Chapter 8 - Paolo Wasn’t Running Away From Me
Paolo was arrested outside Philadelphia two days later.
He had not been fleeing to Europe.
The Newark car was misdirection.
He switched vehicles and drove south.
When police found him, he carried eighteen thousand dollars in cash, two phones, and a passport that had never been used.
Paolo talked faster than Marco.
Not because he had more conscience.
Because he had less loyalty.
He admitted attacking Emma.
Admitted searching for Noah’s copy.
Admitted planting the Kolov narrative.
But when Detective Ramirez asked who ordered it, Paolo said:
“Marco didn’t.”
I watched the interview through recorded footage later.
“Then who?”
Paolo laughed nervously.
“You people still think this is about old men.”
He gave them a name.
Lucia Castellano.
My sister.
I stopped the playback.
“Again.”
Ramirez replayed it.
Paolo claimed Lucia had contacted him six months earlier and asked what Noah still possessed from Harbor Crest.
Impossible.
Or I wanted it to be.
Lucia was forty-one.
My only sibling.
The person who convinced me to pay Emma more after discovering she slept on subway trains.
The person who treated Noah like family whenever he visited.
The person who had called the doctor while Emma bled on my floor.
I asked Ramirez:
“Do you believe him?”
“I believe suspects trade names for oxygen.”
Not an answer.
Correctly.
Then forensic accountants found transfers from a nonprofit Lucia chaired.
Payments to a consulting firm tied to Paolo.
She said they were event-security expenses.
Invoices existed.
Dates matched.
Services were vague.
The money totaled $96,000 over eighteen months.
I confronted her privately.
She didn’t flinch.
“I hired security.”
“Through Paolo?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you refused to admit Kolov was watching us.”
She had always believed my legitimacy campaign made us vulnerable.
Father’s daughter in the ways I hated most.
Then she said something strange.
“Dominic, whatever you think Marco did, do not let police dismantle the entire company chasing ghosts.”
“Why?”
“Because people depend on us.”
Employees.
Pensions.
Contracts.
Families.
It sounded responsible.
It also sounded exactly like the kind of argument my father used whenever truth threatened revenue.
Then Emma remembered the phrase one attacker whispered while searching her backpack.
“If we don’t find it, she’ll bury us.”
She.
Not he.
May you like
That night Lucia disappeared.
And she took our father’s private archive key with her.
