Chapter 6 - THE NAMES IN RED
When I first saw Giuseppe Caruso's signature on a payment made seventeen years after his death, I assumed somebody had been careless. An old name left in a computer. A template nobody bothered to update.
Then Tessa showed us the payment history.
Every three months, money had been moved from the children's equipment reserve to a vendor called Harbor Patient Support. The vendor billed for wheelchairs, overnight nursing, and specialty transport. Sometimes the payments were modest. Sometimes they were worth more than a year of my salary. They had been approved using digital credentials that purported to belong to Giuseppe.
“What happened to the equipment?” Rosa asked.
“We can't find evidence it was delivered,” Tessa said. “Not to the listed patients.”
Enzo rested both hands on the edge of his desk. “Who controls those credentials?”
“An administrator in the foundation's accounting system. But the access log only gives a service account name.”
Maya shook her head. “Don't change anything. Copy the logs with a qualified forensic examiner. We need to preserve how they were obtained.”
A few months earlier, I'd have thought all this painfully slow. Why not seize the computers? Why not force everybody into a room and make them confess? But I'd watched Serena announce that Rosa was incapable of making her own decisions, and I understood how much harm could hide behind the claim that a powerful person knew best.
At the clinic, I met one of the families listed in the disputed register. A father named Ben Torres was waiting outside a treatment room with his daughter Zoe, who used a bright yellow wheelchair decorated with stickers. Ben had signed consent for a new seating system eight months earlier. The grant had been approved, but the equipment had never arrived.
“We keep hearing it's delayed,” he said when a staff member introduced us. “The current chair hurts her back, but we're trying to make it work.”
His daughter looked up at me. “It isn't the chair's fault. I'm taller now.”
“You've got that right,” he said, smiling sadly.
I thought of the payments on Tessa's screen. Money had moved through the system as though a child had been helped. The child still waited. I asked whether I could write down what they'd said. Ben agreed after I explained I wasn't working as an investigator and would pass any concerns to the foundation's independent team.
When I told Rosa, she closed her eyes. “That is why we cannot stop at getting my signature back.”
Enzo called an emergency meeting of the legitimate trustees, excluding anyone implicated in the questioned transfers pending legal review. Maya advised that a court-appointed independent manager might be safer. Rosa agreed at once, despite the loss of personal control it would mean.
“My foundation is not my handbag,” she said. “If the money has been misused, someone independent should find out.”
The interim manager was a woman named Helen Cho, a former nonprofit auditor with little patience for family prestige. She arrived in comfortable shoes, requested bank records, and asked Enzo to leave the accounting room during interviews.
He looked taken aback. Then he stepped out.
I liked her immediately.
Before lunch I went back into the clinic courtyard and found Ben Torres adjusting the strap on his daughter's wheelchair. Zoe was explaining to him why a small wheel had begun squeaking. Her explanation involved friction and an unexpectedly serious lecture about why adults should not ignore maintenance. Ben caught my eye and shrugged.
“She'll be an engineer,” he said.
“Or a lawyer,” Zoe replied. “I can argue just fine.”
I asked whether they minded if I sat nearby. Zoe pointed at a bench. She wanted to know why I had a bandage on my face. I told her that someone had hurt me, that I was getting medical care, and that other people were helping make sure it didn't happen again. Her expression grew thoughtful.
“Adults should get help too,” she said.
I looked at Ben, who smiled. “We've had that conversation a lot.”
The courtyard was not an extraordinary place. It had uneven bricks and an old fountain that hadn't worked in years. Yet children moved across it confidently, each in a different way, and the adults made room without turning every accommodation into a spectacle. I wondered what Rosa would say if she knew her foundation's future was being argued over by people who had never spent an afternoon here.
When I left, Zoe called after me. “Tell the people with the money I'm still waiting for my new chair!”
“I will,” I promised, and wrote her words down exactly.
At lunch, Ortiz contacted me with an update on the stranger in the gray coat. Parking footage from the north wing showed a man named Alec Voss, a private investigator contracted through Arthur Valenti's office. He had visited my apartment building and taken the photograph of me that appeared online. Ortiz said her office was investigating whether threats or unlawful conduct had occurred, but warned me not to contact him.
