Chương 6 - THE PRICE OF GETTING HER HIRED
Paige did not sleep.
At 5:30 the next morning, she stood in the hotel bathroom staring at herself while Kevin’s words repeated in her head.
He paid me thirty thousand dollars to make you take the job.
Eight months earlier, Kevin had sent her the Moretti Logistics posting.
He had encouraged her to apply.
He had helped rewrite her résumé.
He had even bought cheap champagne when she got the position.
She had believed he was proud.
Now every memory looked contaminated.
At 7:15, Gabriel knocked on her hotel room door.
Not security.
Not Nico.
Gabriel.
Paige opened it wearing sweatpants and a gray T-shirt.
He held two coffees.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“So do you.”
“Good morning to you too.”
He handed her a cup.
She let him in.
Two guards remained by the elevator.
Gabriel noticed her packed overnight bag.
“Leaving?”
“My apartment is being repaired today.”
“You’re not going back there.”
Paige gave him a look.
He corrected himself.
“I strongly recommend you don’t go back there yet.”
“Better.”
He almost smiled.
She sat by the window.
“Why me?”
“We’ll ask Kevin.”
“I’m asking you.”
Gabriel remained standing.
Paige continued.
“If Cesare wanted someone inside the company, why choose a broke graphic designer with no power?”
“Because no one noticed you.”
The truth hurt less the second time.
“And because I could build the forgeries.”
“Yes.”
“But I didn’t have access to executive records.”
“You had access to templates.”
“Which means if the fraud was discovered, everything could point to me.”
Gabriel nodded.
Paige stared at her coffee.
“Kevin didn’t leave me as collateral because he was desperate.”
“Maybe partly.”
“He was paid to put me here.”
“Yes.”
“He lived with me while someone was planning to frame me.”
Gabriel sat across from her.
“Paige.”
She looked up.
“Do not make his guilt larger than what you know.”
She laughed bitterly.
“You’re defending him now?”
“No.”
“Sounds like it.”
“I’m telling you not to torture yourself with facts you don’t have.”
That silenced her.
The most violent man in Philadelphia, according to office rumor, was warning her against inventing pain.
Life had become strange.
At 11:40, they arrived near Saint Mark’s Church.
Gabriel hated the plan.
Paige knew this because he had said so eleven times.
Kevin had demanded she come alone.
She refused.
The compromise placed Gabriel and Nico inside an empty parish office across the courtyard while Paige sat in the church’s last pew.
No visible guards.
No dramatic entourage.
Just an earpiece hidden beneath her hair.
The church smelled of old wood and candle wax.
At exactly noon, Kevin entered.
Paige’s heart stopped.
He had lost weight.
His expensive haircut was gone.
Dark stubble covered his jaw.
He wore a coat too large for him and kept looking behind.
For three years, Paige had known the sound of his key in a lock.
The way he chewed the inside of his cheek when lying.
The exact laugh he used when he wanted forgiveness.
Now he looked like a stranger wearing Kevin’s face.
He sat two pews ahead.
Not beside her.
“I’m sorry.”
Paige stared at the altar.
“That is an embarrassingly small sentence.”
“I know.”
“Did Cesare pay you to get me hired?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes burned.
“How much?”
“Thirty thousand.”
“So the debt was never a debt.”
“It became one.”
“How?”
“I lost some of the money.”
“Gambling?”
Silence.
Paige laughed once.
“Of course.”
“I thought I could replace it.”
“You always thought you could replace things.”
“Paige—”
“My money. My trust. Six months of my life.”
Kevin turned.
She looked at him fully.
“You watched me take a second job to pay back money you were paid.”
His face crumpled.
“I didn’t know they’d collect from you.”
“You gave them my name.”
“I was scared.”
“So was I.”
That ended the excuse.
Kevin looked down.
After a moment, he said, “Cesare approached me at a sports bar. He knew about your design degree. Knew you were looking for better work. He said he needed someone harmless inside Moretti Logistics.”
“Harmless.”
“That was his word.”
“What were you supposed to do?”
“Get you hired. Then ask you for templates.”
“You did.”
“Yes.”
“And the logo.”
“Yes.”
“Why Harbor Light?”
“He gave me the name.”
“Luca?”
“Handled the paperwork.”
“Did Gabriel know?”
