Chapter 2 - The Audit
By noon, Nora’s personnel file was sitting open on the dark mahogany desk in Roman Blackmere’s third-floor sanctuary.
Sitting across from him was Samuel Vance, a towering man with graying hair, a jagged scar across his cheek, and thirty years of intelligence work behind him. Vance was the head of security for Blackmere House, a man whose sole purpose was identifying threats before they materialized.
"Nora Vale," Roman said, his voice a low, rough rasp that cut through the quiet room. "Tell me about her."
Vance reached down, pulling a thin blue folder from his leather briefcase. "Twenty-six years old. Hired eighteen months ago through an agency in New Jersey. Her background check came back completely clean—no criminal record, no debt, no family connections to any rival families in New York or Chicago."
Roman leaned back in his leather chair, his long fingers steepling beneath his chin. "A background check that clean in our industry is usually a construction, Samuel."
"It is," Vance agreed grimly. "When she flinched in the hallway this morning, you asked me to re-verify her documents. I sent two men to the agency in Trenton. The owner of the agency received fifty thousand dollars eighteen months ago to create her paper trail."
Roman’s eyes darkened. "Who created it?"
"She did it herself," Vance replied, laying three photographs on the desk. "Or rather, she bought a clean identity from an independent forged-document broker in Brooklyn. Her real name isn't Nora Vale. It's Nora Vance-Moreau."
Roman’s brow furrowed slightly at the second surname. "Moreau? As in Arthur Moreau?"
"The very same," Vance said. "Arthur Moreau was the chief accountant for the Valenti syndicate in Philadelphia for twelve years. Three years ago, Moreau disappeared with forty million dollars of Valenti money and a hard drive containing every laundering route on the East Coast."
Roman stared at the photograph of the young woman. In the picture, she was nineteen years old, standing beside a thin, pale man with wire-rimmed glasses outside a brownstone in Philadelphia.
"She isn't an assassin," Roman murmured, remembering the small, fragile frame cowering on his marble floor. "She’s a fugitive."
"Arthur Moreau was hunted down and killed in a warehouse outside Camden two years ago by Julian Valenti," Vance explained softly. "The daughter vanished the same night. The Valenti family put a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on her head, assuming she knows where her father hid the hard drive."
Roman looked at the third photograph—a police crime-scene photo from Camden. The body of Arthur Moreau lay beside a smashed desk. Beside him were empty liquor bottles and signs of prolonged, brutal physical violence.
Roman’s mind instantly linked the picture to the way Nora had covered her head in the corridor—the automatic, bone-deep instinct of a child who had grown up in the shadow of a violent, desperate man, only to be hunted by even worse monsters after his death.
"She’s been hiding in my house for eighteen months," Roman said quietly.
"She thought Blackmere House was the safest place on the East Coast," Vance said. "Valenti’s men would never dare cross your perimeter to search your staff. She used your shadow to stay alive."
Roman reached out, his thumb running over the corner of Nora’s forged application form. She had worked twelve-hour shifts, cleaned sixty rooms, never complained, never asked for a raise, and never taken a single sick day. She had lived in utter terror while maintaining flawless marble floors.
"Does Valenti know she’s here?" Roman asked.
"No," Vance said. "If he knew, he would have tried to bribe a guard or leverage a delivery driver. She’s completely invisible to them."
Roman closed the folder. "Make sure it stays that way."
"What do you want to do with her, Boss?" Vance asked. "She lied on her intake paperwork. She brought a high-profile feud near your front gate."
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Roman stood up, walking toward the high arched window that overlooked the rain-slicked gardens below. He could see a small figure in a dark uniform walking quickly between the greenhouses, carrying a heavy brass bucket.
"She didn't bring a feud to my gate," Roman said softly. "She looked for sanctuary. Write a note, Samuel. Hand-deliver it to her room tonight."
