Chapter 3 - The Man Who Approved My Hiring
Adrian Vale had worked for Moratini Holdings for twenty-three years.
That was the first thing Silas reminded me after I recognized him in the photograph.
Twenty-three years.
Chief Financial Officer for eight.
Board member for eleven.
Trustee on the Moratini charitable foundation.
Executor on two family estates.
The kind of executive nobody questioned because questioning him would mean questioning half the company’s history.
And, apparently, the man who personally approved the final paperwork that placed me inside Ronan’s division.
I stared at his younger face in the Harbor Nine photograph.
“What does he know?”
Ronan answered without hesitation.
“More than he ever told me.”
“Could he have sent this?”
Silas shook his head.
“If Adrian wanted to communicate secretly, he wouldn’t leave a photograph in an elevator under security cameras.”
“Unless he wanted us to think somebody else did it.”
Silas looked at me.
“You’re going to be exhausting.”
“My father said the same thing.”
The words came out before I could stop them.
For half a second, grief cut through the adrenaline.
Ronan noticed.
He didn’t comment.
That was one thing I was beginning to understand about him.
He noticed everything.
He simply chose which things to use.
“We don’t confront Adrian,” Ronan said.
I laughed softly.
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“You don’t trust him.”
“I trust facts.”
“That sounds like something embroidered on a dictator’s pillow.”
Silas actually laughed.
Ronan glared at both of us.
I folded my arms.
“If Adrian is involved, we need to know why.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“Then somebody wants us to suspect him.”
Ronan nodded.
“Exactly.”
We spent the afternoon building two investigations.
The official one involved vendor inflation.
The real one involved Harbor Nine.
My name stayed off every search.
Silas used archived physical records stored in a warehouse in Queens.
Ronan pulled old board minutes from a safe in his apartment.
I went back to my desk and pretended my world had not collapsed before lunch.
That was harder than expected.
Moratini Holdings occupied twelve floors of the tower.
Finance sat on thirty-four.
My cubicle faced west.
Usually, I liked the view.
That afternoon, every reflection in every window felt like surveillance.
At 3:46, Adrian Vale walked through Finance.
He was fifty-eight now.
Silver hair.
Navy suit.
Perfect posture.
He had the reassuring face of a man banks put in advertisements about retirement planning.
He stopped beside my desk.
“Lena.”
I looked up.
“Mr. Vale.”
“You were upstairs this morning.”
Not a question.
“Yes.”
“With Ronan.”
“Yes.”
He smiled.
“Everything all right?”
My heart beat once, hard.
“Vendor review.”
“Anything interesting?”
There it was.
Maybe innocent.
Maybe not.
“Depends how you feel about elevator insurance.”
His smile barely shifted.
“I try not to feel anything about elevator insurance.”
“Healthy.”
He studied me for one second too long.
“You’re doing excellent work.”
“Thank you.”
“I knew you would.”
My fingers stopped above the keyboard.
He turned to leave.
“Mr. Vale?”
He looked back.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you know?”
For the first time, something entered his eyes.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Then the pleasant executive smile returned.
“Good instincts.”
He walked away.
I sat motionless for ten seconds.
Then I texted Silas one word.
Interesting.
His reply came immediately.
Do not follow him.
Naturally, ten minutes later, I followed him.
Not physically.
I wasn’t suicidal.
I checked the elevator logs.
Adrian left Finance at 4:02.
Went to floor twenty-eight.
Legal.
Stayed eleven minutes.
Then forty.
Executive dining.
Then basement level two.
That was strange.
Executives used B1 for drivers.
B2 held maintenance and secure storage.
I sent Silas the data.
His response:
Stay upstairs.
I replied:
You use too many commands.
He wrote:
You ignore too many.
At 5:31, Ronan appeared beside my desk.
No entourage.
No warning.
Half the finance department became instantly interested in their monitors.
“Walk with me.”
I stood.
We took the stairs.
Not elevator.
Good.
“You followed Adrian digitally,” he said.
“I observed publicly accessible movement records.”
“You accessed restricted elevator logs.”
“Publicly accessible to me.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You hired me.”
His jaw moved.
He had no answer to that.
We stopped in an empty stairwell between floors thirty-three and thirty-four.
Ronan handed me a photocopy.
It was an old Harbor Nine insurance report.
Cause of fire: electrical.
Damage: moderate.
Casualties: none.
Except in the margin, handwritten in black ink, someone had written:
1 missing contractor — G.H.
Gabriel Hart.
My father.
I stared.
“He was listed missing?”
“For fourteen hours.”
“But the photograph was taken three days later.”
“Yes.”
“What happened during those fourteen hours?”
“We don’t know.”
Ronan gave me another page.
A visitor log.
My father re-entered Harbor Nine at 6:12 the next morning using authorization from…
Adrian Vale.
