Chapter 2 - THE DEAD MAN WHO KEPT GETTING PAID
Dead people are excellent employees.
They never complain about missing checks.
That was Dominic’s first conclusion.
Mine was worse.
Someone had used my father long before he died.
The next morning, Dominic moved the financial review out of Laura.
Not because he trusted me.
Because he trusted almost nobody else.
He gave me a conference room inside a legitimate Rossi property-management company.
No bodyguards inside.
One outside.
I complained anyway.
“He has a gun.”
“He is security.”
“He has shoulders wider than the doorway.”
“That is not illegal.”
“Probably inconvenient.”
Dominic ignored me.
We traced eighteen months of transactions.
My father’s name appeared in four companies.
None belonged directly to Varga.
All connected indirectly through vendors.
The structure was messy, but the pattern was simple enough.
Money went out.
Documentation claimed Thomas Bennett provided services.
Then related amounts surfaced elsewhere.
“What was my father doing?”
I asked.
Dominic did not answer.
“Dominic.”
“I don’t know.”
“You always know.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“And that is beginning to irritate me.”
Good.
At noon, Paulie arrived carrying a cardboard banker’s box.
“Found this in Moretti’s storage room.”
Anthony Moretti had not come to work.
His phone was off.
His wife claimed he left early for golf.
His golf club had not seen him.
Inside the box:
Old accounting files.
Shipping records.
Loan agreements.
And one photograph.
My father.
Anthony Moretti.
Varga.
Not one of Varga’s collectors.
The man himself.
Lucian Varga.
I had seen photographs.
Everyone had.
He looked exactly like the kind of man who would inherit a debt from a dead alcoholic and threaten the dead man’s daughter over it.
The photograph was dated five years earlier.
My father looked healthier.
Sober.
Angry.
“What were they doing together?” I whispered.
Dominic turned the photograph over.
Handwritten:
T.B. refuses revised numbers.
I stared.
“Revised what?”
Dominic’s face darkened.
“Ledgers.”
My father had been a bookkeeper before gambling consumed him.
I knew that.
Small businesses.
Bars.
A roofing company.
Anything cash-heavy enough to pay weekly.
Then Dominic said:
“Before Moretti worked for me, he worked with Varga.”
“What?”
“For eleven years.”
“You hired your enemy’s accountant?”
“He changed sides.”
“Apparently not cleanly.”
Dominic gave me a look.
Fair.
Then Paulie found something taped beneath the bottom of the box.
A motel key card.
Room number written on it.
No date.
And two letters:
T.B.
My father.
We traced the motel through the logo.
Closed now.
Demolished six months earlier.
But property records showed who purchased the land.
Rossi Urban Holdings.
Dominic’s company.
He had bought the site without knowing my father had used it.
Then Paulie said:
“There’s still a storage building behind it.”
We went.
I insisted.
Dominic argued.
I won partly because I threatened to follow separately.
Unit 217 contained one folding chair.
A metal desk.
And a safe.
Inside:
My father’s old wallet.
A bottle of bourbon.
And a handwritten note addressed to me.
May you like
Chloe—
If Varga ever comes for you, the debt is a lie.