“Thank you,” I said. “I thought I was imagining that he was following me.”
“You weren't imagining the car,” she replied. “Keep telling us what happens. Let us sort out what it means.”
That afternoon, I attended a meeting with my employment lawyer, Sandra Bell. She was blunt in a way I found comforting.
“You're entitled to treatment and a workplace free of assault,” she said. “The question of who employed you and who issued directions may affect the claims. Keep every schedule, pay stub, and message.”
“I still need money.”
“We'll work on that separately. You don't have to trade away your testimony for wages already earned.”
I agreed to seek unpaid leave while the legal issues were examined and applied for temporary assistance. The words felt humiliating when I said them, but Sandra didn't react as though needing help was a moral failure. She simply showed me the forms.
When I came back to the mansion to retrieve my remaining belongings, Mrs. Alvarez met me at the kitchen door. She handed me a small paper bag filled with homemade lemon cookies. “For your mother,” she said. “Or for you if she doesn't share.”
I laughed, then winced at my cheek. She hugged me carefully.
In the hallway I found Enzo speaking quietly to Rosa. He stopped when he saw me.
“Claire,” he said, “Evelyn Shaw has been located.”
My knees nearly weakened. “Is she all right?”
“She's alive and with a lawyer,” Rosa answered. “She wants to speak to investigators before anyone connected to the family.”
“Good,” I said. “That's her choice.”
Evelyn had provided a sworn statement describing pressure to backdate invoices and alter beneficiary records. She claimed Dominic and Arthur's representatives had designed a program to route foundation money through supposedly charitable patient services. The payments went to companies that existed mostly on paper. The scheme predated Serena's engagement to Enzo.
“Then Serena joined something that was already happening,” I said.
“That's what the records suggest,” Enzo answered. “Her actions are serious enough on their own. But the trail goes further back.”
He paused. “And Dominic may not have been the first person to approve it.”
I remembered Giuseppe's digital signature. “Your father.”
“Possibly. We need to know whether the transactions began while he was alive or whether someone merely used his credentials later.”
For once Enzo didn't sound defensive. He sounded determined to let the records speak, even if they said something terrible about a man he'd admired.
That evening, Maya brought Rosa an old handwritten ledger recovered from a locked drawer in the north wing. Most of it documented legitimate grants. Near the back, several pages listed unexplained transfers with initials beside them: G.C., D.C., and P.D.
“Giuseppe, Dominic, Paul D'Angelo?” Rosa asked.
“We can't assume,” Maya cautioned. “But the dates are worth examining.”
One entry had a red line drawn across it and the words STOP THIS written in a different hand. A second line below recorded that the payment went through anyway.
Rosa touched the handwriting. “This is mine.”
“Do you remember it?” Enzo asked.
“Vaguely. I confronted your father over accounts I couldn't reconcile. He said it was a temporary loan to protect the business from creditors. I told him charity money wasn't a loan he could take.”
Enzo turned away toward the window.
“I don't remember what he said afterward,” Rosa continued. “I remember being told that the board had corrected it. I wanted to believe that.”
Outside, the mansion's lights shone across the wet lawn. Somewhere beyond those gates, children still waited for therapy equipment the records said had been delivered.
Maya's phone rang. She answered and listened. Her expression changed.
“There's an emergency board session scheduled for tomorrow,” she told us. “Dominic's counsel claims Rosa's recent statements show she's being influenced by Enzo, so they want her suspended pending capacity review.”
Rosa gave a short, bitter laugh. “I'm being manipulated because I refuse to be manipulated.”
“That's the argument,” Zoe replied. “But there's more. The motion cites witness testimony from Serena Valenti.”
Enzo looked up. “After what she did?”
Maya checked the attachment again. “She's claiming Claire orchestrated the entire incident so Enzo could take control of the foundation.”
I felt the old fear rise, hot and familiar. A woman in an emerald gown was still trying to make me the villain of her story.
Then Rosa gripped my hand and said, “We will answer with what happened, not with what they want people to fear.”
May you like
For the first time, that sounded possible.
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