Chapter 3 - THE MAN BEHIND THE SMILE
Within three minutes, Romano House stopped feeling like a mansion.
It became a fortress.
Steel gates locked.
Security teams moved to every entrance.
Elevators were restricted.
Phones began ringing behind closed doors.
Nobody explained anything to the staff.
Nobody needed to.
Fear traveled faster than instructions.
I stood inside Adrian’s private office while Mrs. Greco sat with Sophia on the sofa.
Sophia had hot chocolate foam on her upper lip and absolutely no understanding that armed guards were searching the building because a man had threatened her life.
Adrian paced near the windows.
“Vincent’s phone is clean,” said Matteo Russo, Adrian’s attorney and oldest friend.
Matteo was broad-shouldered, silver-haired, and looked like he had been born disappointed with everybody.
“Too clean.”
“Second phone?”
“Probably.”
“Accounts?”
“We’re checking.”
Adrian’s gaze landed on me.
“Did Vincent ever approach Sophia?”
“No.”
“Speak to her?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Follow you home?”
“I don’t know.”
His jaw tightened.
That answer bothered him.
It bothered me more.
Sophia looked up.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Can I have another marshmallow?”
Mrs. Greco whispered, “Absolutely not.”
Sophia looked betrayed.
Adrian crossed to a cabinet, opened it, and took out a glass jar.
Mrs. Greco stared.
“You keep marshmallows in your office?”
“My nephew visits.”
He handed Sophia one.
She smiled.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
A man who supposedly ordered violence with a glance was apparently helpless against a three-year-old asking for sugar.
I might have found it funny under different circumstances.
Matteo’s phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
His face changed.
“What?”
Adrian stopped moving.
Matteo ended the call.
“The restaurant safe wasn’t the only one.”
“How much?”
“At least eight hundred thousand over eleven months.”
Mrs. Greco inhaled.
Adrian barely reacted.
“From where?”
“Three restaurants. Two parking operations. Petty cash reserves from the Brooklyn warehouse. Daniel Reeves adjusted internal reports to hide it.”
“That still doesn’t explain threatening Maria.”
“No.”
Matteo looked at me.
“There’s something else.”
Adrian already knew.
“So find it.”
A knock came.
One of the guards stepped inside.
“We found Vincent’s second phone.”
“Where?”
“Inside the vent behind his office filing cabinet.”
Matteo gave a grim smile.
“Subtle.”
The guard handed over a sealed evidence bag.
Adrian looked at me.
“You should take Sophia home.”
I laughed once.
I could not help it.
His brows drew together.
“What?”
“You just told me a man who threatened my daughter had a hidden phone inside your house, and now you want me to walk into the subway and go home?”
Silence.
“Good point,” Matteo muttered.
Adrian looked irritated.
Mostly with himself.
“You’ll stay here tonight.”
“No.”
His expression sharpened.
“My daughter sleeps in her own bed.”
“Your daughter will sleep somewhere secure.”
“I don’t need your permission to leave.”
“And I don’t need yours to make sure someone doesn’t follow you.”
I stepped closer.
“Do not start ordering me around because you finally discovered I was telling the truth.”
His eyes narrowed.
Mrs. Greco stared between us like she was watching somebody dismantle a bomb with a fork.
Adrian lowered his voice.
“I accused you unfairly.”
“Yes.”
“I endangered you by believing Vincent.”
“Yes.”
“And now I am trying to fix that.”
“You don’t fix it by deciding where I sleep.”
Sophia raised her hand.
We both turned.
“Can I sleep here?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Adrian said at exactly the same moment.
She grinned.
I glared at him.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Matteo cleared his throat.
“There’s a secured guest suite on the fourth floor. Separate entrance, nursery room from Adrian’s nephew’s visits, locks controlled internally. Maria decides whether she uses it.”
Adrian looked at me.
That last part had been aimed at him.
“Fine.”
I hesitated.
Home was a third-floor apartment in Queens with one deadbolt, a window that never completely locked, and a superintendent who treated security cameras as decorative objects.
Sophia yawned.
I hated that practicality won.
“One night.”
Adrian nodded.
“One night.”
The hidden phone was unlocked forty minutes later.
Vincent had used a messaging application designed to erase conversations.
It had failed to erase everything.
One name appeared repeatedly.
R.C.
Payments.
Drop locations.
License plate numbers.
Photographs.
Then Matteo stopped scrolling.
“Adrian.”
He turned the screen around.
A photograph of me filled it.
I was leaving Sophia’s daycare.
