Chapter 3 - Room 917
At 1:06 in the morning, I stood outside Room 917 at The Drake Hotel with Chicago’s most feared mafia boss on my left and two armed men on my right.
It was not how I had expected my engagement night to end.
Cosimo took the key card from the evidence bag and held it against the lock.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Red light.
“Deactivated,” one of his men said.
I looked at the electronic panel.
“Or changed.”
Cosimo glanced at me.
“You can tell?”
“No. I just dislike assuming the simplest explanation when someone has already stolen twenty-three million dollars through an eight-layer corporate structure.”
He almost smiled.
One of his men stepped forward with a bypass tool.
I lifted an eyebrow.
Cosimo said, “Hotels have doors. I have people who understand doors.”
“I’m learning so much tonight.”
The lock clicked.
We entered.
The room was dark.
No luggage.
No clothing.
No obvious sign anyone had stayed there.
Then I saw the champagne bucket.
Two glasses sat beside it.
One had lipstick on the rim.
The other had a smear of blood.
“Don’t touch anything,” Cosimo said.
“I know.”
I moved toward the desk.
A legal pad lay beneath a hotel pen.
The top sheet was blank, but when I angled it toward the lamp, faint impressions appeared from whatever had been written on the page above.
Numbers.
Columns.
My pulse accelerated.
“Do you have a pencil?”
Cosimo looked at me.
“Why would I have a pencil?”
“You run a criminal empire and no one carries office supplies?”
One of his guards quietly produced a mechanical pencil.
I pointed at him.
“This is why he’s my favorite.”
Cosimo gave the man a look.
The guard looked at the ceiling.
I shaded lightly across the page.
Indentations emerged.
317.
880.
1142.
Then initials.
D.M.
S.G.
M.L.
And a fourth set.
C.L.
I froze.
Carlo Lombardi.
My father.
Cosimo saw it.
“So he was involved.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.”
His eyes hardened.
“I follow evidence.”
“So do I.”
I stared at the initials.
“My father signs Carlo Lombardi as C.A.L. on internal documents. Carlo Antonio Lombardi. He has since I was a child.”
Cosimo’s expression shifted.
“And whoever wrote this didn’t know that.”
“Or wanted someone to think it was him.”
I kept shading.
Beneath the initials appeared a phrase.
AFTER ANNOUNCEMENT — REMOVE F.
My hand stopped.
Cosimo read it over my shoulder.
The room became completely silent.
Remove F.
Francesca.
My throat tightened.
“Could mean something else,” I said.
Cosimo did not insult me by agreeing.
A sound came from the bathroom.
Soft.
Almost nothing.
Cosimo moved in front of me instantly.
His men drew their weapons.
“Stay behind me.”
“I hate that sentence.”
“Tonight you can hate it from behind me.”
One guard opened the bathroom door.
A man collapsed forward.
Sal Greco.
Blood covered the side of his shirt.
He hit the carpet hard.
I gasped.
He was conscious, barely.
His eyes found mine.
“Francesca.”
Cosimo crouched beside him.
“Who shot you?”
Sal shook his head.
“Hospital,” I said.
Cosimo’s guard was already calling.
Sal grabbed my wrist.
His fingers were slippery with blood.
“Don’t… trust…”
“Who?”
He swallowed.
“Matteo.”
“That I figured out.”
His grip tightened desperately.
“Not… only…”
My heart stopped.
“Not only Matteo?”
He nodded once.
“Who else?”
His eyelids fluttered.
“Your…”
The word faded.
I leaned closer.
“My what?”
His eyes closed.
“Sal.”
No answer.
“He’s alive,” Cosimo said after checking his pulse. “Barely.”
Paramedics loyal to Ferraro arrived within minutes and took him through a service elevator.
I stood beside the bed, staring at the bloody handprint Sal had left on my wrist.
Your.
Your father?
Your sister?
Your family?
Cosimo handed me a towel.
I wiped the blood away.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m furious.”
“They can coexist.”
I looked at him.
“Does anything frighten you?”
“Yes.”
The immediate answer surprised me.
“What?”
He looked toward the door where Sal had disappeared.
“Finding out too late that I trusted the wrong person.”
There was history in that sentence.
I wanted to ask.
I didn’t.
Not yet.
Instead I searched the room.
Nothing in the closet.
Nothing beneath the mattress.
The trash had been emptied.
Then I noticed the minibar receipt.
Two bottles of water.
One bottle of champagne.
Room service charged at 7:41 P.M.
Guest signature: D. Romano.
“Dominic.”
Cosimo took the receipt.
“So he was here before the party.”
“With Sal, probably.”
“And someone wearing lipstick.”
I stared at the champagne glass.
The lipstick was a deep plum shade.
My middle sister, Elena, wore that color constantly.
I immediately hated myself for noticing.
Cosimo noticed me noticing.
“You recognize it.”
“It’s common.”
“That was not my question.”
I turned away.
“My sister Elena wears something similar.”
“Would she meet Dominic privately?”
“No.”
Too fast.
Cosimo said nothing.
I looked at him.
“She wouldn’t.”
“You are trying to convince yourself.”
“I know my sister.”
“Did you know your uncle was burning your office tonight?”
The words landed hard.
