Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN THE WHITE COAT
“My mother.”
Khloe looked from Gabriel to the note in her hand.
Her father had written Evelyn Falcone’s name eighteen years earlier.
Gabriel’s mother.
The room seemed to tilt.
“Why would my father tell me to find your mother?”
Gabriel’s gaze remained on the pocket watch.
“Because Thomas trusted her.”
“Trusted her with what?”
“That is what I’ve been trying to learn.”
Khloe stared at him.
“You had my father’s watch for eighteen years and you never thought to contact me?”
Gabriel didn’t flinch.
“I didn’t know the note was behind the photograph.”
“You never opened it?”
“I opened the watch. I didn’t remove a picture of a little girl from her father’s watch.”
That stopped her.
A small thing.
But somehow believable.
Gabriel continued.
“Thomas gave me the watch when I was twenty-three.”
“Why?”
“He said if anything happened to his records, the watch would tell me where to begin.”
“You were twenty-three. Why would he trust you?”
Gabriel looked toward the old red ledger.
“He didn’t.”
Khloe frowned.
“He trusted my mother.”
Gabriel sat.
“My father still controlled most of Falcone Holdings then. The Obsidian was one of a dozen businesses moving money through cash-heavy accounts.”
“Your father was stealing?”
Gabriel’s expression tightened.
“I don’t know yet.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It is not meant to.”
Khloe wanted to be angry.
Anger was easier than confusion.
“My father lost his accounting practice eighteen years ago.”
Gabriel nodded.
“I know.”
“Clients left. Banks stopped working with him. He sold our house.”
“I know.”
“My mother worked two jobs.”
“I know.”
That answer hurt most.
“You knew?”
Gabriel’s voice lowered.
“I knew Thomas had been damaged after he challenged somebody powerful. I did not know every consequence.”
“Who?”
“That is what the ledger may tell us.”
Khloe looked down at the note.
THE WOMAN IN THE WHITE COAT.
“Is your mother alive?”
Gabriel’s face changed.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She died twelve years ago.”
A new frustration moved through Khloe.
“Then my father left me instructions to find a dead woman.”
“No.”
Gabriel reached for the watch.
“He wrote this eighteen years ago.”
Before Evelyn died.
Khloe understood.
“He expected me to find it sooner.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t I?”
Gabriel looked at her carefully.
“Because the watch was with me.”
The answer sat between them.
Somebody had deliberately separated the message from the person meant to read it.
Khloe looked at him.
“Why did my father give it to you instead of your mother?”
“He tried to see her that night.”
“And?”
“She wasn’t home.”
“What happened?”
“He found me outside our old house.”
Gabriel’s eyes moved to the window as if he could still see the street.
“He looked frightened. Thomas Harrison was not a frightened man.”
Khloe almost smiled.
That sounded like her father.
“What did he say?”
“Keep this away from my father.”
Khloe’s head lifted.
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He never explained.”
Chad spoke from the other end of the table.
“The old reimbursements.”
Everyone looked at him.
He swallowed.
“If those transfers were happening eighteen years ago, and Thomas Harrison found them…”
Khloe finished it.
“Someone destroyed his reputation.”
Gabriel nodded.
“That is my working assumption.”
Khloe hated those words.
Assumptions were for people who didn’t have numbers yet.
She pulled the red ledger toward herself.
“Then we stop assuming.”
For the next hour, she worked.
Marco brought a laptop.
Chad supplied archived vendor codes.
Gabriel stood near the window.
Khloe barely noticed any of them.
The world narrowed into columns.
Old numbers.
New numbers.
Descriptions.
Dates.
She found the first pattern after twenty-three minutes.
“The rounding.”
Gabriel moved beside her.
“What?”
“My father’s note.”
She pointed.
“Every legitimate liquor payment ends in irregular cents because taxes and delivery fees vary.”
Chad nodded.
“That’s normal.”
“But the suspicious transfers eighteen years ago all round to exactly zero.”
Gabriel leaned closer.
“And now?”
“The current false reimbursements copy them.”
She highlighted both sets.
Same dates of the month.
Same amount sequence.
Same vendor categories.
“This isn’t random.”
“No,” Gabriel said.
“Whoever is moving money now wants someone to compare it to the old transactions.”
“And find Thomas Harrison’s initials.”
Khloe’s stomach turned.
“They’re building a story.”
Chad looked at her.
“The daughter continuing her father’s scheme.”
Khloe went cold.
That was why Chad had called her a thief publicly.
Not simply to protect himself.
Somebody needed witnesses.
Three hundred wealthy people had watched.
By tomorrow morning, half of Chicago would hear that the basement bookkeeper had been caught stealing.
A story had already begun.