“No.”
“Did Nico?”
“Not at first.”
Paige remembered the ledger.
“What happened after?”
Kevin rubbed his hands together.
“I started copying files because Luca stopped paying me.”
“You blackmailed him.”
“Yes.”
“At least you’re honest now.”
“I found something bigger.”
“The employee debt scheme.”
“Part of it.”
Kevin looked toward the side entrance.
“Cesare had been buying private debts tied to company employees for years. Medical bills. gambling loans. tuition loans. Anything people were ashamed of.”
Paige felt sick.
“Why?”
“To make them useful.”
“What did he make them do?”
“Small things. Passwords. schedules. files. Nothing that looked like treason alone.”
“And eventually?”
“He had access everywhere.”
Paige thought of Sylvia.
Forty-three employees.
Maybe more.
“Why undermine Gabriel?”
Kevin laughed without humor.
“Because Gabriel was cleaning the company.”
Paige frowned.
“What?”
“After his father died, Gabriel shut down businesses Cesare liked. Cash operations. protection routes. private lending.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Not all of it.”
“No. But more every year.”
Paige thought of Gabriel’s insistence that the collectors were part of his world, not Moretti Logistics.
An uncomfortable distinction.
Maybe an important one.
Kevin continued.
“Cesare thinks Gabriel is making the family weak.”
“So he created fraud under Nicholas Moretti’s name.”
“To prove Gabriel lost control.”
“And then?”
“Board removes Gabriel. Cesare installs Luca.”
Paige felt a cold clarity.
“That simple?”
“No.”
Kevin looked at her.
“You were insurance.”
“How?”
“If Gabriel found the forged documents, they would trace back to your design files, your signatures, your debt, your boyfriend.”
“You.”
“Yes.”
“And he’d think I did it.”
“Or that you helped me.”
Paige’s hands curled.
“Why return?”
Kevin’s face changed.
“I heard they were going to make you disappear.”
The phrase hit hard.
“In what sense?”
“I don’t know.”
“That matters.”
“I swear I don’t know.”
Paige looked toward the parish office.
Gabriel would be hearing every word.
“What evidence do you have?”
Kevin reached into his coat.
Paige tensed.
He removed a brass key.
“Locker 214. Thirtieth Street Station.”
He set it on the pew.
“What’s inside?”
“Original agreements. Recordings.”
“Of who?”
Kevin looked at her.
“Cesare.”
Paige’s pulse jumped.
“And Luca?”
“Yes.”
“Why not take this to police?”
“Because I’m in half the recordings.”
Fair.
“Come with us.”
Kevin laughed.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Moretti will kill me.”
In her earpiece, Gabriel’s voice came very quietly.
No.
Paige almost turned toward the office.
Kevin didn’t hear.
“He won’t,” she said.
“You don’t know him.”
“I know what he promised me.”
Kevin stared.
“What did he promise?”
“Not to make my choices for me.”
For the first time, Kevin looked genuinely ashamed.
Paige stood.
“You never gave me that.”
He lowered his eyes.
A side door opened.
Two men entered.
Not church staff.
Kevin saw them.
His face went white.
“Go.”
Paige did not move.
“Who are they?”
“Go!”
Gabriel and Nico appeared from the opposite side immediately.
The men stopped.
No one reached for a weapon.
The church became silent.
Gabriel walked down the aisle.
He looked at Kevin.
Then at the two strangers.
“Service is over.”
One of the men smiled.
“Mr. Moretti.”
“Nico.”
Nico took out his phone.
Not a gun.
He photographed both men.
“You’re on church cameras,” Gabriel said. “City cameras. Private cameras. Leave.”
The men exchanged a look.
Then walked back out.
Paige realized she had been holding her breath.
Kevin stared at Gabriel.
“You’re not going to kill me?”
Gabriel’s expression did not soften.
“No.”
Kevin almost sagged.
“But you’re going to tell the truth.”
“I already did.”
“You’ve told the first ten percent.”
Gabriel stopped one pew away.
“You used Paige. You forged her name. You participated in a scheme targeting my employees.”
Kevin swallowed.
“Yes.”
“You will testify to that.”
“To who?”
“Everyone who needs to hear it.”
Kevin looked toward the door.
“They’ll kill me.”
Gabriel’s eyes went cold.
