Chapter 1 - The Secretary Who Was Never Supposed to Last
The police report officially stated that Isabella Rosi had taken a sudden, unannounced vacation to the Amalfi Coast.
There were photographs of a hotel reservation.
A canceled return ticket.
A credit card transaction from Naples.
There was even a cheerful email supposedly written by Isabella herself, informing Moretti Maritime Group that she had become exhausted with corporate life and intended to spend several months traveling through southern Europe.
Every piece of evidence said Isabella had left New York willingly.
Every piece of evidence was false.
The woman herself lay somewhere beneath thousands of tons of concrete poured during an expansion project near the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
Nobody searching for her knew that.
Nobody except the people responsible for putting her there.
On the eighty-eighth floor of Moretti Tower, secrets were not merely protected.
They were buried.
Sometimes literally.
That was why Lorenzo Moretti had gone through four executive assistants in less than a month.
One had resigned after two days.
One had disappeared after finding a pistol inside a conference-room cabinet.
Another had suffered what Human Resources delicately described as a nervous exhaustion incident after overhearing an argument involving three million dollars, a missing cargo container, and somebody whose body had recently been discovered floating near Red Hook.
Then there had been Isabella.
Isabella had lasted longer than all of them.
She had also asked too many questions.
Now her desk was empty.
Again.
Lorenzo Moretti stood behind the floor-to-ceiling windows of his private office, watching Manhattan disappear beneath low February clouds.
From eighty-eight floors above the street, taxis looked like yellow insects and pedestrians became tiny moving dots.
He preferred people at that distance.
Small.
Predictable.
Unable to touch him.
Behind him, Mateo Russo paced beside the abandoned secretary's desk.
"This is becoming a problem."
Lorenzo did not turn around.
"Everything becomes a problem when you complain about it long enough."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
Mateo stopped pacing.
"We've lost four assistants this month."
"Three."
"Isabella counts."
Lorenzo's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Mateo noticed.
Mateo noticed everything.
He had known Lorenzo since they were both teenagers stealing cigarettes behind Saint Catherine's church in Brooklyn.
He knew exactly which subjects could be pushed and which ones required distance.
Isabella was becoming the second kind.
Mateo lowered his voice.
"Employment agencies are refusing to send anyone else."
"They'll send someone."
"They think we're monsters."
"They aren't entirely wrong."
Mateo stared at his oldest friend.
"If they knew half of what happens on this floor, we wouldn't be arguing about secretaries. We'd be arguing about which federal prison has the better cafeteria."
That earned him a glance.
Lorenzo finally turned from the window.
At thirty-six, Lorenzo Moretti had the kind of face newspapers loved to photograph and prosecutors hated to see across a courtroom.
Sharp cheekbones.
Dark hair kept short and controlled.
A faint scar near the right side of his mouth.
He wore an expensive charcoal suit without a tie, and beneath his shirt, black ink climbed from his chest toward his collarbone.
Business magazines described him as an aggressive shipping entrepreneur who had modernized Moretti Maritime Group after inheriting the company from his father.
Those magazines never mentioned the warehouses where unregistered cargo was unloaded after midnight.
They never discussed the men who paid Moretti protection to move goods through New York Harbor.
They certainly never mentioned the people who had crossed Lorenzo and subsequently developed unfortunate tendencies to vanish.
Mateo leaned against the empty desk.
"We still need someone out here."
"Then find someone."
"We tried."
"Try harder."
"What exactly am I supposed to put in the advertisement? Excellent salary. Medical insurance. Dental. Occasional gunfire. Previous assistant missing under mysterious circumstances?"
Lorenzo ignored the sarcasm.
"I need someone who doesn't notice things."
Mateo raised an eyebrow.
"You want an idiot."
"I want someone consumed by their own problems."
"Same difference."
"Not necessarily."
Lorenzo walked toward the desk.
He looked at the empty chair.
"Find someone who sees what is directly in front of them and nothing beyond it. Someone too distracted to become curious."
Mateo considered the instruction.
"You want a person who could walk through a crime scene and worry about spilling coffee."
"Exactly."
Thirty floors below them, Khloe Higgins was spilling coffee.
Not metaphorically.
Two large iced coffees.
Neither belonged to her.
At twenty-three years old, Khloe had already developed an impressive catalog of disasters involving public transportation, inexpensive footwear, and beverages.
That morning managed to combine all three.
Her subway had stalled outside Queensboro Plaza.
Her phone battery had dropped to three percent.
The résumé she had printed at a library the previous night had somehow acquired a purple ink stain.
Then, while running toward Moretti Tower, the heel of her right shoe caught inside a sidewalk grating.
The plastic heel snapped clean off.
Khloe lurched sideways.
Unfortunately, a man carrying two iced coffees was passing directly in front of her.
