Chapter 3 - THE GIRL WHO OWNED A COMPANY
The name on Luca's phone looked wrong even though it was spelled correctly.
HANNAH ELISE COLLINS.
There it was beside a controlling interest in Green Orchard Partners, a company I had never heard of until the moment Luca said it aloud. Under the transfer details was a mailing address: the little apartment building where my mother lived. I recognized every digit of the street number. My stomach pitched.
“It's a forgery,” I said.
“Probably,” Rebecca replied. “But we need to prove it before someone uses it to hurt you.”
Luca set his phone facedown on the library table. “No one should assume Hannah knows anything about the company. We have records to review and a lawyer to call.”
I was grateful for the words and furious that they were necessary. That afternoon I had been afraid Vanessa could take away my employment. By midnight she had apparently given me ownership of a corporation designed to conceal whoever wanted Rebecca's vote. It was so absurd I almost laughed.
“I want to see everything filed under my name,” I said.
Rebecca nodded. “You will.”
Amelia Price returned with a portable scanner and a face that told me she had canceled her night's sleep. She spread the public registration forms across a long table. One listed me as president. Another listed me as sole manager. The signature looked remarkably like the one on the torn resignation letter: elegant, looping, entirely false.
“Do these papers mean I owe debts?” I asked.
“We can't know the full exposure until we investigate,” Amelia said. “A fraudulent identity filing can create serious trouble, but filing it doesn't make it legitimate. We'll document the impersonation, notify the relevant agencies, and protect your accounts.”
She didn't pretend a signature vanished just because somebody called it fake. That honesty steadied me more than a promise that everything would be fine.
Daniel arrived with two folders from the household office. “We confirmed Vanessa requested photocopies of employee IDs and tax forms last week. She said the wedding insurer required them.”
“The insurer?” Luca asked.
“According to her assistant.”
I remembered standing by the laundry-room printer while Vanessa's assistant collected staff paperwork. We were told it was routine. I had given them copies because I couldn't imagine my driver's license would become a weapon.
“Can you identify anyone else whose information was copied?” Amelia asked.
“Most of the staff,” I answered. “They had us line up after lunch.”
Rebecca rubbed her forehead. “She didn't just target Hannah because Hannah discovered the affair. She already had access to Hannah's documents.”
A strange thought occurred to me. “What if the fake resignation wasn't the beginning? What if it was supposed to hide the fact that I supposedly owned Green Orchard?”
Luca looked at Amelia. “An employee who suddenly 'resigned' might be harder for us to locate when auditors started asking questions.”
“And a missing employee makes a convenient scapegoat,” Amelia added.
Outside, the rain finally stopped. Wet branches brushed the windows, and a gray predawn light began lifting the darkness above the lake. The staff had gone home or to their rooms. I was still wearing an unfamiliar coat over a bandage. The smell of antiseptic lingered around my collar. I wondered how many people had been forced to work through the night because powerful strangers had decided their lives were expendable.
At six, Mrs. Avery arrived with scrambled eggs and toast. She placed the tray in front of me and waited until I took a bite.
“Your body won't solve anything if you starve it,” she said.
“I feel sick.”
“Then eat slowly.”
Rebecca took the chair beside me. “She says that to Luca, too.”
“Especially Luca,” Mrs. Avery replied.
For half a minute we almost felt like ordinary people in an ordinary kitchen. Then Daniel returned with news from the police: Vanessa had been located at a hotel near O'Hare, but she was no longer in her room when officers arrived. Her suitcase remained. So did a stack of Westhaven documents in the desk drawer.
“Was she tipped off?” Luca asked.
“We don't know.”
“Can police trace her phone?”
“They're pursuing the appropriate process.”
Luca looked frustrated by every cautious word. I understood it. It was easier to imagine a grand command that fixed everything than to accept how slowly real evidence had to be gathered.
Rebecca touched my hand. “Hannah, I think somebody used your name because they expected you to disappear. If Vanessa told you she could ruin your employment, she might have planned to make the company look like yours when the deal collapsed.”
I looked at my bandaged shoulder. “She almost succeeded.”
Amelia brought me a fresh set of papers. “I recommend a separate attorney represent you. I can refer someone independent of the Moretti family, and you should be free to disagree with us without worrying about your job.”
“Can I afford one?”