Gabriel looked at Chad.
“Did whoever was controlling you tell you to accuse her tonight?”
Chad hesitated.
“Yes.”
Khloe stared at him.
“What exactly did they say?”
“That if Harrison ever confronted me, I was to make sure people heard the accusation before she showed the ledger.”
Her face burned.
“You knew before I came upstairs.”
“Yes.”
“And you still put your hands on me.”
Chad lowered his eyes.
“Yes.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
Khloe noticed.
She didn’t need Gabriel’s anger.
She needed the truth.
“Who gave the instruction?”
Chad rubbed both hands across his face.
“I never met them.”
“No mysterious messages,” Khloe said. “Think.”
He looked at her.
She continued.
“Who had access to your approval queue?”
“Finance. Ownership. Internal audit.”
“Who knew about your mother?”
Chad said nothing.
Gabriel answered.
“Human resources.”
“Who knew you stole thirty-two thousand?”
Chad’s face changed.
Khloe saw it.
“What?”
“The money I took…”
He looked at Gabriel.
“I put it back.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“How?”
“I sold my condo.”
Khloe understood first.
“Then whoever threatened you wasn’t using an active theft.”
“No.”
“They were using something buried.”
Chad nodded.
“Something that should have disappeared after repayment.”
Gabriel turned toward Marco.
“Who had the original internal review?”
Marco’s expression hardened.
“Executive finance.”
Khloe looked at the old ledger.
“Who runs executive finance?”
Gabriel did not answer immediately.
That was enough.
“Who?”
“My cousin.”
“What’s his name?”
“Adrian Falcone.”
Chad looked sick.
Khloe said, “Does Adrian know the old ledger exists?”
Gabriel glanced at him.
“He helped inventory the archives after we bought the club outright eight years ago.”
Khloe pushed back from the desk.
“So your cousin could know about Chad’s old theft, the old reimbursements and my father’s initials.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not proof.”
“No.”
She appreciated that answer.
Gabriel wasn’t rushing to blame someone because the story fit.
Khloe turned another page.
A paper photograph slipped from between two sheets.
It landed faceup.
Five people stood outside the Obsidian eighteen years earlier.
Thomas Harrison.
A much younger Gabriel.
A dark-haired woman in a white winter coat.
Evelyn Falcone.
And two men Khloe didn’t recognize.
Her father wasn’t smiling.
Evelyn had one hand around his arm.
The older man beside her wore a gold bracelet.
The younger man beside Gabriel wore the same bracelet.
Khloe picked up the photograph.
“Who are they?”
Gabriel’s face went rigid.
“The older man was my father.”
“And the other one?”
“My cousin Adrian.”
Khloe studied him.
Adrian looked about nineteen.
His hand rested on Thomas Harrison’s shoulder.
Not threateningly.
Almost affectionately.
She turned the photograph over.
Three words had been written in her father’s handwriting.
HE TRIED TO HELP.
Khloe frowned.
“Who?”
Gabriel stared at young Adrian.
“I don’t know.”
Chad leaned closer.
Khloe noticed something beneath the writing.
A number.
11:42.
She immediately opened her father’s pocket watch.
The hands had stopped.
Eleven forty-two.
Gabriel saw it too.
“That watch worked when he gave it to me.”
Khloe’s heartbeat quickened.
“Then someone stopped it later.”
Marco picked up the photograph.
“This was taken in winter.”
Khloe nodded.
“So?”
“The Obsidian clock.”
He pointed to the glass doors behind the group.
Inside the lobby, a wall clock was visible.
The hands read 11:42.
Khloe stared.
The pocket watch hadn’t stopped at a random time.
It had been set deliberately to match the photograph.
She looked closer.
At 11:42, something had happened.
Her father wanted them to remember it.
Khloe studied every face.
Then she noticed Evelyn’s white coat.
One button was missing.
Not torn.
Removed.
A dark hole showed near her waist.
Khloe looked again at the watch.
There was a tiny white object lodged beneath the inside rim.
She used the tip of a paper clip to lift it.
A mother-of-pearl coat button fell into her palm.
Gabriel whispered, “My mother’s.”
The back had been scratched with two letters.
Not T.H.
Not A.F.
E.F.
And underneath them—
A small arrow.
Pointing toward the edge.
Khloe rotated the button.
Tiny numbers had been engraved around the side.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Gabriel’s expression changed.
Khloe knew why.
Four digits.
Not a date.
Not an amount.
A combination.
Gabriel looked toward the locked cabinet behind his desk.
“My mother had a private safe.”
Khloe stood.
“Where?”
Gabriel looked at the little button in her hand.
“In the old Falcone house.”
Then his eyes hardened.
May you like
“And Adrian lives there now.”
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