Chapter 2 - THE NAME ON THE PAYMENT
The hospital smelled like antiseptic, wet coats, and coffee that had been sitting on a warmer for too long. Those ordinary smells should have comforted me. Instead, every squeak of a cart wheel sounded like the champagne tower collapsing all over again.
Dr. Shah drove me to the emergency department herself. An ambulance was not necessary after she checked my vital signs, but she insisted that I keep the injured leg elevated on the ride. At the hospital, a nurse removed the dressings while I stared determinedly at a poster about hand hygiene.
The cuts were shallow, though several needed careful closure. Imaging showed no retained glass or fracture. The physician prescribed rest, follow-up care, and a temporary restriction on standing. He was kind, but the kindness hurt in a way I hadn't expected. I had been prepared to apologize for taking up space.
"You don't have to prove you're in pain," the nurse said, watching my hands twist together.
I laughed once, and then I cried.
Before midnight, Hannah arrived with a clean sweatshirt and a bag of socks. She had driven across town in the rain after I finally told her where I was. She didn't ask what the champagne tower cost or whether Vanessa was angry. She took one look at my bandaged leg and sat beside me.
"I brought the terrible striped socks," she announced. "They're the only ones in my drawer with loose tops."
"They're hideous," I said.
"Exactly. That means nobody important can mistake this for a fashion show."
I had to laugh, which made my eyes fill. Hannah handed me a tissue and waited without demanding the whole story. When I asked if I could stay on her couch, she said I should have asked months ago. The relief of knowing I had somewhere to go was stronger than the pain medicine beginning to work.
At midnight, Luca arrived in the waiting area with Daniel and a woman carrying a leather briefcase. Luca's black suit had lost its perfect shape. He had removed his tie. There was an unfamiliar exhaustion in his eyes.
He stayed several steps away until I invited him closer.
"How are you?" he asked.
"Embarrassed. Tired. Still alive."
"That's a good start." He looked at the medical papers on my lap. "May I sit?"
I nodded. He pulled over a plastic chair that seemed ridiculous beneath a man whose home contained chairs worth more than my yearly salary.
"Olivia, this is Naomi Brooks," he said. "An independent attorney. Not one of my company's lawyers. She's here because the police may want your statement, and I don't want you pressured by anyone connected to me. You can choose your own counsel instead."
Naomi shook my hand gently. "You're a witness and possibly a victim. You have a right to understand what people are asking of you. I can explain those options if you'd like."
I looked at Luca. "You called a lawyer for a maid?"
"For a person injured in my house," he said. "I should have done better long before tonight."
Daniel came back from the parking lot, where he had been on the phone with investigators. Police officers had searched the east wing after the guests departed. The room showed signs of hurried removal. The camera system had gone dark for eleven minutes during the afternoon. The vendor hired to service it had arrived under an authorization signed by Vanessa Bellini.
"Elena's family says she hasn't been home in two days," Daniel reported. "Her sister Marina has been trying to reach her. The supposed resignation letter came by courier, not in person."
"She has a child," I said suddenly.
They looked at me.
"Elena kept asking whether her daughter was safe. I thought maybe she'd just had a fight with someone at home."
Naomi wrote it down. "Do you know her daughter's name?"
"Sofia. She said it twice."
Luca closed his eyes. "Sofia is ten. I met her at the holiday party. Elena used to bring her because she couldn't afford a sitter."
The detail broke through the hard image I had of him. Somewhere in the city was a ten-year-old whose mother had been held in a locked room, and none of us knew where she was.
"We'll make sure the police know," Naomi said.
Daniel hesitated. "There's something else. East River isn't a warehouse. It's the assistance fund after the Riverbend distribution-center fire last winter. Eleven employees were hurt and three died. The fund was supposed to pay medical support and long-term benefits to their families."
"I remember," I said. Everyone in Chicago remembered the smoke cloud over the river that morning. For weeks, people left flowers at a chain-link fence near the site.
"My mother started the foundation," Luca said. "I expanded its commitments after the fire. Elena was brought in to reconcile the accounts."
"Was the money gone?" I asked.
"I don't know yet." He said it plainly, without trying to protect his pride. "But Elena wouldn't hide in a guest room because of a bookkeeping error."
