Chapter 3 - THE MONEY THAT DISAPPEAREDBy nine that morning, Sylvio Raldi's executive conference room looked like a war room.
Computer monitors covered one wall.
Attorneys sat beside accountants.
Cybersecurity specialists worked from laptops.
Coffee cups accumulated across a table designed for elegant investor meetings.
Sylvio stood at the window overlooking downtown Manhattan.
He had not slept.
He did not care.
“Tell me what we know.”
His chief financial officer, Rebecca Lin, opened a spreadsheet.
“ClearPath Facility Services was our authorized contractor until fourteen months ago. Following termination, invoices began appearing from ClearPath Maintenance Group.”
“How did procurement approve them?”
“They didn't.”
Sylvio turned.
Rebecca swallowed.
“The invoices bypassed procurement.”
“Impossible.”
“Normally, yes.”
His general counsel slid a document forward.
“Curtis Grant had temporary emergency vendor authority during the systems migration.”
“For six weeks.”
“He appears to have created a permanent shadow authorization before it expired.”
Sylvio stared at the paper.
“How much?”
“We're still calculating.”
“How much, Rebecca?”
She looked up.
“Potentially 4.8 million dollars.”
No one spoke.
Sylvio's eyes moved toward the city.
Four point eight million.
But he wasn't thinking about the number.
He was thinking about sixteen-dollar access fees.
Unpaid overtime.
Khloe working fifty-six hours and receiving forty.
A little girl eating macaroni beneath a reception desk.
Rebecca continued.
“He wasn't acting alone.”
“Names.”
“We don't have enough evidence.”
“Then find it.”
On another floor of the tower, Khloe sat in a private guest suite with Lily.
Sylvio had arranged it after the hospital discharged her.
She had refused three times.
Then Lily fell asleep sitting upright in a chair.
Khloe accepted.
Now her daughter slept beneath a white duvet while Khloe stared at the untouched room-service breakfast.
Eggs.
Toast.
Fruit.
Pancakes.
More food than they usually had for an entire weekend.
She hated how hungry she was.
She hated even more that she was afraid to eat it.
Poverty trained people strangely.
Even when food was free, part of her calculated what should be saved for later.
A knock came at the door.
Maria entered.
“You okay?”
Khloe nodded.
“You?”
“No.”
They smiled weakly.
Maria sat beside her.
“I've been keeping copies for eight months.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew something was wrong.”
“Why didn't you report it?”
Maria's face tightened.
“I tried.”
Khloe looked at her.
“To who?”
“Human resources.”
“What happened?”
“Two days later Curtis showed me a photograph of my husband's landscaping truck. He knew where Antonio worked. He knew our address.”
Khloe's stomach turned.
“He threatened you?”
“He said accidents happen to undocumented workers.”
“Is Antonio undocumented?”
Maria shook her head.
“He became a citizen three years ago.”
“Then—”
“Curtis didn't know that.”
Maria looked down.
“I still got scared.”
Khloe reached for her hand.
“You had children.”
“Three.”
“Then you weren't a coward.”
Maria's eyes filled.
Neither woman spoke for a moment.
The door opened after another knock.
Sylvio entered.
Khloe immediately became guarded.
“Any news?”
“We stopped most of the deletions.”
“Most?”
“Some records are gone.”
Maria went pale.
Sylvio continued.
“But we have backups.”
He placed a folder on the table.
“More importantly, we found something else.”
Khloe opened it.
A list of employees.
Beside each name were numbers.
Hours.
Pay.
Fees.
At the bottom of every row was a final column marked RETENTION.
“What is that?”
“The difference between what my company paid and what you received.”
Khloe found her name.
Her throat closed.
Over twenty-two months, someone had skimmed more than forty-one thousand dollars from wages billed under her labor.
“Forty-one thousand?”
“That isn't necessarily what you're legally owed,” Sylvio said. “Overtime penalties and fraudulent deductions may increase it.”
She stared at him.
“Forty-one thousand dollars.”
It was more money than Khloe had ever seen at one time.
Enough to clear her medical debt.
Enough to repair her car instead of taking two buses.
Enough for Lily to have her own bedroom.
Enough that Khloe might never have needed to skip dinner.
She pushed the folder away.
“I need air.”
She stood too quickly.
Sylvio reached out.
She jerked away.
“Don't.”
He dropped his hand.
