Chương 2 - THE THINGS KEVIN STOLE
The lockdown lasted forty-three minutes.
Nobody was allowed to leave the building.
Nobody was allowed to use the freight elevators.
Nobody was allowed to take a personal bag into a restroom, stairwell, or conference room.
Paige learned all of this while sitting in Gabriel Moretti’s office, watching an entire corporate tower react to danger with the efficiency of a military installation.
It should have terrified her.
Instead, what terrified her was the photograph on the desk.
She had walked out of the gym at 6:08.
By 3:14, she had accidentally called Gabriel honey.
By 3:32, somebody had placed a box under her chair containing a message that repeated the exact word.
Whoever was watching her had either been inside Moretti Logistics all day or had someone inside.
Gabriel stood at the windows speaking quietly on the phone.
“No police yet.”
A pause.
“I said yet.”
Another pause.
“No one touches her apartment until I get there.”
Paige stood.
“What?”
Gabriel ended the call.
“My apartment?”
“Nico sent a team.”
“You sent armed men to my apartment?”
“I sent two people to see whether the door was still locked.”
“You could have asked me first.”
“You were busy discovering that someone photographed you before sunrise.”
“That does not give you permission to invade my home.”
“They haven’t gone inside.”
She stared at him.
He stared back.
Then his phone vibrated.
He looked down.
“Now they don’t need permission.”
Paige’s stomach dropped.
“What happened?”
“The front door is open.”
She was moving before she understood she had made a decision.
Gabriel stepped into her path.
“No.”
“That is my apartment.”
“And if whoever opened the door is still inside?”
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“Gabriel.”
His eyes narrowed at the use of his name.
Paige lowered her voice.
“My mother’s letters are in that apartment. My laptop. My birth certificate. My father’s watch. Everything I own that Kevin didn’t already take is in there. I am going.”
For several seconds, the city’s most feared logistics executive looked as though he was deciding whether to order her physically restrained.
Then he exhaled.
“You stay behind me.”
“I’m not hiding behind you.”
“You can stand beside Nico, then.”
“That’s not better.”
“It is from a ballistics perspective.”
Paige stared.
Gabriel picked up his jacket.
“You wanted a conversation. This is the part where I compromise.”
“You are unbelievably bad at compromise.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Twenty minutes later, Paige was seated in the rear of a black SUV with Gabriel beside her and Nico in front.
Rain had begun.
Philadelphia blurred outside the windows in silver streaks.
No one spoke for the first five minutes.
Paige finally broke the silence.
“What is Harbor Light Consulting?”
Gabriel’s gaze stayed on the street.
“A shell company.”
“You knew the name.”
“I knew it appeared on three invoices that should never have existed.”
“What kind of invoices?”
“Consulting fees.”
“For what?”
“Nothing. That’s usually the point.”
She turned toward him.
“You think Kevin created it?”
“I think Kevin had access to it.”
“I made the logo two years ago.”
That got his attention.
“Two years?”
“Maybe a little more.”
“When did he borrow the money?”
“Six months ago.”
“When did you start working at Moretti Logistics?”
“Eight months ago.”
Gabriel’s expression changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Paige saw it.
“You think he pushed me toward the job.”
“Did he?”
“I found the listing online.”
“Who sent it to you?”
Her chest tightened.
Kevin had.
He had been lying in bed, scrolling through his phone.
Hey, babe, this one pays better.
She remembered clicking the link while he kissed her shoulder.
She had thought he was being supportive.
Paige looked out the window.
“Oh, God.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Sit there looking like you already knew.”
“I didn’t.”
“You suspected.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not better.”
“No.”
The SUV turned into Paige’s neighborhood.
Her building was a narrow brick walk-up between a laundromat and a closed bakery.
Gabriel looked at it once.
“You live here?”
Paige bristled.
“Try not to sound so devastated.”
“I’m not.”
“You looked devastated.”
“I was thinking about the locks.”
“The locks work.”
“Your door is open.”
She had no response to that.
Two men in dark coats waited inside the entrance.
One gave Gabriel a short nod.
“Third floor. No one inside now. Back window’s open.”
Paige’s heart started pounding.
They climbed.
Her apartment door stood three inches open.
A cheap chain lock hung broken from the frame.
Paige stopped.
For months, she had imagined collectors standing outside that door.
Now someone had entered without even bothering to knock.
Gabriel looked back.
“You can stay here.”
“No.”
He studied her face, then pushed the door open.
The apartment was small enough to see most of it from the entrance.
The couch cushions had been cut open.
Drawers had been dumped.
Books lay scattered across the floor.
The cheap television remained on its stand.
So did the microwave.
Her jar of emergency cash was untouched behind the flour canister.
“They weren’t robbing me,” Paige whispered.
“No.”
She stepped around broken glass.
Her bedroom looked worse.
Mattress lifted.
Closet emptied.
Desk drawers removed completely.
Her laptop was gone.
Paige pressed her lips together.
Gabriel remained in the doorway, not touching anything.
“My father’s watch.”
“Where?”
“Blue box. Top drawer.”
She searched.
The box was there.
The watch remained inside.
That hurt more somehow.
Whoever had entered knew exactly what mattered and what did not.
“They took the computer,” she said.
“What else?”
