Chapter 3 - Noah’s Accident Had a Castellano Number on It
The next afternoon, Emma’s brother arrived.
Noah Carter maneuvered his wheelchair through the hospital doorway with practiced irritation and immediately told Emma she looked awful.
She laughed despite the cracked ribs.
That told me something about them.
Then Noah saw me.
His expression changed.
Not gratitude.
Recognition.
“You’re Castellano.”
“Yes.”
He looked toward Emma.
“You work for him?”
“You knew that.”
“I knew the name. Not…”
He stopped.
“Not what?”
Noah’s jaw tightened.
Then he asked if we could speak privately.
Emma objected.
He ignored her.
We went into the small family consultation room.
Noah pulled a battered laptop from his backpack.
“My accident wasn’t random.”
I said nothing.
Three years earlier, Noah had been working as a warehouse inventory clerk through a temporary agency. He was hit by a tractor-trailer while crossing a secured loading area in Queens.
The driver claimed Noah stepped into a blind spot.
Cameras happened to be down.
The trucking subcontractor settled.
No criminal case.
Noah lost both legs below the knee.
“What does that have to do with me?”
He opened a scanned invoice.
The truck belonged to Harbor Crest Transport.
I knew the name.
It had been a legacy vendor of Castellano Freight until I terminated the contract two years earlier.
At the bottom of the invoice sat an internal vendor authorization code.
MB-17.
Marco Bellini.
“He approved them,” Noah said.
“Marco approved hundreds of vendors.”
“I know.”
Then Noah opened a photograph.
Cargo manifests.
Container numbers.
One shipment listed pharmaceuticals.
The weight was wrong by almost five tons.
Noah had noticed.
He took pictures because his supervisor told him to stop asking questions.
Two days later, he was hit.
My throat tightened.
“Why didn’t you bring this to police?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“They said billing fraud wasn’t proof someone tried to kill me.”
Correct.
Painful, but correct.
Then he said:
“Someone broke into my apartment six months later. They didn’t take money. They took the original flash drive.”
I looked at him.
“You told Emma you still had one.”
“A duplicate.”
“Where?”
He hesitated.
“She doesn’t know.”
Good.
Then Noah leaned forward.
“I started looking again after I saw Harbor Crest was quietly dissolved. One of its former managers now works for a company tied to Sergei Kolov.”
There it was.
Kolov again.
Too clean.
Too convenient.
I asked:
“Who knew you restarted the investigation?”
Noah thought.
“My lawyer. Emma. And a guy who called saying he represented Castellano compliance.”
My skin went cold.
“What guy?”
“He said his name was Michael.”
I did not have a Michael in compliance.
But Marco Bellini’s middle name was Michael.
I left the room and called my chief compliance officer.
“Pull every Harbor Crest file from the last five years.”
May you like
“Why?”
“Because I should have done it two years ago.”
