Chapter 3 - The Audit of Shadows
By 1:00 a.m., the ground floor of the Valenti estate had turned into a command center.
Roman sat behind the dark mahogany desk in his private library. The room was lined with leather-bound legal volumes, historic maps of Lake Michigan, and three monitors displaying encrypted spreadsheets.
Across from him stood Julian Valenti, his cousin and the chief financial officer of the Valenti syndicate.
Julian was thirty-four, impeccably groomed in a three-piece charcoal suit, his silver cufflinks gleaming under the desk lamp. He looked like an investment banker, which was precisely why Roman had put him in charge of the family’s legitimate holdings—the real estate trusts, the import companies, the offshore accounts that washed the grease off the family’s income.
“I don’t understand how this happened, Roman,” Julian said, his hands spread wide in an expression of helpless frustration. “I personally signed off on the London wire transfers every month. Eight thousand pounds for the Kensington lease, four thousand for personal maintenance. The receipts came back stamped by Barclays every thirty days.”
Roman didn’t look at him. He was looking at a single piece of paper Marco had retrieved from Claire’s coat pocket.
It was a notice of eviction from a basement apartment on Grand Avenue. Outstanding balance: six hundred and forty dollars.
“Where did the money go, Julian?” Roman asked. His tone was deceptively soft, the voice he used when he was deciding whether to fire a man or put him in the river.
“I’m running a full forensic audit right now,” Julian said quickly, pulling out his tablet. “The funds were routed through our Zurich holding company, then to London. If the Kensington lease was never signed, the money had to be bouncing back into a clearing account or being intercepted at the intermediary level.”
“And the reports?” Roman pointed to a leather binder on his desk—six months of detailed, typed security briefs describing Claire’s peaceful life in London. Her visits to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her morning walks through Hyde Park. Her shopping trips to Harrods. “Who typed these?”
“Arthur,” Julian said without hesitation. “Your father’s former secretary. He handles all European correspondence.”
“Get Arthur here,” Roman said.
“Roman, it’s one in the morning, the man is seventy-two—”
“Get him here,” Roman repeated, his eyes locking onto Julian’s with a glare that made the younger man step back toward the door. “Now.”
Julian bowed his head slightly. “Yes, Roman.”
As Julian left the library, Marco stepped out from the curtained recess near the terrace doors. He held a small, black velvet box in his right hand.
“Found this in her purse, boss,” Marco said quietly.
Roman took the box. He opened it.
Inside lay her wedding ring—a six-carat cushion-cut diamond set in platinum—and a small, folded piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad.
Roman unfolded the paper. Written in Claire’s delicate, slanted script were four lines:
Roman, I didn't use the money. I couldn't keep it after what you said about us being a mistake. But please... if anything happens to me, don't let your family take the baby. He deserves to know what love feels like.
Roman’s fingers tightened on the paper until the corners crumpled into dust.
“She knew,” Roman whispered to the empty room. “She thought I divorced her because I hated her.”
Marco stayed silent. He knew the truth, just as Roman did.
Roman hadn't divorced Claire six months ago because he hated her. He had divorced her because the Commission in New York had sent three hit squads into Chicago during the spring war, and Roman’s enemies had begun targeting family members. His father had died in a car bomb; his younger sister had spent two months in ICU after a shooting outside a restaurant.
Roman had staged the bitter, cold divorce to erase Claire from his side, to make her look like an discarded outsider no longer worth target practice, and to ship her safely across the Atlantic under a new name until the blood was scrubbed off the streets.
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He had thought he was saving her life.
Instead, he had cast her into a cold city with thirty-eight dollars in her pocket and his child growing beneath her ribs.