“I spent two Christmases telling Lily Santa had trouble finding our apartment.”
Her voice shook.
“I told her we couldn't afford dance lessons because rent came first. I watered down milk.”
Sylvio said nothing.
“I sold my mother's wedding ring.”
Khloe looked straight at him.
“And these people had forty-one thousand dollars that belonged to me.”
Maria covered her mouth.
Khloe wiped her face angrily.
“Where was your company?”
Sylvio absorbed the question without defending himself.
“Where were all the people upstairs earning six figures to make sure this couldn't happen?”
“They failed.”
“So did you.”
“Yes.”
Khloe wasn't expecting that.
No excuse.
No corporate language.
No “allegedly.”
Sylvio simply stood there and took it.
“Yes,” he repeated. “I did.”
Her anger lost some of its direction.
He continued.
“I can tell you I didn't know. That's true. But it doesn't give you back the nights you went hungry.”
Khloe looked away.
“I intend to repay every dollar we can verify before the investigation is finished.”
“Why before?”
“Because you shouldn't have to wait two years for courts to decide whether you're entitled to money that was obviously taken from you.”
Maria stared.
“You're paying everybody?”
“Everyone affected.”
“Even if Grant stole the money, not the company?”
“Especially then.”
Khloe studied him.
“You could lose millions.”
“I already lost something more expensive.”
“What?”
“Trust.”
For a billionaire, the answer sounded almost absurd.
But Khloe sensed he meant it.
Sylvio's phone rang.
His expression changed when he saw the screen.
“Excuse me.”
He answered.
“Sylvio.”
A distorted voice came through loudly enough for Khloe to hear.
“You need to stop digging.”
Sylvio's body became completely still.
“Curtis?”
“You think this is about janitors?”
Sylvio motioned silently toward his security chief outside.
The call was already being traced.
Curtis laughed.
“You have no idea what's inside your own company.”
“What do you want?”
“The audit stops.”
“No.”
“Then maybe ask your new little friend how safe her daughter feels walking home from school.”
Khloe froze.
Sylvio's face turned terrifyingly calm.
“Do not mention that child again.”
“Now you're listening.”
The call disconnected.
Khloe crossed the room.
“What did he say?”
Sylvio hesitated.
She saw the answer anyway.
“What did he say about Lily?”
“Nothing that will happen.”
“What did he say?”
Sylvio told her.
Khloe went white.
“I have to leave.”
“No.”
“I need to take Lily somewhere.”
“You are staying here.”
“You don't get to order me around.”
“Correct. But I can put trained security between your daughter and a man making threats.”
Khloe looked toward the bedroom.
Lily slept peacefully.
“I brought her into this.”
“No. Grant did.”
“I should have kept quiet.”
Sylvio stepped closer.
“If you keep quiet now, he learns the threat worked.”
“My daughter's safety matters more than your investigation.”
“It matters more to me too.”
Khloe searched his face.
“Why?”
He didn't answer immediately.
Finally, Sylvio sat in the chair opposite her.
“When I was eleven, my father owed money to people who believed fear was an efficient collection method.”
Khloe had never heard anything about Sylvio Raldi's childhood.
“He became successful later?”
Sylvio almost smiled.
“Much later.”
“What happened?”
“One night, those men came to our apartment.”
He looked toward Lily's room.
“My mother hid me beneath the kitchen sink.”
Khloe's expression softened.
“I listened while they broke my father's ribs.”
“Oh.”
“He survived. But fear stayed in that apartment long after the men left.”
Sylvio met her eyes.
“I know what it feels like to be a child hiding while adults make the world dangerous.”
Khloe thought of Lily beneath the reception desk.
“I won't let Grant do that to her.”
His phone rang again.
This time Rebecca.
Sylvio listened.
Then his face changed.
“How certain?”
He ended the call.
Khloe stood.
“What?”
“We found the company that owns ClearPath Maintenance Group.”
“And?”
“It's registered through three shell companies.”
“To Curtis?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Sylvio looked toward the door.
“To my chief operating officer.”
Khloe stared.
“Your COO?”
“Daniel Mercer.”
The second most powerful executive in Raldi Properties.
A man Sylvio had known for seventeen years.
A man who had attended his father's funeral.
May you like
A man Sylvio considered family.
And at that exact moment, Daniel Mercer was walking into the building with two attorneys, smiling as if he knew absolutely nothing.
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