Chapter 6 - Emma Refused to Be Hidden

I wanted Emma moved somewhere nobody knew.

She refused.

“I’ve spent three years watching people make decisions for Noah because he uses a wheelchair,” she said. “I’m not letting you do it to me because I got beaten.”

“You were nearly killed.”

“So were you, apparently, depending on which newspaper I read.”

Lucia laughed aloud.

I glared at her.

Emma continued.

“I’ll follow police advice. Not orders from you.”

That should have irritated me.

Instead, it reminded me why I had noticed her for fourteen months.

Emma did not confuse fear with obedience.

So we made a plan.

Detective Ramirez placed patrol attention around the townhouse.

My outside security team replaced Marco’s men.

Marco was told I was restructuring because insurers were nervous after the attack.

He pretended to believe me.

The forensic audit produced its first result that afternoon.

Harbor Crest Transport had overbilled Castellano Freight by nearly $4.8 million over six years.

Payments passed through three shell vendors.

One was connected to Marco’s brother-in-law.

Another to Paolo.

The third had received money from a former Kolov subsidiary.

Perfect.

Too perfect.

Whoever designed the trail wanted investigators to reach Kolov after touching Marco.

Then Noah finally told Emma where the second flash drive was hidden.

Inside one of his prosthetic-leg shipping cases in a rehabilitation storage unit.

Detective Ramirez recovered it under evidence procedures.

The drive contained Noah’s photographs.

But it also held a video he had forgotten existed.

The night before his accident, Noah recorded himself walking through the warehouse because he wanted proof of unsafe loading conditions for his temp agency.

At 2:14 into the video, two voices were audible behind a closed office door.

One was Harbor Crest’s manager.

The other said:

“Marco doesn’t want Dominic seeing these numbers.”

Emma looked at me.

Noah whispered:

“Is that him?”

I knew the voice.

Not Marco.

Paolo.

That mattered.

Because Paolo had no official Castellano role at the time.

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If he was giving instructions in Marco’s name, either he was lying—

or Marco had built a shadow operation inside my company while I was still congratulating myself for cleaning up my father’s sins.