Paige scanned the room.
Then froze.
“My sketchbooks.”
“How many?”
“Six.”
All gone.
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“What was in them?”
“Old work. Ideas. Logos. Random notes.”
“Passwords?”
“No.”
“Names?”
“Maybe.”
“Kevin?”
“Probably.”
She dropped to her knees beside the overturned desk.
There was a loose floorboard beneath it.
Kevin had never known about it.
At least she did not think he had.
Paige pulled the board up.
A thin black sketchbook remained underneath.
Relief moved through her.
Gabriel crouched beside her.
“You hid one?”
“My favorite.”
She opened it.
Pages of rough drawings.
Packaging designs.
A hotel lobby concept.
A series of dogs wearing historical costumes that she had once planned to turn into greeting cards.
Gabriel stared at one.
“Is that George Washington?”
“As a golden retriever.”
“Why?”
“I was twenty-two.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
She almost smiled.
Then she reached the back cover.
Something hard pressed beneath the paper.
Paige frowned.
“That’s new.”
She tore the glued edge carefully.
A small flash drive slid into her palm.
She stared.
Gabriel’s expression turned hard.
“Did you put that there?”
“No.”
“Kevin?”
“He knew I never let anyone touch this sketchbook.”
“So yes.”
She looked at the drive.
“Or somebody wants us to think so.”
Gabriel stood.
“We don’t open it here.”
Paige looked around her destroyed bedroom.
“Where exactly do I live tonight?”
“With security.”
“No.”
“At one of my residences.”
“Absolutely not.”
“A hotel under another name.”
“No.”
“Paige.”
“I am not becoming your hostage because somebody broke my door.”
“Then choose your own hotel. Nico will put two people outside it.”
“I can’t afford—”
“I didn’t say you were paying.”
She stood too.
“And that is exactly how people start owing you things.”
Gabriel looked at her so directly that she stopped speaking.
“You do not owe me for protection against a threat connected to my company.”
Something about the sentence reached her.
Not the power.
The boundary.
She nodded once.
“Hotel.”
“Fine.”
“One guard.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“Two, but they stay at the elevators.”
She considered.
“Fine.”
Nico appeared in the doorway.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“There’s something in the kitchen.”
They followed him.
A photograph had been taped to the refrigerator beneath Paige’s magnet from the Cleveland Zoo.
Kevin.
Recent.
He was standing outside a coffee shop.
The date stamp in the corner read three days earlier.
Philadelphia.
Paige gripped the counter.
“He’s here.”
Gabriel removed the photo carefully.
On the back was a printed address.
No message.
Nico looked it up on his phone.
“Storage facility in South Philly.”
Paige stared at Kevin’s face.
He looked thinner.
Older.
Afraid.
“Why would someone leave this?”
“To send us somewhere,” Gabriel said.
“Then we don’t go.”
“We don’t go blindly.”
She looked at him.
“You’re still going.”
“So are you.”
That surprised her.
“I thought you’d order me to stay behind.”
“You’ve made it clear you don’t follow orders.”
“I follow reasonable orders.”
“You called me honey in front of thirty employees.”
“That was not an order.”
For one second, Nico’s mouth twitched.
Paige saw it.
So did Gabriel.
Nico immediately became a statue.
Gabriel picked up the flash drive.
“Back to the office first.”
Two hours later, in a secure conference room on the top floor, they connected the drive to an isolated computer.
Paige sat at the keyboard.
Gabriel stood behind her.
Nico watched the door.
The drive contained one encrypted folder.
Paige tried Kevin’s birthday.
Wrong.
Their old apartment number.
Wrong.
The name of his childhood dog.
Wrong.
Then she remembered a ridiculous phrase Kevin had used whenever things went wrong.
Luck favors beautiful idiots.
She typed it without spaces.
The folder opened.
Paige stared at the screen.
Hundreds of files.
Invoices.
Route sheets.
Payment records.
Photographs.
Scanned signatures.
Her signature.
“Oh my God.”
Gabriel leaned closer.
Harbor Light Consulting had billed Moretti Logistics for more than two million dollars over eighteen months.
The invoices carried approvals from executives Paige had never met.
Several contained her name in design authorization fields.
Every signature was fake.
Every one convincing.
“Kevin practiced,” she whispered.
“How do you know?”
“Because the first versions are here.”
A subfolder contained dozens of scans of Paige’s signature.
Some sloppy.
Some near-perfect.
Gabriel’s face became dangerous.
Paige clicked another folder.
MORETTI_INTERNAL.
One spreadsheet listed warehouse transfers.
Another listed phone extensions.
Then she saw a column of authorization codes.
Every suspicious payment ended with the same initials.
N.M.
Nico stepped forward.
“Who is N.M.?”
Gabriel did not answer.
Paige looked at him.
“Gabriel?”
His face had gone completely unreadable.
She turned back to the screen.
One scanned authorization page contained a full signature.
Not initials.
A name.
Nicholas Moretti.
Paige glanced between the two men.
“Who is Nicholas?”
Nico’s eyes lowered.
Gabriel stared at the signature.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than Paige had ever heard it.
“My father.”
Paige waited.
Gabriel did not move.
“My father signed that authorization,” he said.
May you like
Then he looked at her.
“Eight years after we buried him.”
