Chapter 4 - THE SECOND SIGNATURE
The police were not called immediately.
I hated that.
I told Vincent so.
We stood inside the preschool director’s office while Marco’s people reviewed camera footage.
Lily slept on a small couch beneath my coat.
“You need to call the police.”
Vincent looked at me.
“I will.”
“Then do it.”
“Claire.”
“A pregnant woman has been taken.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you?”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
I should have been afraid.
Instead, anger had swallowed everything else.
“Because in your world people seem to keep secrets first and contact normal authorities second.”
Marco looked very interested in the security monitor.
Vincent exhaled.
“You’re right.”
That surprised me more than an argument would have.
He took out his phone and called a detective named Alvarez.
Within fifteen minutes, NYPD officers were processing the building.
Vincent didn’t leave.
He didn’t interfere either.
Detective Maria Alvarez arrived wearing a rain-darkened trench coat and the expression of a woman already tired of rich men making simple crimes complicated.
She listened.
Then looked at Vincent.
“So your fiancée faked an ongoing pregnancy after a miscarriage, her doctor used another patient’s medical records, and someone threatened Ms. Carter’s child after the deception was exposed.”
“Correct.”
“And now the patient whose records were stolen is missing.”
“Yes.”
Alvarez turned to me.
“You saw Elena here?”
“Twice.”
“When?”
“Last week and about a month ago.”
“Did she seem afraid?”
I thought about it.
“She always checked the window before leaving.”
Alvarez wrote that down.
Marco called from the hallway.
“We have camera footage.”
The video showed Elena entering at 7:14 p.m.
At 8:03, a dark sedan stopped in the alley.
A man wearing a maintenance jacket entered through the rear door.
At 8:11, the camera feed froze.
When it returned twenty-seven minutes later, Elena was gone.
Alvarez leaned closer.
“Plate?”
“Obscured.”
Marco enlarged the driver-side window.
Nothing useful.
Then Lily woke.
She sat up and rubbed her eyes.
“Mommy?”
“I’m here.”
She looked at the monitor.
Then pointed.
“That’s Mr. Green.”
Alvarez crouched.
“Who is Mr. Green?”
“The sticker man.”
Nobody understood.
Lily climbed down and approached the monitor.
“He gives stickers when Mommy works.”
My blood chilled.
Someone had been around my daughter.
“Where?”
“By our building.”
“Lily, when?”
She shrugged.
“Lots.”
Vincent’s face became stone.
Alvarez asked, “What does Mr. Green look like?”
“He wears green.”
“Anything else?”
“He has a broken ear.”
Marco zoomed the image.
The man entering the preschool wore a knit cap.
But one ear was visible.
The upper cartilage was badly scarred.
Marco whispered, “I know him.”
Vincent looked at him.
“Who?”
“Peter Lanza.”
The name meant nothing to me.
It meant something to Vincent.
His face changed.
“He works for Bellini.”
Marco nodded.
“Security consulting. Formerly.”
Alvarez looked between them.
“You want to explain?”
Vincent’s eyes stayed on the screen.
“Antonio Bellini used Lanza for internal theft investigations.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that didn’t always result in police reports.”
Alvarez’s expression hardened.
“You omitted that five minutes ago.”
“I didn’t know Lanza was involved.”
“You’re going to give me everything, Moretti.”
“Yes.”
“No family editing.”
“Yes.”
“No corporate attorneys deciding what I can see.”
Gabriel, who had arrived behind us, winced.
Vincent said, “Done.”
Alvarez clearly didn’t trust him.
But she believed the answer.
At 1:40 a.m., we returned to the Moretti townhouse because Alvarez refused to let me take Lily home after the threat.
Sophia and the Bellinis were gone.
Their attorneys had arrived and escorted them out after police interviews.
Dr. Reed stayed.
He had requested an attorney, then apparently changed his mind after hearing Elena was missing.
I found him in the library.
“You knew Elena was in danger.”
His face looked twenty years older.
“I suspected she might be.”
“That’s not different.”
“I tried to help.”
“By stealing her records?”
“No.”
He removed an envelope from inside his jacket.
“I paid for an apartment for her.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“Guilt.”
He handed the envelope to Vincent.
Inside was an address in Queens.
