Chapter 6 - The First Audit
The corner office assigned to Karen Delaney was large, bright, and smelled of new leather and fresh oak.
On her massive glass desk sat three black leather-bound ledgers containing the complete financial records of Marchetti Enterprises' twelve hospitality venues across New England. Next to them was a brand-new laptop connected to a secure internal server.
For the first three days, Karen didn't leave her desk until ten o'clock at night.
She dove into the numbers with the quiet, obsessive intensity of a woman who had been given a second life. Her accounting background, combined with her eleven months of working on the absolute bottom floor of Marchetti’s operations, gave her a unique advantage that no high-priced Ivy League auditor could ever match.
She knew how much floor cleaner a restaurant actually used in a month. She knew how many bottles of high-end olive oil were needed for sixty dinner services. She knew the exact cost of meat waste, linoleum wear, and dishware breakage.
And by Thursday afternoon, she found the discrepancy.
Karen sat staring at the digital ledger for Marchetti’s on Atwells—the very restaurant where she used to scrub floors.
According to the official quarterly records signed off by the general manager, the restaurant had spent forty-eight thousand dollars on high-end imported seafood from a supplier named Pellico Wholesale Marine over the last four months.
However, Karen remembered every single crate that had arrived at the back loading dock at three in the morning while she was cleaning the walk-in cooler. The crates were never marked Pellico. They were plain white styrofoam boxes delivered by an unmarked van with Massachusetts plates.
She pulled up the registration for Pellico Wholesale Marine in the Rhode Island corporate registry database.
The company was registered to a small residential address in Cranston.
The owner’s name was Curtis Hodge.
Karen’s breathing hitched.
She stood up from her desk immediately, pulled the printed ledgers into a neat black folder, and walked down the hallway to Dante Marchetti’s private suite.
Dante’s executive assistant—a sharp woman named Sofia—nodded as Karen approached. "Go right in, Miss Delaney. He’s expecting you."
Dante was sitting behind his heavy oak desk, reviewing a map of the Providence port facility. He looked up as Karen entered, noticing the sharp, focused energy in her eyes.
"You found something," Dante noted flatly, setting his gold pen down.
"Curtis Hodge isn't just a predatory loan shark, Mr. Marchetti," Karen said, stepping over to the desk and laying the black folder open before him. "He’s been skimming from your supply chain for at least eighteen months."
Dante’s brown eyes narrowed slightly. "Explain."
Karen pointed her finger at the line items on the paper. "Your general manager at Atwells Avenue, Frank, has been processing fake invoices through Hodge’s shell company for top-grade bluefin tuna and langoustines. Hodge bills the restaurant full price, buys sub-standard gray-market seafood from Boston docks for ten cents on the dollar, and splits the thirty-thousand-dollar monthly difference with Frank."
She looked directly into Dante’s eyes.
"They aren't just stealing your money, Mr. Marchetti. They're using your kitchen as a money-laundering mechanism for Hodge’s illegal collection operations."
Dante leaned back slowly in his chair. He didn't explode in anger. He didn't curse. A terrifying, ice-cold stillness settled over his sharp features—a stillness that made the air in the executive suite feel twenty degrees colder.
"Hodge," Dante murmured quietly, his finger gently tapping the edge of the desk. "He thought because he was dealing with an old sanitation line item, nobody would ever look closely at the shellfish invoices."
He looked up at Karen, a slow, dark smile spreading across his face.
"You’ve been in this office for four days, Delaney, and you’ve already saved me a hundred and twenty thousand dollars."
"What are you going to do?" Karen asked softly.
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Dante stood up, buttoning his charcoal jacket.
"Tonight is Friday," Dante said quietly. "Frank and Hodge always meet at the restaurant after midnight to settle the weekly cash balances. You and I are going to pay them a visit."