Naomi cautioned him against accessing or changing the fund's systems himself before a forensic examination. She contacted a financial investigator whose work could be kept separate from Moretti Holdings. The difference mattered: if Luca's name appeared on suspicious transfers, his personal assurance of innocence would not be enough.
"You should understand," Luca said to me, "my family's reputation is not good. If you tell the truth, people may question why you worked there or why you trusted me."
"I trusted the paycheck," I said. "Until tonight, I thought that was all I could count on."
He looked away. "Fair."
I thought he might be angry. Instead, he sat quietly while the nurse brought my discharge instructions.
By morning, a police investigator named Detective Morgan Lee arrived to speak with me. Naomi remained only after I asked her to. I described the east guest room, Elena's frightened voice, the broken cabinet, and Vanessa stepping in front of my crutch at the party. I tried to recall the man with the event-staff badge. He had a narrow scar at his hairline, dark glasses he kept in his shirt pocket, and a tattoo of a black compass on his wrist.
"Anything else?" the detective asked.
I remembered the blue notebook lying beneath the lamp. Its cover was soft, worn at the corners, with an elastic strap. "She pointed to it before the man came in. Then she told me seventeen. Maybe a page number."
Detective Lee wrote that down.
After the statement, Naomi explained that I did not have to return to Luca's home, even if the estate had provided part of my housing allowance. Luca offered to cover a hotel temporarily, and Naomi suggested making any arrangements in writing so that my testimony could not later be characterized as purchased.
"I'll stay at my friend Hannah's," I said. "She has a couch and a terrible cat."
"That sounds safer than a mansion full of people with security badges," Naomi replied.
For the first time in hours, I smiled.
My phone had been charging beside the bed. When I checked it, I found twenty-one unread messages from Hannah. She had seen a video of my fall circulating online. Someone had posted the broken champagne tower with a caption calling me a drunken employee looking for a payout. Another account claimed I'd assaulted Vanessa with a serving tray.
I felt sick. "I wasn't drinking."
"I believe you," Naomi said. "Keep the posts. Don't argue with them online."
A message from an unknown number arrived while we spoke. It included a photograph of my apartment door and a typed sentence: YOUR FRIEND'S COUCH WON'T PROTECT YOU.
Detective Lee returned immediately when Naomi called her. An officer was sent to check the building. Hannah agreed to stay elsewhere for the night.
Luca read the threat over my shoulder but said nothing. His silence was different from the cold silence at the dinner. He looked ashamed.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I brought danger into your life."
"It was already there when Vanessa locked that room," I replied. "You just finally saw it."
In the afternoon, while I rested with my leg raised, Daniel called Naomi with news from the fund's accountants. An emergency audit had identified several transfers totaling nearly nine million dollars to an outside consulting group. The beneficiary name was a company I had never heard of: North Meridian Advisory.
The authorization codes were attached to Luca's executive account. More unsettling, the final approval contained a digital signature that auditors said matched his authorized credential.
I watched Luca absorb the news. "Could someone have stolen it?" I asked.
"Someone could have used it," he said. "Or I signed something I should have examined. We need to find out which."
His phone rang again. This time the caller was his cousin Matteo Moretti, a company executive I had occasionally seen at family dinners. Luca listened without speaking. Then his expression hardened.
"No," he told Matteo. "There will be no emergency meeting to transfer authority until the evidence is preserved."
He ended the call.
"What's happening?" I asked.
"Matteo says the board is frightened," Luca replied. "He thinks I should step aside and let him manage the fund while this is investigated."
"Maybe he's trying to help."
"Maybe." Luca looked at the photograph of my apartment door on Naomi's phone. "But he's also the person who recommended North Meridian to us six months ago."
My heart thudded.
A final message came from Detective Lee before sunset. Sofia Rossi had been located safely with her aunt Marina. Elena, however, remained missing. Marina had handed police an old voicemail from her sister. Its last sentence was almost inaudible.
May you like
Naomi turned up the volume.
"If anything happens to me," Elena whispered through static, "ask about the blue book. And whatever they say, don't let Matteo sign the seventeenth page."