The collision sent both drinks over his coat and Khloe's white blouse.
For several seconds, Khloe simply stood there.
Coffee dripped from her hair.
The stranger stared at his ruined coat.
Khloe stared at her ruined future.
"Oh my God."
The man opened his mouth.
"I'm so sorry."
"You—"
"I know."
"You just—"
"I know."
"Do you always walk like this?"
"Mostly when I'm awake."
The man looked too confused to remain angry.
Khloe dug through her purse.
"I can pay for dry cleaning."
She opened her wallet.
Four dollars.
A MetroCard.
A coupon for cat food.
She closed it again.
"I can pay for dry cleaning eventually."
The stranger looked at her broken shoe.
Then at the coffee stain.
Then at the résumé.
"Job interview?"
Khloe nodded miserably.
"What job?"
"Executive assistant."
The man laughed.
Not cruelly.
Almost sympathetically.
"Good luck."
"I feel like the universe already gave me its opinion."
By the time Khloe reached Moretti Tower, she was eleven minutes late.
She limped across a marble lobby large enough to contain her entire apartment building.
Security guards watched her suspiciously.
Everyone else entering the building looked expensive.
Khloe looked caffeinated.
She checked the job listing again.
Executive Administrative Assistant.
Competitive compensation.
Immediate start.
Confidential corporate environment.
Discretion essential.
The salary had seemed like a typo.
Khloe had applied anyway.
Her student-loan payment was overdue.
Her landlord had taped a notice to her apartment door.
Her checking account was negative eighty-seven dollars.
Her cat, Mr. Whiskers, had recently developed an unfortunate preference for prescription food that cost more per pound than chicken.
Desperation was an effective career counselor.
She eventually reached the eighty-eighth floor.
The elevator opened onto silence.
Not ordinary office silence.
The kind of silence Khloe associated with expensive museums and funerals.
Dark wood covered the walls.
Black marble reflected ceiling lights.
Men in tailored suits spoke quietly into phones.
Nobody smiled.
Khloe approached a large set of oak doors that stood slightly open.
She saw a desk beyond them.
Reception.
Probably.
She pushed the door wider.
"Hello?"
Lorenzo Moretti turned from the window.
Khloe froze.
Mateo froze.
Two guards near the wall shifted simultaneously.
Khloe's brain processed several facts.
The room was enormous.
The man by the window looked deeply unfriendly.
The men near the wall were definitely armed.
This was probably not reception.
"I'm sorry."
Nobody answered.
"I think I'm lost."
Lorenzo's right hand moved slowly toward the underside of his desk.
Khloe did not notice.
She was staring at her résumé.
"I have a two o'clock appointment."
Mateo stepped forward.
"How did you get in here?"
"The elevator."
"I mean who authorized you?"
"Oh."
Khloe looked behind herself.
"I don't know."
Mateo's expression hardened.
"Name."
"Khloe Higgins."
Her broken heel slipped from her fingers.
It struck the marble floor.
Every man in the room reacted.
Khloe jumped.
"I'm sorry!"
Lorenzo stared at the piece of plastic.
Then at her.
Coffee stain.
Broken shoe.
Frizzy hair.
Shaking hands.
Either someone had designed the most elaborate assassination attempt in organized-crime history, or the woman standing in his office was genuinely incapable of walking ten feet without creating an incident.
Khloe swallowed.
"I understand if this isn't going well."
Mateo looked at Lorenzo.
Khloe continued.
"I can type ninety words per minute."
Silence.
"I'm excellent with spreadsheets."
Still silence.
"I make very good calendar systems."
Nothing.
"And obviously I have tremendous experience with crisis management."
Mateo's mouth twitched.
Khloe gathered her broken heel.
"Okay."
She backed toward the door.
"I'll save everybody the trouble."
She turned.
"Wait."
Lorenzo's voice stopped her.
Khloe slowly looked over her shoulder.
He studied her.
She was frightened.
But strangely, Lorenzo realized, she was not frightened of him.
She was frightened of being late.
Frightened of the stain on her shirt.
Frightened of unemployment.
Frightened of her own existence.
There was no calculation in her expression.
No professional curiosity.
No carefully constructed confidence.
She was chaos wrapped in a discount blouse.
"How badly do you need this job?" Lorenzo asked.
Khloe laughed nervously.
"My landlord used the phrase final notice yesterday."
"You're hired."
Mateo turned sharply.
"What?"
Khloe blinked.
"I'm sorry?"
"You start today."
"But you haven't interviewed me."
"I just did."
"You don't want references?"
"No."
"Typing test?"
"No."
"Excel?"
"No."
Khloe looked concerned.
"Is this legal?"
Mateo coughed.
Lorenzo almost smiled.
"Most employment decisions are."