I closed my eyes.
“This is insane.”
“It gets worse.”
“Of course it does.”
He handed me a third page.
A death-benefit transfer.
After my father died, Moratini Holdings had made a payment of $250,000.
Recipient:
Margaret Hart.
My mother.
I looked up.
“No.”
Ronan said nothing.
“She never told me.”
“Maybe she didn’t know the source.”
“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars is difficult to overlook.”
“It was routed through an insurance trust.”
I stared at the page.
My mother had worked two jobs after my father died.
We had nearly lost the house.
I had taken student loans.
If she had received that money—
Something did not fit.
“It never reached her.”
Ronan’s eyes sharpened.
“How do you know?”
“Because we were broke.”
That night, I went home and called my mother.
I did not mention Mafia families.
I did not mention encrypted keys.
I did not mention photographs from burned warehouses.
I asked one question.
“Mom, did Dad have life insurance?”
A long pause.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Not much.”
“How much?”
“Lena—”
“Please.”
“Fifty thousand.”
“Did you ever receive anything from his employer?”
Another pause.
This one longer.
“No.”
My stomach tightened.
“Did anyone visit you after he died?”
Silence.
“Mom.”
“A man came.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What man?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You remember everything.”
She exhaled shakily.
“He said your father had made dangerous mistakes.”
I stopped breathing.
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. It was dark.”
“Was he Italian?”
“Lena.”
“Please.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted a notebook.”
The old black leather notebook.
My father’s.
The one Ronan had.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t have it.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“Your father mailed it somewhere the week before he died.”
I closed my eyes.
Ronan’s father.
Of course.
“Why have you never told me this?”
“Because the man told me if you ever started asking questions about your father, I should stop you.”
Cold moved through my body.
“What exactly did he say?”
My mother’s voice trembled.
“He said, ‘If Lena ever goes looking for Gabriel’s work, she’ll finish what he started.’”
I stood in my apartment staring at the dark windows.
“Mom, listen to me. I need you to go stay with Aunt Diane for a few days.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
“You sound like your father.”
That hurt more than anything else.
I ended the call and immediately contacted Silas.
Twenty minutes later, two Moratini security vehicles were on the way to my mother’s house.
Ronan arrived at my apartment before midnight.
I opened the door.
“You could have called.”
“You wouldn’t have listened.”
“That appears to be everyone’s opinion of me.”
He entered.
For the first time, Ronan Moratini looked out of place.
My apartment was small.
Books stacked beside the couch.
Cheap dining table.
One dying plant.
He looked at a framed photograph of me and my father.
I was ten.
Missing a front tooth.
Dad looked happy.
Genuinely happy.
Ronan stared at him longer than expected.
“You knew him.”
“Not well.”
“But you met him.”
“When I was sixteen.”
I turned.
“You never said that.”
“You never asked.”
“Ronan.”
“He saved my life.”
Silence.
The words landed slowly.
“What?”
“Harbor Nine.”
He looked at the photograph.
“I was there during the fire.”
My pulse slowed.
“No.”
“My father took me because he wanted me to understand operations from the ground up. The fire started while we were inside.”
“And my father?”
“Got me out.”
“Then disappeared for fourteen hours.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Ronan met my eyes.
“Because he went back inside.”
“For what?”
“We never knew.”
His phone rang.
Silas.
Ronan answered.
“What?”
His expression changed.
“What do you mean gone?”
He looked at me.
My stomach dropped.
“What happened?”
He ended the call.
“Adrian disappeared.”
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
“From where?”
“Basement level two.”
“Security cameras?”
“Looped.”
I thought of the elevator transmitter.
Janus.
My father’s letter.
“Did he take anything?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Ronan stared at me.
“The original Harbor Nine access ledger.”
I sank onto the edge of the couch.
Then my laptop chimed.
New email.
No sender.
No subject.
I opened it.
One sentence appeared.
YOUR FATHER DID NOT DIE IN THE CAR.
Beneath it was an attached video file.
Ronan said, “Don’t.”
Too late.
I clicked.
The footage was grainy.
Security camera.
Date stamp twelve years ago.
Harbor Nine.
My father entered the frame.
Alive.
Injured.
Looking over his shoulder.
Then another man appeared.
Adrian Vale.
They argued.
No audio.
My father handed him something.
Adrian shook his head.
Then the video skipped forward.
My father was gone.
Adrian stood alone.
And beside him appeared a third person.
A man I recognized from photographs in Ronan’s office.
Ronan’s father.
Vittorio Moratini.
The final frame froze.
Both men were staring directly toward the camera.
Then words appeared across the screen.
ONE OF THEM ORDERED GABRIEL HART’S DEATH.
May you like
And beneath it:
ASK RONAN WHICH ONE HE HAS BEEN PROTECTING.
