[COMPLETED] Her Mafia Husband Left Their Gala With Another Woman—Then Elena Removed the Moretti Family Pin

Dante came to Clara's apartment that afternoon.

I knew he was outside before the bell rang. A black sedan waited across the street, and a man I recognized from his security detail stood beneath the awning of the building opposite. Dante had not brought his entire entourage. He had brought enough to make the sidewalk belong to him.

Clara opened the door and looked over her shoulder at me.

"It's your decision."

I set the authorization on the coffee table. "Let him in."

Dante looked as though he had not slept. He still wore the same dark suit trousers as the evening before, though his tie was gone. There was a faint mark near his collar where Bianca's fingers had caught the fabric at the gala.

He saw the suitcase beside the guest-room door.

Then he saw my hand without its ring.

"Are you safe here?" he asked.

"I'm with my sister."

"I know."

"Then why ask?"

He accepted the question without answering it. That, at least, was familiar.

Clara moved into the kitchen. I sat in the armchair rather than beside him on the sofa. He remained standing until I pointed to the opposite seat.

"Who is Bianca Russo?" I asked.

He looked down at his hands.

"Marco Russo's widow. Marco worked as an accountant on several foundation projects. He died eleven months ago."

"And you knew her?"

"Marco was a friend before he ever worked for us. After he died, Bianca came to me about his papers. I promised I would make sure she wasn't left alone with whatever he'd discovered."

"You might have told your wife that much before you walked out with her."

"I should have."

I had expected him to defend himself. The plain admission made the quiet between us harder to navigate.

"Was she ill last night?"

"Exhausted. Frightened. She'd been followed from a place where she was supposed to be safe. Someone got close enough to leave a photograph of her front door inside her bag."

"Who?"

"We don't know yet."

"When she said they'd found her, that's what she meant?"

"Yes."

I remembered the photographer lifting his camera and Dante moving toward the private exit. The danger might have been real. So had the choice he made in front of me.

"You could have said she was in trouble," I told him. "You could have told me you would call."

"I thought getting her out quickly was the safest thing."

"For Bianca."

He did not pretend not to understand.

I handed him the transfer summary. He read the first page without changing expression. At the second, his thumb stopped moving.

"Where did you get this?"

"From a woman who has been trying to pay for patients' treatment. Did you authorize that transfer?"

"I approved a construction reserve in principle. Not money from the Mercy Fund."

"My name is on it."

"I can see that."

"I never approved it. My foundation access was suspended ten minutes after I asked for the records."

He looked up sharply. "Who suspended you?"

"The notice came from Graham Pike's office."

Dante took out his phone. I held up a hand.

"Don't call anyone in front of me and arrange another solution I'm not permitted to see."

He lowered the phone.

"What do you want me to do?"

It was the first question he had asked me in a long time without already knowing which answer he preferred.

"Tell me why Marco's widow is frightened and whether his work involved the Mercy Fund. Tell me what you know, not just what you've decided I can bear."

Dante sat back.

"Marco noticed construction invoices that didn't match the work on site. He was collecting copies when he died in a traffic collision. The police found no evidence at the time that someone caused it. Bianca believed he had been threatened. Three weeks ago she gave me a notebook with his figures. I hired an independent accountant to check them."

"Three weeks," I repeated.

"Yes."

"And in those three weeks you didn't tell the woman responsible for approving patient grants that you were investigating missing hospital money."

"I didn't have proof."

"You had enough suspicion to hire someone."

He rubbed one hand across his face. For a moment he looked less like the man who could command a room than the man I had married, struggling to say something he disliked about himself.

"I was afraid that if the wrong people knew, Bianca would be hurt. I trusted too few people."

"You didn't trust me at all."

He had no answer for that.

A quiet knock sounded from the kitchen. Clara appeared in the doorway and said there was another car outside. Its driver had parked too close to Dante's security man and then moved away when he was noticed.

Dante stood immediately.

"I need to check that."

"Of course you do," I said, and hated the bitterness in my voice.

He paused. "Elena, listen to me. My men can protect this building."

"I don't want this building turned into a Moretti property. I want to know if my sister is in danger because of documents bearing my name."

He held my gaze. "I'll tell you what I find. Directly. No intermediaries."

When he went downstairs, I called my own lawyer, Nora Ellis, whose practice was not connected to the foundation or the family. I asked her to arrange a forensic review of the document and explain what it meant for me to be named in a transaction I denied authorizing.

She said one thing before agreeing to come.

"Do not let anyone tell you this is only a marital problem."

An hour later an unfamiliar number appeared on my phone.

I almost ignored it. Then a woman's voice said, "Elena Moretti? This is Bianca Russo."

I went into the guest room and closed the door.

"Where are you?"

"Somewhere safe for now. Dante doesn't know I'm calling."

"Why are you calling me?"

She drew a careful breath.

"Because Marco kept a list of names he thought were being used to approve the false invoices. Yours was on it. He said you were asking too many questions to be part of it willingly."

I leaned against the wardrobe.

"He knew about me?"

"He saw you argue over a frozen grant last winter. He wrote down what happened afterward."

I remembered a meeting in which Salvatore had told me the committee should leave finance matters to professionals. It had seemed like another insult I was expected to swallow.

"What happened afterward?"

"Your approval appeared on a transfer the following morning. Marco said it was as if someone wanted the record to tell a different story from the person who'd been in the room."

I looked through the half-open door at the gray suitcase.

"Do you have the list?"

"Yes."

"Then let Nora Ellis see it. She's my lawyer. Not Dante's."

Bianca said nothing for a moment.

"I came to the gala because I thought he was the one man powerful enough to help me."

"And now?"

"Now I think you're the person who can prove what was done."

After the call, Bianca sent a photograph of one notebook page. Marco had drawn a line between three invoices, each submitted by North River Facilities. Beside the second, he had written my name and a question mark.

Under the third was a date I knew immediately.

It was the morning after Salvatore had told me, in front of six committee members, that there was no reason for me to look at the contractor accounts.