“They will not touch you.”
Paige heard the difference.
Not mercy.
Protection.
A decision.
Kevin looked at her.
“Do you trust him?”
Paige considered the question.
Twenty-four hours earlier, the answer would have been absurd.
Now it was complicated.
“I trust the rules we made.”
Gabriel looked at her.
Something passed between them.
Kevin saw it.
His face twisted with something like regret.
“Locker 214,” he said.
Then he reached into his pocket and gave Paige a folded receipt.
“Code is on the back.”
Gabriel took it.
Kevin did not resist.
Nico arranged a protected location for him through a lawyer Gabriel trusted.
Not a Moretti safe house.
Not a basement.
A legitimate attorney’s secured apartment with cameras and documented access.
Paige noticed Gabriel doing things differently because she had asked.
That frightened her in a new way.
Because power listening could become something dangerously close to tenderness.
At Thirtieth Street Station, locker 214 contained a brown leather briefcase.
Inside were contracts.
Audio files on a recorder.
Bank statements.
And one old black-and-white photograph.
Gabriel lifted it.
Nicholas Moretti stood beside Cesare.
Both young.
Both smiling.
Between them was a third man Paige did not know.
On the back:
NICK, CESARE, VICTOR — 1998.
Paige looked through the contracts.
One was dated eight years earlier.
A week before Nicholas died.
It transferred control of the Moretti private lending network away from Cesare.
To Gabriel.
The document had never been executed.
Gabriel stared at his father’s signature.
“He was going to remove him.”
Nico nodded slowly.
“Looks like it.”
Paige pressed play on the first recording.
Kevin’s voice.
Luca’s.
Then another voice.
Older.
Cesare.
The quality was poor but understandable.
Luca said, “If Gabriel finds the invoices, the girl takes the fall.”
Cesare replied, “Only if he insists on behaving like his father.”
A pause.
Then Kevin asked, “What does that mean?”
Cesare laughed.
“Nick always believed blood excused disobedience.”
Gabriel froze.
The recording continued.
Luca said, “And look where that got him.”
Silence filled the station corridor.
Paige looked at Gabriel.
His face had gone pale.
“Gabriel.”
He reached for the recorder and stopped it.
Nico’s voice was careful.
“That doesn’t prove—”
“I know.”
“Gabriel.”
“I said I know.”
But Paige understood.
Eight years earlier, Nicholas Moretti had moved to strip Cesare of power.
Soon afterward, Nicholas died.
According to public records, a heart attack.
According to the tone in Cesare’s voice, perhaps the past was not finished.
Gabriel put the photograph back into the briefcase.
Then he looked at Paige.
“This is no longer your problem.”
She stared at him.
“You cannot possibly be serious.”
“This changed.”
“So did my life.”
“Paige—”
“No.”
He stopped.
She stepped closer.
“You don’t get to send me downstairs now because the mystery became painful for you.”
His jaw tightened.
“This is family.”
“And I was bait.”
“That’s exactly why—”
“Exactly why I’m staying.”
Nico looked between them.
Gabriel’s voice dropped.
“You could get hurt.”
“I already got hurt.”
The words struck.
Paige softened, but only slightly.
“I’m not asking to stand in front of bullets. I’m asking to finish the work.”
Gabriel looked at her for a long time.
Then nodded.
“Together.”
She nodded back.
“Together.”
Nico’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“What?”
Gabriel asked.
Nico looked at Paige first.
Then Gabriel.
“Too late.”
“For what?”
“The story just hit the news.”
He turned the phone around.
A headline filled the screen.
MORETTI BOSS PROMOTES DEBT-RIDDEN EMPLOYEE AFTER PRIVATE PENTHOUSE MEETING.
Below it was a photograph of Paige entering Gabriel’s hotel elevator the previous night.
The second image showed Gabriel arriving twenty minutes later.
The implication was obvious.
Paige felt nausea rise.
Then she read the final line visible beneath the headline.
Sources inside Moretti Logistics allege Winslow received preferential treatment following a personal relationship with the company’s chief executive.
Paige looked at Gabriel.
“Cesare.”
Gabriel’s face became ice.
“No.”
He took the phone.
“This is Luca.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Cesare destroys reputations quietly.”
May you like
He looked at the headline again.
“Luca enjoys applause.”