“We can identify legal aid and victim-support resources. Luca can also offer to cover reasonable fees, but the lawyer must answer to you, not him.”
I glanced at Luca. He nodded. “However you choose to handle it.”
I decided to accept an introduction to a lawyer named June Patel. Within an hour, June joined us by video call. She wore a plain navy blouse, held a mug marked WORLD'S MOST TIRED ATTORNEY, and asked me to tell the story in my own words from the beginning.
I did. I included the missing wages, the forged resignation, the attack in the hallway, the photograph of Michael's button, and the message threatening my mother. At the end she said, “You have been very clear. I want you to remember something: the person whose identity is stolen is not responsible for explaining why someone else chose to steal it.”
I didn't realize how badly I needed that sentence until my eyes filled.
June arranged to meet me at her office later that day. She advised me to preserve messages, monitor financial accounts, and avoid signing anything brought to me by household management without review. Luca's company agreed to place disputed employment records under independent hold.
By noon, detectives had interviewed Michael and the technician responsible for the deleted camera footage. The technician admitted receiving an urgent instruction through Vanessa's assistant but said he hadn't known the content concerned an assault. His account included a time-stamped message. Every detail mattered; none of it alone was enough to close the case.
I sat near the library window while Rebecca made calls about Westhaven. She was sharp, organized, and newly suspicious of everyone who used the phrase “for your own good.” At one point she hung up and looked at me with exhausted amusement.
“You know the worst part?” she asked. “Michael used to ask me to explain the fine print because he said I was better with contracts.”
“He was right,” I said.
“Apparently he still preferred to believe Vanessa.”
“Maybe believing her was easier than admitting what he wanted.”
Rebecca considered that. “Maybe.”
She opened an old family ledger and showed me a photograph of Westhaven's riverfront freight terminal. Brick walls rose above a row of loading docks, and a faded MORETTI sign stretched across the roof. “Dad founded the shipping company here. When he retired, he kept the archive building out of the sale. He said some histories should never be auctioned.”
“What kind of histories?”
“Correspondence. Payroll ledgers. Agreements with people our family shouldn't have worked with. Dad spent his last years trying to make the business clean.”
“And someone wants those records?”
“I think someone wants to know what Dad kept.”
The family business existed in a world that made me uncomfortable. Luca was called a Mafia boss because of the violent network he had inherited, even as he had reportedly moved substantial operations into legitimate businesses. I didn't know which stories were true. Rebecca didn't ask me to pretend the past was harmless.
“My father hurt people,” she said quietly. “And his father before him. If these files prove crimes, they need to be preserved, not used as bargaining chips.”
At three, June drove me to her office. Luca offered a car, but I chose to ride with the lawyer. The small freedom mattered. We filed an identity-theft report, began disputing the corporate filings, and prepared a formal statement about the assault. I didn't become brave all at once. My pen shook while I signed my actual name.
When we returned, a messenger was waiting in the entrance hall with a package addressed to me. Daniel had not opened it. June photographed the wrapping and advised that the police examine it first. The sender line read GREEN ORCHARD PARTNERS. Across the label someone had written in red ink: PRESIDENT COLLINS.
Inside was a single thumb drive sealed in plastic and a note typed on cheap paper.
YOUR COMPANY. YOUR PROBLEM. ASK WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NIGHT SHIFT.
I looked at Rebecca. “What night shift?”
Her face lost color. “At the freight terminal?”
Luca arrived moments later, listened, and told Daniel to deliver the drive to investigators for forensic imaging before anyone attempted to access it.
Rebecca stared out toward the lake. “There was an accident at Westhaven fifteen years ago. A fire in an overnight loading bay. Dad said the records were incomplete.”
“How many people were hurt?” I asked.
“Three workers died.”
June folded her arms. “We need to distinguish rumor from evidence. But the reference matters.”
I turned the note over. On the back was a phone number and one final line.
IF YOU WANT YOUR REAL PAYCHECKS, CALL THE MAN WHO KNOWS WHY YOUR FATHER LEFT WESTHAVEN.
My breath caught. My father, a retired mechanic named Daniel Collins, had died when I was nineteen. Mom told me he'd worked in warehouses before an injury forced him out. He never mentioned the Morettis.
I read the line again.
May you like
Why your father left Westhaven.
I had come to this mansion to earn enough money for rent and medicine. Now someone was telling me my family had been part of the same secret long before I ever walked through its doors.
