Chapter 2 - THE NAME BEHIND THE COMPANY
Meline turned the page.
Mateo Russo’s hand remained inside his jacket.
Lorenzo Falcone noticed.
His voice came quietly from the doorway.
“Take your hand out.”
Mateo did not move.
Lorenzo repeated nothing.
He simply looked at him.
That was enough.
Mateo slowly removed his hand.
Empty.
Maybe he had never intended to draw a weapon.
Maybe he had wanted everyone in the room to remember he carried one.
With men like Mateo Russo, the suggestion often did more work than the object itself.
Meline looked back at the ledger.
“New Jersey Distribution Group,” she said.
“Registered eleven years ago.”
“No warehouse.”
“No delivery fleet.”
“No payroll.”
“No active phone line.”
The restaurant manager swallowed.
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“Who owns it?”
Meline looked at Mateo.
“Officially?”
“Yes.”
“Angela Russo.”
Mateo’s face changed.
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed.
“Your sister.”
Mateo laughed too quickly.
“She owns a company. So what?”
“She teaches third grade in Oak Park.”
Nobody spoke.
Meline turned another page.
“Her tax filings show no business income from distribution.”
“Yet your companies have paid her LLC $4.2 million over eighteen months.”
Mateo took one step toward the desk.
“That doesn’t prove I touched a dime.”
“No.”
Meline pushed her glasses higher.
“It proves whoever designed this expected nobody to ask why a schoolteacher was supplying imported olive oil, commercial refrigeration parts, and bulk seafood to six restaurants.”
The restaurant manager stared at Mateo.
Lorenzo did not.
He was watching Meline.
“What else?”
That question mattered.
Not:
Are you sure?
Not:
Do you understand who you’re accusing?
What else?
Meline picked up a second folder.
“I pulled the bank disclosures your bookkeeping firm gave me.”
“New Jersey Distribution moves ninety percent of every incoming payment within forty-eight hours.”
“To where?”
“Three accounts.”
“One belongs to a trucking subcontractor.”
“One belongs to a private club.”
“And the third?”
Meline paused.
Mateo’s throat moved.
“Bellandi Advisory.”
The room changed.
Lorenzo’s face became very still.
“Enzo?”
There.
Meline had heard that name before.
Enzo Bellandi.
Lorenzo’s consigliere.
Fifty-eight.
The man who had sat beside Lorenzo at board dinners for twenty years.
The man employees called Mr. Bellandi even when Lorenzo was not present.
Mateo immediately shook his head.
“No.”
“You’re reading it wrong.”
Meline looked at him.
“I spent twelve years reading money people tried to disguise.”
“This is not the part I read wrong.”
Mateo slammed his palm onto the desk.
“You know nothing about how these businesses work.”
Meline almost smiled.
“That is what men say when they need accounting to become mysterious.”
Lorenzo’s mouth moved slightly.
Not a smile.
Close.
Mateo turned toward him.
“Boss, she’s been awake thirty hours.”
“She’s guessing.”
Meline corrected:
“Thirty-one.”
Mateo glared.
She continued.
“And I’m not guessing.”
She opened a spreadsheet.
“Bellandi Advisory receives percentages matching the inflated portion of the supplier invoices.”
“Not all of it.”
“Enough.”
“Every sixth invoice.”
“Twelve percent.”
“Every eighteenth.”
“Duplicate.”
Lorenzo asked:
“Why eighteen?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Mateo’s face changed again.
Tiny.
Meline saw.
“There.”
She pointed at him.
“That.”
“What?”
“You know.”
He stared.
“Eighteen means something to you.”
“No.”
“You looked scared.”
Mateo laughed.
“You think you’re a psychologist now?”
“No.”
“I’m an auditor.”
“People lie to both.”
Lorenzo pulled out the chair opposite her desk.
Sat.
The feared Mafia Boss of Chicago sat down in a cramped upstairs office smelling like garlic and toner while everyone else remained standing.
“Finish.”
Meline did.
The pattern was more extensive than $4.2 million.
That was merely what she had confirmed.
Similar vendors appeared in shipping accounts.
Construction material invoices.
Security subcontracting.
Restaurant procurement.
All legitimate businesses around the Falcone organization.
Some of the money could be ordinary fraud.
Some might be criminal proceeds being moved differently.
Meline did not speculate beyond what records showed.
That made Lorenzo trust her more.
“I can confirm $4.2 million diverted.”
“Another $7.8 million is questionable.”
Lorenzo’s expression hardened.
“Over how long?”
“Potentially four years.”
Mateo went pale.
Then Lorenzo asked:
“Who authorized payments?”
Meline looked at him.
“Your digital approval.”
Silence.
Everyone stared at Lorenzo.
Mateo almost relaxed.
Meline continued.
“But I don’t think you approved them.”
His eyes sharpened.
“Why?”
“Because your authorization timestamps follow a pattern.”
“You approve ordinary vendor payments between six and eight in the morning.”
“Sometimes after midnight.”
“Never between two and four in the afternoon on Sundays.”
Lorenzo frowned.
“How do you know?”
“Because I checked eighteen months of your approvals.”
Mateo muttered:
“Obsessive.”
Meline looked at him.
