Chapter 13 - My Name on the Payments
I had seen too many forged identities to assume my name meant my hand.
Still, the payments were real.
Rossi Strategic Security paid a consulting company called Harbor Clinical Systems.
Harbor paid Novacore research contractors.
Nathan Hall received money through one of those contractors.
My executive authorization approved the original vendor.
Why?
I remembered.
Two years earlier, Caleb recommended Harbor for medical security research.
The company developed threat monitoring for executives receiving experimental treatments abroad.
I signed the framework agreement.
Ordinary.
Later amendments expanded the scope.
I never reviewed them personally.
My delegated procurement office did.
Someone used a legitimate vendor I approved and transformed it into a funding channel.
Sophia noticed because Vale money intersected with Rossi security money.
Who approved the amendments?
Chief Operating Officer:
Marcus Reed.
My oldest friend after Caleb.
Marcus managed Rossi Holdings whenever I traveled.
He had visited Sophia in the hospital before she died.
He sat beside me during Leo’s emergency delivery.
He had not appeared anywhere else in the investigation because no one asked.
That was how genuine hidden involvement often looked.
Not a person named in every suspicious file.
A person absent from them.
Marcus arrived with counsel when contacted.
He denied knowing Harbor funded Nathan.
He approved security amendments based on Caleb’s recommendations.
Caleb denied recommending those specific amendments.
Signatures went to forensic review.
Two were genuine Marcus signatures.
One was copied.
Marcus remembered signing.
“Harbor said Vale requested joint neonatal threat research.”
“Who told you?” Monroe asked.
“Adrian.”
Adrian denied it.
Email evidence showed a message from Adrian’s account.
Another stolen identity?
Metadata traced the email through Rossi internal servers.
It originated from Marcus’s own office network.
Someone inside Rossi sent Marcus a fake Adrian request.
Who had access?
Marcus.
His executive assistant.
Caleb.
Me.
Sophia occasionally.
The circle tightened again without a direct answer.
Marcus also knew my travel.
My gun habits.
My response protocols.
The nursery trap required someone who understood me.
Caleb did.
Marcus did more.
He managed the crisis plan after Sophia’s bombing.
He told security not to overload me with details.
He approved Caleb’s private handling of crash evidence.
Caleb admitted it.
“Marcus told me Lorenzo could not handle another complication.”
Marcus stared at him.
“I told you to preserve evidence discreetly.”
“You told me Adrian would manage Sophia’s phone.”
“I never said that.”
Two compromised men blaming memory.
Sophia’s corrupted video became critical.
Technicians recovered twelve more seconds.
“…almost as much as you.”
Static.
Then:
“Marcus signed the vendor, but I do not know if he knows what it funds.”
Sophia herself did not accuse him.
She distinguished signature from knowledge.
We had to do the same.
Rossi financial records showed Marcus ordered an internal audit one month before the bombing.
Target:
Harbor Clinical Systems.
He had become suspicious.
The audit disappeared after Sophia died.
Who canceled it?
My account.
I was in the hospital with Leo when cancellation occurred.
Again, my identity.
Caleb had emergency access to my executive system during crisis operations.
Marcus did too.
The audit cancellation came from a physical terminal inside my home office.
Camera:
Deleted.
Security override:
Caleb.
He admitted entering.
“I was retrieving insurance documents.”
“Did you cancel the audit?”
“No.”
“Was anyone with you?”
He hesitated.
“Adrian.”
Adrian had come to the house after Sophia died to help arrange estate documents.
He denied entering my office with Caleb.
Then Hannah remembered something unrelated but useful.
On her first week, she polished a framed family photograph in my office.
Behind it was a small silver key.
She mentioned it to Marcus during a staff inspection because she thought it might belong to a cabinet.
Marcus told her to leave it.
A key.
Caleb checked the old executive desk.
The silver key opened a manual compartment.
Inside was a hardware authentication backup.
Missing.
Someone who knew the compartment could access my credentials without my phone.
Who knew?
Me.
Sophia.
Marcus.
My father before he died.
I had never told Caleb.
Adrian should not have known.
Marcus looked pale.
“Sophia showed me once.”
“Why?”
“She wanted me to know how to access emergency company records if both of you were unavailable.”
He could have used it.
So could Sophia.
Someone else could have learned through him.
Marcus voluntarily surrendered his home computers.
One contained a deleted message from Nathan.
Stop the audit or Lorenzo learns what happened in Dubai.
“What happened in Dubai?” Monroe asked.
Marcus looked toward me.
A secret.
There it was.
Another lever.
Three years earlier, a Rossi security contractor injured two civilians during a protection incident in Dubai.
Marcus paid a confidential settlement.
Legal.
But he concealed details from our board because he feared reputational damage.
Nathan learned.
He blackmailed Marcus into stopping the Harbor audit.
Marcus did not know about infant deaths.
He knew the vendor was questionable.
He chose silence to protect himself.
His silence kept Nathan funded.
Another accomplice.
Not the central one.
Marcus finally admitted using my backup authentication to cancel the audit while I was in the hospital.
He had also deleted the camera record.
He had not poisoned Leo.
He had helped the financial channel survive.
Sophia’s warning was precise.
She trusted him.
He failed that trust.
Then Marcus gave investigators the message Nathan sent after the audit vanished.
Good. One less problem. Adrian still thinks he is running this.
Everyone stopped.
Nathan viewed Adrian as a tool too.
Who did Nathan believe was actually running it?
A second message:
The Rossi side is handled. After Sophia, no one will question the source account.
Source account.
Financial investigators traced Harbor’s earliest funding.
Not Marcus.
Not Adrian.
A private Rossi family trust created years before my marriage.
Trustee at creation:
My late father, Anthony Rossi.
May you like
My father had been dead for seven years.
Continue to the next part: The money behind Nathan’s operation appears to come from a Rossi family trust created by Lorenzo’s father long before Sophia entered the family.
