“Northstar?”
Luca looked at her.
“You know it?”
She shook her head slowly.
“My mother's physical therapy billing company used Northstar for a short time. She told me they made mistakes with the reimbursement paperwork.”
Serena opened her laptop.
“Northstar has handled administrative services for several hospitality companies over the past decade. We haven't established a connection between your mother's medical billing and the restaurant's payroll records.”
“But it could be the same company.”
“Yes,” Serena said. “And that is something we can verify.”
Luca looked at the papers again.
“Northstar's current owners include a holding company associated with my father's former chief financial officer.”
“Who?”
“Richard Sloane.”
Elena had heard the name before, though she couldn't remember where.
Luca explained that Sloane had served as the Varenzi family's chief financial officer for nearly twenty years. He had overseen several major acquisitions and had been responsible for consolidating the company's financial systems.
After Anthony died, Sloane remained in place for another three years.
Then he resigned.
Officially, he wanted to retire.
Unofficially, Luca had never understood why a man who had controlled so much of the company's finances had walked away without negotiating for a consulting role.
“Have you spoken to him?” Elena asked.
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to understand what I'm asking before I give him a chance to prepare an answer.”
It was the first time Elena had seen Luca admit uncertainty without disguising it as authority.
He wasn't simply searching for someone to blame.
He was trying to determine whether the business he had inherited was built on information he had never been given.
That evening, the accountants discovered another discrepancy.
An internal account called the Employee Welfare Reserve had been used to cover unexplained transfers over several years.
The reserve had originally been established to provide emergency assistance to employees facing medical expenses, family crises, or unexpected loss of income.
Its balance had steadily declined.
Some payments were legitimate.
Others had no supporting documents.
The account's final authorization records had been removed from the system during a software migration.
Serena studied the report.
“We need the original archive.”
“Where is it?” Luca asked.
“According to the inventory, it was transferred to off-site storage seven years ago.”
The same year Anthony Varenzi died.
Luca's face became unreadable.
“Find the storage company.”
Serena made several calls.
An hour later, she returned with an answer.
The archive facility had closed. Its records had been transferred to another operator, which required authorization from the company that originally owned the files.
The authorization had been signed by Richard Sloane.
Luca stood and walked to the window.
Outside, rain slid down the glass.
“My father died, the records were moved, the financial director resigned, and the accounts were consolidated,” he said. “Each event has an explanation. Together, they raise questions.”
Elena looked at the photograph of her father lying on the desk.
“What if the report proves he was right?”
“Then we find out what happened.”
“And if it proves something worse?”
Luca turned.
“Then we deal with that too.”
His answer was simple, but Elena noticed that he did not say it would be easy.
That night, she returned home and found an envelope pushed beneath her apartment door.
There was no return address.
Inside was a single photocopied page.
It showed a list of payments from an old employee welfare account.
Several entries had been circled.
One name appeared beside a transfer of $18,500.
DANIEL MARLOWE.
Elena felt the room tilt.
Her father had never mentioned receiving money from the Varenzi company.
She turned the page over.
On the back, someone had written in black ink:
Ask your mother what your father was really investigating.
CHAPTER 5 — THE MONEY IN HER FATHER’S NAME
Elena read the note until the words blurred.
She called Luca.
He answered immediately.
“What happened?”
She explained about the envelope and sent him a photograph of the page.
He did not speak for several seconds.
“Don't throw anything away,” he said. “Put the original in a clean folder. Don't write on it or show it to anyone else yet.”
“Do you think my father took the money?”
“I don't know.”
“That's a very convenient answer.”
“It's the only honest one I have.”
His response irritated her because she knew he was right.
She wanted him to tell her that Daniel had been framed.
She wanted someone to explain how a man who had spent his life trying to protect employees could suddenly appear in a record suggesting he had taken money from them.
But wanting something to be true did not make it evidence.
Luca arrived at her apartment with Serena less than an hour later.
They examined the photocopy under a desk lamp.
The document appeared to be an extract from the old welfare account, but it lacked a complete transaction reference, an authorization signature, and the supporting invoice.
Serena photographed it and placed it in an evidence sleeve.
“This page alone doesn't establish that the money went to your father,” she explained. “A name can appear as a reference, recipient, employee, or reimbursement contact. We need the underlying transaction.”
Elena sat on the sofa.
“My father was an accountant. If he was investigating the payments, why would his name appear on a transfer?”
“That is precisely what we need to determine,” Luca said.
Marianne emerged from the bedroom.
She had heard the voices and recognized Luca when she saw him.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then she looked at the page in Serena's hands.
“Oh, Daniel.”
Elena stood.
“Mom, you know about this?”
Marianne lowered herself into a chair.
“I knew he had been asked to review the welfare account. I didn't know what happened to the final report.”
“Was the money paid to him?”
“I don't know.”
“Did he tell you he was investigating it?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Marianne looked at her daughter, and the pain in her expression was worse than any denial.
“Because I didn't know how to explain a story I never understood myself.”
She described the months before Daniel's death.
He had been working late, sometimes returning home after Elena had fallen asleep. He kept a notebook in his briefcase and made calls from the balcony so that his conversations wouldn't wake them.
He told Marianne that he had discovered irregularities in an employee assistance program.