Chapter 9 - BUSTER’S POSTER
The poster showed Buster wearing aviator goggles.
Paige wanted to die from embarrassment.
Gabriel looked at the screen.
“This is your work?”
“I was nineteen.”
“It’s good.”
“Do not encourage this.”
Nico smiled.
The original design file contained hidden layers.
One invisible text layer.
A string of characters.
The encryption key.
Kevin had embedded it two years earlier.
“Why?” Paige demanded.
Kevin answered from the hospital video call.
“Insurance.”
Against Vale.
He had already realized Vale was dangerous.
Yet stayed.
Because money was good.
Because fear was stronger.
Because getting out seemed harder every month.
Paige understood that pattern more than she wanted to.
IT decrypted the drive.
Files opened.
Thirty-eight million became forty-six.
Shell vendors.
Insurance fraud.
Kickbacks.
Rusk.
Corrupt port inspectors.
Then something unexpected.
Payments to Kevin.
$620,000 over two years.
Paige stared at him through the screen.
“You made six hundred twenty thousand dollars.”
Kevin looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
“And left me with an overdrawn bank account.”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Gone.”
“How?”
He gambled some.
Spent some.
Vale took much through pressure and false investments.
None of that changed what Kevin did.
Paige’s eyes burned.
“I sent four hundred dollars yesterday.”
“I know.”
“You had made over half a million dollars.”
“I know.”
She ended the call.
No forgiveness today.
Maybe never.
Then the decrypted files revealed another secret.
Martin Vale did not act alone.
There was an internal partner coded:
SABLE.
Payments:
$4.1 million.
Approval access.
Executive floor.
Who?
Gabriel reviewed possible executives.
Nico.
Legal chief.
Operations director.
Gabriel’s cousin Anthony Moretti.
Then Paige noticed SABLE used a distinctive memo phrase:
CLEAR WEATHER.
She had seen it.
Quarterly manifests.
Certain cargo exceptions included:
Clear weather authorization.
Signed:
N.M.
Nico Moretti?
No.
Nico’s surname was Bell.
N.M. belonged to Natalia Moretti.
Gabriel’s older sister.
Chairwoman of Moretti Holdings’ legitimate real-estate division.
Paige looked at Gabriel.
His face changed.
“My sister.”
Nico said nothing.
Natalia lived in Boston.
Rarely involved in logistics.
Or so everyone believed.
Payments to SABLE went to a consulting trust she controlled.
Gabriel called her.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Then Natalia called Paige.
Not Gabriel.
Paige stared at the screen.
Unknown number.
She answered.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice.
“Ms. Winslow.”
“Yes?”
“You found Sable.”
Paige looked at Gabriel.
He heard.
Natalia continued:
“My brother thinks this means I betrayed him.”
Gabriel took one step closer.
Paige held up a hand.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then explain.”
“I was paying Vale.”
Gabriel’s expression hardened.
“For what?”
Natalia answered:
“To collect evidence.”
Silence.
She had suspected Vale for three years.
She could not tell Gabriel.
Why?
“Because Gabriel would have killed him before I found where the money went.”
Gabriel looked offended.
Paige looked at him.
He did not deny it.
Natalia continued:
“Sable is my investigation fund.”
The four-point-one million?
Controlled payments designed to trace Vale’s offshore network.
Maybe.
Proof needed.
Then Natalia said:
“I can prove it.”
“Where?”
“Boston.”
“No.”
Paige surprised herself.
“Send it to investigators.”
Silence.
Then Natalia laughed softly.
“Gabriel found someone intelligent.”
Paige frowned.
“I’m not his anything.”
“Good answer.”
Then the call ended.
Minutes later, federal agents received a data package from Natalia’s attorney.
Three years of evidence.
Valid chain.
Vale’s network mapped almost completely.
But one account remained unidentified.
$11 million.
Beneficiary:
K.M.
Kevin Mercer.
Paige went cold.
Kevin had lied about how much he received.
May you like
Not six hundred thousand.
Eleven million dollars sat somewhere under his initials.