He walked toward her.
"Three rules."
Khloe straightened.
"Don't enter my office without knocking."
She glanced around.
"Little late on that one."
Mateo looked down to hide another smile.
"Second," Lorenzo continued, "folders marked in red do not exist."
Khloe nodded.
"Great."
"Third, you ask no questions about conversations you overhear."
Khloe nodded again.
"I have a fourth rule."
She immediately looked alarmed.
"Buy better shoes."
For the next forty-eight hours, Lorenzo learned that hiring Khloe Higgins had been simultaneously the smartest and most ridiculous decision he had made all year.
She jammed the industrial shredder before noon.
She accidentally transferred the mayor of New York to the basement maintenance department.
She apologized to Mateo after stepping on his foot, then stepped on it again while backing away.
She called Lorenzo "Mr. Moreno" once.
She nearly cried afterward.
But she also reorganized six months of shipping appointments in ninety minutes.
She caught three duplicate invoices.
She remembered every number she saw.
And despite the armed men, sealed doors, unexplained packages, whispered arguments, and occasional stains that were clearly not tomato sauce, she asked absolutely nothing.
Lorenzo watched her from behind his glass office walls.
She chewed her lower lip while concentrating.
She whispered calculations beneath her breath.
She wrote reminders on brightly colored sticky notes, including one attached directly to Mateo's expensive coat that read:
DO NOT FORGET 4 PM MEETING.
Mateo wore it through half the building.
By Wednesday afternoon, Lorenzo had begun to wonder whether Khloe was precisely what he needed.
Then she spilled six cups of espresso across Dominic Gallow's ledger.
The meeting had already been deteriorating.
Dominic controlled several Brooklyn port operations and had spent three decades surviving through violence, paranoia, and calculated alliances.
He believed Lorenzo was stealing from him.
His accountants claimed shipment weights had been altered.
Fourteen thousand tons recorded where eighteen thousand had supposedly entered.
Millions of dollars were missing.
Dominic pushed the leather ledger across the boardroom table.
"You think I'm stupid?"
"I don't think about you enough to form an opinion," Lorenzo replied.
Dominic's soldiers stiffened.
Mateo quietly shifted his jacket away from his holster.
Then the boardroom doors opened.
Khloe entered carrying espresso.
Every head turned.
Khloe's eyes widened.
Her right foot found the edge of the rug.
"Oh no."
The tray tilted.
Porcelain flew.
Espresso struck Dominic directly across the chest.
The ledger disappeared beneath coffee.
Dominic shot to his feet.
"You stupid little—"
Lorenzo was already standing.
Weapons appeared around the table.
Khloe dropped to her knees.
"I'm sorry! Please don't shoot anybody. I'll pay for the tie."
Dominic stared at her.
"This tie costs twelve hundred dollars!"
Khloe stopped wiping.
"I will not pay for the tie."
Even Lorenzo almost laughed.
Then Khloe noticed the page.
Black ink was bleeding away.
Blue numbers remained beneath it.
She stopped moving.
"What?"
Lorenzo saw her expression.
"What is it?"
Khloe looked closer.
"This number."
Dominic snapped, "What about it?"
Khloe pointed.
"Yesterday I filed the Katarina manifest."
Lorenzo's amusement vanished.
"You remember it?"
"Fourteen thousand tons."
Dominic slapped the table.
"Exactly."
"No."
Khloe looked at the dissolving page.
"Your ledger said fourteen thousand."
"That's what I just said."
"But underneath it says eighteen."
Nobody spoke.
Khloe rubbed the paper carefully.
The black number vanished further.
The waterproof blue number beneath remained.
Someone had altered Dominic's books.
Not Lorenzo's.
Dominic slowly turned toward his accountant.
The man's face had gone gray.
Lorenzo looked at Mateo.
That was enough.
The doors closed.
The accountant began begging before anyone touched him.
Khloe stood beside the table holding the tray against her chest.
She suddenly understood she had accidentally walked into something much larger than a corporate disagreement.
Lorenzo approached her.
He lifted her chin.
"Do you remember every number you see?"
Khloe swallowed.
"Usually."
"How?"
"I don't know. They just stay."
"For how long?"
Khloe thought.
"Years sometimes."
Something changed in Lorenzo's eyes.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Am I fired?"
"No."
"Thank God."
His thumb rested briefly against her jaw.
"You are never leaving this floor."
Khloe did not interpret that sentence romantically.
She interpreted it as a threat.
By Thursday morning, her desk had been moved inside Lorenzo's office.
Every security camera had been repositioned.
Her access badge had been upgraded.
Two armed guards followed her to lunch.
Khloe became convinced Lorenzo planned to murder her.
By Friday night, she discovered someone else intended to do it first.
