Chapter 9 - LUCA MORETTI, ACCOUNT 17
The flash drive contained a ledger with hundreds of transactions.
Politicians. Clinics. Shipping companies. Funeral homes. Police officers.
At the center was Account 17.
LUCA MORETTI.
Millions had moved through it for eight years.
"I never opened this account," I said.
Detective Brooks did not look convinced. "It uses your tax number, your corporate seal, and your authorization code."
Only three people had ever known that code.
Me.
Enzo.
Tony.
Tony stood across the evidence table, his face unreadable.
"You think I did this?" he asked.
"I think someone close enough to touch my files built an empire under my name."
He removed his gun, placed it on the table, and stepped back. "Then test everything."
Elena was taken to a guarded children's hospital outside the city. Bruno refused to leave her door. Rosa and Tomas stayed beside her, their restaurant debt erased before I even asked.
Account 17 connected directly to Carlo's death payment.
The money had been sent two hours before his ambush.
Brooks traced the login to a private office above La Estrella, Tomas's restaurant.
We searched it after midnight.
Behind a false wall, we found a safe containing burner phones, forged signatures, and photographs of every child who had disappeared along the route.
One photograph showed Elena outside her school.
Another showed Carlo entering the cold-storage warehouse eight years earlier.
The final photograph showed Tony meeting Victor Harlan in a parking garage.
Tony stared at it.
"That meeting happened," he said. "But not for Enzo. Carlo sent me. We were trying to identify Harlan's buyers."
"Why did you never tell me?"
"Because Carlo believed Enzo was reading your messages. He made me promise to stay close to you after he died."
He opened one of the burner phones using a number only Carlo would have known.
A recording began.
Carlo's voice filled the dark office.
"Luca, if you hear this, the betrayal came from inside the house. Do not trust the man who taught you to call him brother."
Tony closed his eyes.
My phone rang.
It was the hospital.
May you like
Bruno had disappeared from Elena's door.
And a nurse had found a single drop of blood beside the stairwell.
