Chapter 1 - THE FILE THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED
At 6:17 the next morning, Benny Santino walked into Carmine Orsini's private office carrying a thin manila folder.
He looked uncomfortable.
That alone was enough to make Carmine put down his coffee.
"What's wrong?"
Benny locked the door before answering.
"Boss, the maid's personnel file doesn't match her background check."
Carmine opened the folder.
Nell Brisco. Twenty-seven years old. No criminal record. No surviving relatives listed except an elderly father receiving long-term care. Previous employment included a roadside diner, a grocery store, and three months at a hotel before she disappeared from public records for almost a year.
Too ordinary.
Suspiciously ordinary.
"Where was she born?"
"Louisiana. But the birth certificate attached to her application was issued three years ago."
Carmine looked up.
"Three years ago?"
"Her original identity appears to have been sealed."
He turned another page.
There was a photograph of Nell taken when she first arrived at the mansion. Her hair had been shorter then, her face thinner. But her eyes were unmistakable.
Behind the photograph lay a newspaper clipping about a fire that had destroyed Fontaine's Bakery twelve years earlier.
The bakery had belonged to Emmett Fontaine, a legendary New Orleans baker whose pecan pie had once been served at the governor's mansion.
The official report called the fire an electrical accident.
Three people had died.
One victim had never been identified.
Benny pointed at the photograph accompanying the article.
"That's Emmett Fontaine. The man Nell visits at the care facility."
Carmine read the article twice.
Then he noticed a handwritten note in the margin of Nell's background report.
Possible connection to the missing Fontaine inheritance.
Before he could ask another question, his office phone rang.
Odette, his housekeeper, spoke in a trembling voice.
"Mr. Orsini, you need to come downstairs."
"Why?"
"Someone is here asking for Nell."
"Who?"
Odette hesitated.
"He says he is her father."
Carmine closed the folder.
May you like
Because Nell had listed no father at all.
And the man waiting in his foyer was carrying a photograph of Carmine's own father, taken the night he died.