Mateo burst through Lorenzo's office during a thunderstorm.
His pistol was drawn.
"Two men breached security."
Lorenzo stood.
"Where?"
"Freight elevator."
Khloe froze at her desk.
Mateo looked at her.
"They're not here for you."
Lorenzo's eyes narrowed.
Mateo finished.
"They're here for her."
Khloe made a small noise.
"Me?"
"Dominic put a contract on the person who exposed the ledger."
"I spilled coffee."
"Apparently he took it personally."
Lorenzo crossed the room.
Khloe stood too fast, caught her shoe, and fell directly toward him.
He caught her around the waist.
"For God's sake."
"I'm nervous."
"You're always nervous."
"People weren't usually trying to kill me."
He pulled her toward a bookcase.
A hidden panel opened.
Panic room.
Khloe stared inside.
"You have a secret room?"
"Khloe."
"Sorry. No questions."
"Inside."
"What about you?"
Lorenzo checked his weapon.
A cold smile appeared.
"I'm going to explain why putting a contract on my employee was an expensive mistake."
"My employee?"
He looked at her.
"Would you prefer secretary?"
"Actually yes."
The bookshelf closed.
Gunfire followed minutes later.
Khloe crouched in darkness.
She heard glass break.
Shouting.
Something heavy striking the floor.
Then silence.
When the door finally opened, Lorenzo stood outside covered in someone else's blood.
A dead man lay behind him.
Khloe stumbled.
Lorenzo caught her.
"Don't look."
His hand pressed her face against his chest.
"Look at me."
She did.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"That's blood."
"Not mine."
Mateo searched the attacker's clothing.
Then stopped.
He held up a security card.
Lorenzo recognized it immediately.
Arthur Pendleton.
Chief financial officer.
Sixty-three years old.
Married for forty years.
Grandfather of five.
The same man who brought Khloe peppermint candies every afternoon.
"He authorized them," Mateo said.
Khloe stared.
"Arthur?"
Lorenzo's expression turned lethal.
The altered Gallow books had required somebody to alter corresponding digital records inside Moretti Maritime.
Arthur had access.
Arthur had motive.
And now Arthur had attempted to eliminate the one person capable of exposing inconsistencies simply by looking at them.
"Find him," Lorenzo ordered.
"Alive?"
"Initially."
Arthur was captured twenty-four hours later attempting to board a private aircraft under another name.
By then Lorenzo had removed Khloe from Manhattan.
His Oyster Bay estate looked less like a home than a fortress.
Iron gates.
Cameras.
Armed patrols.
Khloe stepped from the car carrying Mr. Whiskers in a travel carrier.
"This is temporary, right?"
"No."
"I have an apartment."
"Compromised."
"A lease."
"Handled."
"Plants."
"Probably dead."
"My mail."
"Forwarded."
Khloe stared at him.
"You can't relocate human beings like office furniture."
"I just did."
For three days, she lived in luxury and terror.
On the fourth night Lorenzo summoned her to his study.
Arthur had confessed enough.
Offshore accounts.
Altered manifests.
Payments routed through fictional consulting firms.
Money moved for years beneath Lorenzo's nose.
Khloe studied the documents.
"Will he go to prison?"
Lorenzo leaned back.
"No."
"What does that mean?"
"Arthur took an unannounced retirement."
Khloe stared.
"Where?"
"The East River."
Silence.
She slowly put down the paper.
"You're serious."
Lorenzo did not answer.
That was answer enough.
Khloe stood.
"You killed him."
"He betrayed my family."
"He was a criminal."
"So am I."
The simple admission hit harder than denial would have.
Khloe looked around the beautiful study.
Suddenly every painting seemed darker.
Every locked door more significant.
Every employee more frightened.
"You really are what people say."
Lorenzo's face revealed nothing.
"Usually worse."
Khloe backed away.
Then her eyes landed on one of Arthur's recovered documents.
A list of account transfers.
Dates.
Amounts.
Initials.
Her breathing changed.
Lorenzo noticed.
"What?"
Khloe reached for the page.
Near the bottom was a payment made fourteen years earlier.
$250,000.
Recipient designation:
N.H.-17.
Beside it were three additional numbers.
Khloe stared at them.
She had seen them before.
Not this week.
Not this year.
When she was a child.
On papers spread across her father's kitchen table.
Her father, Nathan Higgins, had supposedly died in a highway accident when Khloe was nine years old.
Yet the payment in front of her had been issued four months after his death.
Khloe touched the numbers.
"Lorenzo."
"What?"
"My father is in your ledger."
Lorenzo went completely still.
May you like
Outside the estate, rain began tapping against the dark windows.
And for the first time since Khloe Higgins had walked into Moretti Tower with a broken heel, Lorenzo understood that her arrival might not have been an accident at all.
