Chapter 9 - What Elena Knew
By morning, the story had reached the news.
Not the invoices.
Not the event schedule.
Clara.
A photograph showed her entering Rico’s house.
The headline called her his mystery waitress.
By noon, strangers had found her social accounts.
Gold digger.
Replacement wife.
Poor kid doesn’t stand a chance.
Clara shut off her phone.
At the house, she found Rico in the study ordering someone to “make it disappear.”
“You can’t threaten the internet,” she said.
“I can deal with the person who sold the picture.”
“Do you know who that is?”
“Not yet.”
“Then stop talking like you do.”
He looked up.
“They’re attacking you.”
“Yes. And I need you calm enough to help.”
He put the phone down.
“What do you need?”
“A statement that I’m employed to help with Leo’s daily routine. Nothing about my rent. Nothing about my brother. No sad story.”
He agreed.
Dante traced the photograph to a camera angle outside the side gate.
A place used by household suppliers.
Vincent had sent a florist there the previous afternoon.
It was suspicious.
It was not proof.
Clara was beginning to hate that sentence.
At the hospital, Marco finally spoke to Ortiz.
He admitted creating false invoices at Vincent’s request.
He claimed he thought it was tax fraud.
Then Elena started asking questions.
Vincent ordered him to send her event schedule to a security consultant named Paul Mercer.
“I thought they wanted to scare her,” Marco said.
Ortiz repeated the statement to Rico with his lawyer present.
Rico’s face went blank.
“Mercer worked for us.”
“Until last year,” Dante said.
Rico turned.
“You knew?”
“I knew he’d been hired for outside security. I didn’t know about this.”
Nora slid Elena’s email across the table again.
There was another attachment they had not yet discussed.
A photograph of handwritten notes.
At the top, Elena had written a question.
Why is Vincent paying Mercer from family assistance funds?
Below it were dates.
Amounts.
And one line underlined twice.
Rico must hear this from me before Vincent explains it away.
Rico stared at the words.
For six months, he had believed his wife died because an enemy aimed at him.
May you like
Now he had to consider something worse.
She might have died because she had finally seen an enemy he refused to recognize.