The timestamp was three weeks old.
Below it was another.
Sophia and me in a grocery store.
Another.
Our apartment building.
Another.
Sophia on the playground.
My stomach stopped working.
Mrs. Greco covered her mouth.
Adrian did not move.
Not at first.
Then he took the phone.
His knuckles whitened.
“How long?”
Matteo scrolled.
“Five weeks.”
“Why?”
“There’s a message.”
He read silently.
Then looked at me.
“What?”
I asked.
Nobody answered.
“Tell me.”
Adrian’s jaw locked.
Matteo finally did.
“R.C. wrote: ‘If the cleaner talks again, use the kid. Fear is cheaper than cleanup.’”
For several seconds, I heard nothing.
Not the rain.
Not Sophia humming.
Not my own breathing.
I walked to my daughter.
Kneeling in front of her, I touched her face.
“Baby, look at me.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“Has anybody talked to you outside school? Anybody you didn’t know?”
She thought seriously.
“A man asked me my name.”
My blood turned cold.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Adrian crossed the room.
“What man?”
Sophia looked at him.
“The one with the red hat.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Are you Sophia?’”
“What did you say?”
“I said Mommy says strangers don’t get answers.”
I pulled her into my arms so quickly she squeaked.
“What did he do?”
“He went away.”
“Did he have a car?”
She nodded.
“What color?”
“Gray.”
Adrian turned.
“Get daycare footage.”
Matteo was already calling.
I held Sophia tighter.
This was no longer theft.
No longer workplace retaliation.
Somebody had watched my child.
I looked at Adrian.
“What is R.C.?”
He did not answer immediately.
That frightened me more.
“Adrian.”
“A person.”
“Who?”
His eyes met mine.
“Richard Colton.”
Matteo lowered his phone.
Mrs. Greco went pale.
The name meant nothing to me.
Apparently I was alone.
“Who is he?”
Adrian walked toward the window.
“Ten years ago, Colton ran collections for my father.”
I understood the euphemism.
“What happened?”
“My father died. I took over the businesses.”
“The legal ones?”
He looked at me.
“All of them.”
At least he did not insult me with a lie.
“I closed certain operations. Drugs. Trafficking. Anything involving children. I cut Colton out.”
“And he didn’t appreciate it.”
“He tried to challenge me.”
“What happened?”
Matteo answered.
“He lost.”
Adrian gave him a look.
Matteo shrugged.
“She deserves the truth.”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
Adrian faced me.
“Colton disappeared three years ago. We thought he left the country.”
“You thought wrong.”
“Yes.”
“And Vincent was working with him?”
“It appears that way.”
“Why?”
“Money. Power. Revenge.”
Sophia had fallen half asleep against my shoulder.
Her cheek rested against my collarbone.
I looked at Adrian.
“This happened because I saw Vincent stealing.”
“No.”
“Don’t.”
“It happened because Vincent was already betraying me.”
“And my daughter became leverage.”
His silence confirmed it.
My anger came hard.
“You brought danger into a house full of people who trusted you to know what was happening.”
His face tightened.
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think men like you always know it after someone smaller pays the price.”
Matteo stared at me.
Adrian did not retaliate.
He simply stood there and took it.
Finally he said, “You’re right.”
That stopped me.
Men like Adrian did not say that either.
He came closer.
Not too close.
“I failed to see what was happening in my own organization. Then I failed you when you warned me.”
His gaze dropped to Sophia.
“I won’t fail her.”
I swallowed.
“You don’t get to promise things you can’t control.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“But I can promise what I control.”
“What’s that?”
“Who gets near this house. Who gets near her school. Who has access to you.”
“That sounds like control again.”
“Then you tell me the boundaries.”
The answer surprised me.
I studied his face.
“Two guards outside. Not inside my room.”
“Done.”
“I decide where Sophia goes.”
“Yes.”
“Nobody questions her without me.”
“Yes.”
“And you stop treating me like staff when this involves my child.”
Something changed in his expression.
“You stopped being staff the moment Vincent threatened your daughter.”
I almost asked what that made me.
Before I could, Matteo’s phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
Then cursed.
Adrian looked at him.
“What?”
“The daycare footage.”
“What about it?”
“The man in the red hat got into a gray sedan.”
My stomach tightened.
“So?”
Matteo turned the phone so Adrian could see the image.
“The car is registered to Romano Hospitality.”
Adrian stared at the screen.
Someone inside his own company had followed my daughter.
May you like
And Vincent had not been working alone.
---