“Effective.”
Then she turned the laptop.
“These questionable authorizations mostly happened Sunday afternoons.”
“Who has access to your credential?”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened.
“No one.”
Meline stared.
“Then somebody cloned it.”
That landed.
Lorenzo looked toward the restaurant manager.
“Close the office.”
Then:
“No one leaves.”
Meline immediately looked at him.
“That includes me?”
“For the moment.”
“No.”
Everyone froze.
Lorenzo turned.
Meline folded her arms.
“I came here as a contractor.”
“I am not one of your men.”
“You don’t lock me in a room because your accounts are dirty.”
Mateo laughed.
“Lady, you really don’t understand—”
Lorenzo raised one finger.
Mateo stopped.
Then Lorenzo looked back at Meline.
“You’re right.”
That surprised everyone more.
He continued.
“You may leave.”
“However, someone connected to what you found may already know you found it.”
Meline’s stomach tightened.
That was different.
“Why?”
“Who gave you the books?”
“The outside bookkeeping company.”
“Who authorized review?”
“Bellandi.”
Silence.
Enzo Bellandi himself had hired her.
Interesting.
Lorenzo leaned back.
“If Enzo is stealing, why hire someone capable of finding it?”
Meline had been asking herself the same thing.
“Maybe he didn’t think I was capable.”
Mateo smirked.
She looked at him.
“Your jokes suggest that assumption is common.”
His face darkened.
Then:
“Or…”
Meline turned back to Lorenzo.
“He expected me to find Mateo.”
Mateo went still.
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed.
“Explain.”
“Angela Russo is obvious once anyone checks ownership.”
“Mateo is connected to her.”
“Bellandi Advisory appears one layer farther down.”
“If I stop at the first recognizable name…”
She looked at Mateo.
“…you become the traitor.”
Mateo’s face changed.
Lorenzo leaned forward.
“And if Enzo wanted that?”
“He just hired an auditor to build his case for him.”
Silence.
Mateo stared.
Then whispered:
“He told me to use Angela’s company.”
Every head turned.
Lorenzo’s voice became dangerous.
“Say that again.”
Mateo looked like he regretted speaking.
Too late.
“He said we needed a clean vendor vehicle.”
“For what?”
Mateo swallowed.
“For cash movement.”
“Whose cash?”
“Ours.”
“Why?”
“Old port money.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened.
“You were moving unreported money through my restaurants.”
Mateo looked down.
“Yes.”
“And stealing from it?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“Enzo handled downstream accounts.”
There.
The room seemed to shrink.
Meline asked:
“Did your sister know?”
“No.”
Immediate.
“She signed formation documents because I told her it was for a catering investment.”
“You used her.”
Mateo’s face tightened.
“Yes.”
No defense.
Better.
Lorenzo stood.
“Where is Enzo?”
Nobody answered.
The manager checked his phone.
“Mr. Bellandi left the downstairs dining room twenty minutes ago.”
Lorenzo stared.
“Before Meline showed the page?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The manager went pale.
“I don’t know.”
Meline did.
“Camera.”
Everyone looked at her.
She pointed toward ceiling.
Small black dome.
The cramped office had security.
“If he could watch this room, he saw me reaching the last page before Mateo did.”
Lorenzo turned to security.
“Find him.”
Then stopped.
“No.”
He corrected himself.
“Call police contact and our attorney.”
Mateo looked shocked.
“Police?”
Lorenzo stared at him.
“I’m not starting a war inside my own organization because an accountant found suspicious transfers.”
Meline appreciated the wording.
Suspicious.
Not guilty.
Even now.
Then her laptop made a small sound.
An email.
New.
From an unknown address.
Subject:
NEW YORK WASN’T YOUR FAULT EITHER
Meline stopped breathing.
Her hands went cold.
Lorenzo saw.
“What?”
She did not answer.
Opened.
One sentence.
You should have stayed ruined.
Attached was a photograph.
Meline leaving her old New York office two years earlier.
The day security escorted her from the building.
She had never seen the photograph.
Below it:
ASK LORENZO WHY BELLANDI ADVISORY PAID YOUR OLD PARTNER SIX MONTHS BEFORE YOUR CAREER COLLAPSED.
Meline stared.
Her entire body went numb.
Mateo whispered:
“What?”
Lorenzo came around the desk.
She almost closed laptop.
Then stopped.
No.
She had spent two years hiding the humiliation.
Not again.
She turned the screen.
Lorenzo read.
His face changed.
“Your old partner?”
Meline’s voice barely worked.
“Charles Mercer.”
“Senior partner.”
“The man who told investigators I manipulated audit records.”
The man whose testimony destroyed her.
Lorenzo looked at the email.
Then at the ledger.
Then at Mateo.
And finally back at Meline.
Bellandi’s theft was no longer merely connected to Chicago.
Somehow, the same company receiving money from Lorenzo’s businesses had paid the man who ruined Meline’s life two years earlier.
Meline whispered:
“He didn’t hire me because he underestimated me.”
Lorenzo understood.
“No.”
May you like
“He hired you because he already knew exactly who you were.”
And suddenly the $4.2 million missing from Lorenzo Falcone’s books looked like the smallest secret in the room.