Alvarez immediately dispatched officers.
The apartment was empty.
No Elena.
But they found something else.
A storage envelope containing copies of Bellini Logistics invoices.
Elena had written notes on them.
Gabriel spent the next hour reviewing photographs police allowed him to see.
At 3:07 a.m., he entered Vincent’s office.
“You need to see this.”
I was still there because Lily was asleep in the guest room and I had refused to leave the floor.
Gabriel spread invoice copies across the desk.
“Elena used to work for Bellini Logistics.”
“What?”
“Accounts payable. Temporary employee. Eleven months ago.”
Vincent stared.
“So this wasn’t random.”
“No.”
The clinic hadn’t simply produced a convenient pregnant woman.
Someone had recognized her.
Gabriel pointed at several invoices.
“These companies received nineteen million dollars from Bellini Logistics over two years.”
“Legitimate?”
“They don’t exist.”
Vincent sat back.
“Antonio was draining the company.”
“Looks like it.”
“And Elena found it.”
Gabriel nodded.
“She reported irregularities.”
“To whom?”
“According to her notes, the compliance director.”
“What happened?”
Gabriel looked grim.
“She was terminated nine days later.”
I felt sick.
Then Vincent picked up one invoice.
Something caught his attention.
“What?”
Gabriel leaned over.
Vincent pointed to the authorization line.
There were two signatures.
Antonio Bellini.
And—
“Vincent Moretti.”
My breath stopped.
The signature looked exactly like his.
Vincent stared at it.
“That isn’t mine.”
Gabriel looked at three more invoices.
Same authorization.
Same signature.
“Someone has been using your signature for over a year.”
Vincent stood.
The Bellini scheme suddenly became much bigger.
Fake vendors.
Stolen medical records.
Hidden debt.
A fabricated continuation of Sophia’s pregnancy.
And now forged Moretti approvals.
Gabriel looked at the abandoned trust agreement from dinner.
“Vincent.”
“What?”
“The signature pages.”
Vincent understood instantly.
The agreement Lily had interrupted.
Gabriel opened his briefcase and removed it.
He placed the last page beneath one of the fraudulent invoices.
Same spacing.
Same authorization box.
Same signature line.
“The trust agreement wasn’t only about your unborn child,” Gabriel said.
“It would have created a verified digital signature profile.”
I didn’t understand.
Vincent did.
His face went pale.
“They wanted my live signature.”
Gabriel nodded.
“To authenticate the old ones.”
If Vincent had signed tonight, the Bellinis could argue every previous signature was genuine.
They weren’t stealing money anymore.
They were preparing a legal shield.
Lily hadn’t interrupted a family agreement.
She had interrupted the final step in laundering a year of fraud.
Vincent looked toward the ceiling, where my daughter slept.
Then someone knocked.
Marco entered.
He held a phone.
“We found another camera clip from Claire’s apartment building.”
He played it.
Peter Lanza entered my building five days earlier.
He stayed seventeen minutes.
When he exited, he carried nothing.
But another figure followed ten seconds later.
A woman in a hood.
Marco froze the image.
I recognized the expensive shoes.
Vincent recognized them too.
Bianca Bellini.
“She was in my building?” I whispered.
Marco nodded.
Vincent called Bianca immediately.
She answered after four rings.
“Vincent?”
“Why were you at Claire’s apartment?”
Silence.
“Bianca.”
“I was trying to warn her.”
“About what?”
“I couldn’t tell her directly.”
“Why?”
“Because my father was watching everyone.”
Vincent glanced at me.
“What did you leave?”
“A folder.”
My stomach dropped.
“I never found a folder.”
Bianca’s breathing changed.
“Then Lanza got there first.”
“What was inside?”
“Copies of everything Elena gave me.”
Vincent looked toward the forged signatures.
“Bianca, where is your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is Sophia?”
Another silence.
Then Bianca whispered:
“She left with him.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bianca.”
Her voice cracked.
“But I know what they’re going to do.”
Vincent gripped the phone.
“What?”
“They need Elena alive until she signs a statement saying she created the forged invoices.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
Vincent’s gaze hardened.
“And after she signs?”
Bianca started crying.
May you like
“I don’t think they need her anymore.”
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