He saw it and immediately looked regretful.
“That was cruel.”
“It was accurate.”
“Both can be true.”
I folded my arms.
“Elena is twenty-two. She likes parties, clothes, attention. She is not involved in my father’s business.”
“Neither were you, according to everyone in that ballroom.”
I hated him for being right.
We left Room 917 at two in the morning.
Instead of returning to the Lombardi house, I went with Cosimo to his estate in Lake Forest.
The property sat behind iron gates on nearly eight acres near the water. I expected marble lions, gold fixtures, and the kind of obscene display men in our world used to prove they had money.
Instead, the house was old brick and limestone, elegant without being loud.
A woman in her sixties met us in the foyer.
“Mr. Ferraro.”
“Rosa, this is Francesca Lombardi. She’ll be staying in the east guest room.”
Rosa looked at me.
Not at my dress.
Not at the fact I had arrived with Cosimo at two-thirty in the morning.
At me.
“Would you like tea, dear?”
For some reason, that nearly made me cry.
“Yes, please.”
Cosimo’s gaze softened again.
Rosa led me toward the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, I sat at a wooden table with chamomile tea while Cosimo removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves to his forearms.
It should not have been distracting.
It was.
He placed a secure laptop in front of me.
“Can you reach your off-site mirror from here?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“To access it? Five minutes.”
“To understand the theft?”
I looked at the USB Sofia had saved.
“That depends on how good Matteo is.”
Cosimo sat across from me.
“And how good is he?”
I connected the drive.
“Not as good as he thinks.”
For the next three hours, we worked.
Or more accurately, I worked while Cosimo watched, asked precise questions, and brought me coffee when I forgot the tea existed.
The backup contained transaction archives through February.
The theft had begun in January.
That was enough.
I rebuilt the pathway.
Ferraro escrow account to shell company.
Shell company to Lombardi holding company.
Lombardi holding company to a series of legitimate vendor payments.
Ninety-six percent continued where it should.
Four percent disappeared.
Tiny enough to hide inside large construction budgets.
Massive enough to become millions over time.
“Skimming,” Cosimo said.
“Yes, but not for personal spending.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it consolidates again.”
I opened another window.
“There.”
A company named Marlowe Advisory Group.
Registered in Delaware.
No employees.
No public office.
Beneficial ownership hidden behind a trust.
Cosimo leaned closer.
“Can you break it?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually is not my favorite word.”
“Then become better friends with patience.”
He looked at me.
“You speak to me very differently than everyone else does.”
“I noticed everyone else seems terrified of you.”
“You aren’t?”
I met his eyes.
“I haven’t decided.”
Something passed between us.
Warm.
Dangerous.
Then my screen changed.
A hidden ledger appeared inside the February archive.
Not mine.
Someone had embedded it inside my backup structure.
I clicked.
A list of initials filled the screen beside dollar amounts.
D.R. — 250,000.
S.G. — 175,000.
M.L. — 1,500,000.
E.L. — 400,000.
I stopped.
E.L.
Elena Lombardi.
My sister.
Cosimo read the name in silence.
I stared at the amount.
“No.”
Then another line loaded.
E.L. — FINAL PAYMENT AFTER F. REMOVED.
My stomach dropped.
Cosimo’s voice became very quiet.
“Francesca.”
I could barely hear him.
“My own sister was being paid to get rid of me.”
For several minutes, I could not touch the keyboard.
My brain kept offering explanations because explanations were easier than betrayal.
Maybe E.L. was not Elena.
Maybe someone had chosen her initials deliberately.
Maybe the lipstick in Room 917 belonged to another woman.
Maybe my sister had walked into that room for some harmless reason and left before the rest began.
Cosimo let me cycle through every possibility without interrupting.
Finally I said, “You think I should call her.”
“No.”
That surprised me.
“You don’t?”
“I think you want an answer so badly that you may accept the first one she gives you.”
I stared at him.
“That is irritatingly reasonable.”
“I have other qualities.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He reached for the laptop and turned it slightly toward himself.
“If Elena is involved, calling now warns her. If she is being framed, calling now may frighten her into doing something Matteo expects.”
I hated both possibilities.
“What do you suggest?”
“We verify before we accuse.”
I looked down at the ledger again.
Four hundred thousand dollars.
A final payment after F. removed.
My sister had spent most of her life being praised for beauty while I was ignored for intelligence. I had always assumed that meant she had everything she wanted.
For the first time, I wondered whether being turned into decoration had damaged her too.
“What if I never actually knew her?” I whispered.
Cosimo’s voice softened.
“Then you learn who she is now.”
I looked at him.
“You make that sound survivable.”
“Most truths are. The lies around them are usually what kill people.”
That sentence stayed with me.
I closed the hidden ledger and created three protected copies of the file. Then I logged the metadata, the timestamp, and every transfer associated with E.L.
If Elena had betrayed me, I would know exactly how.
If someone had betrayed both of us, I would know that too.
Only after the evidence was protected did I finally look at my phone.
Three missed calls from my father.
One from Elena.
May you like
And a text from her that made my stomach twist.
FRAN, PLEASE CALL ME. I NEED TO TELL YOU SOMETHING BEFORE DAD DOES.
