Chapter 3 - The Girl in the Photograph
Vittorio Moretti did not look like a man who frightened people.
That, Khloe would later realize, was part of his power.
Lorenzo intimidated a room immediately.
Vittorio made a room forget it should be intimidated.
He entered wearing a navy suit, a pale blue tie, and the easy smile of someone's favorite grandfather.
Silver hair was brushed neatly away from his forehead.
A gold watch rested against his wrist.
He carried no visible weapon.
He did not need one.
Men like Vittorio had spent decades ensuring other people carried weapons for them.
"Lorenzo."
He embraced his nephew.
Lorenzo allowed it without returning the gesture.
Vittorio noticed Khloe.
His smile widened.
"So this is her."
Khloe forced herself not to look at the peppermint.
"Khloe Higgins."
"I've heard remarkable things."
"Mostly from people whose carpets I've ruined."
Vittorio laughed.
"Humility. Rare in this building."
He extended his hand.
Khloe hesitated only a fraction of a second.
Then accepted.
His palm was warm.
Ordinary.
That frightened her more.
"I knew a Higgins once," Vittorio said.
The office went silent.
Khloe's fingers stiffened inside his.
"Did you?"
"Long ago."
Lorenzo stepped between them.
"My office."
Vittorio looked amused.
"Always impatient."
The men disappeared behind the glass doors.
Khloe immediately turned toward Mateo.
"He knows."
"Maybe."
"He said Higgins."
"Your surname isn't exactly unique."
"He came upstairs ten minutes after we opened Isabella's drive."
Mateo lowered his voice.
"That's the part I don't like."
Through the glass, Vittorio sat opposite Lorenzo.
They spoke calmly.
Khloe could not hear them.
She did not need to.
She watched body language.
Lorenzo sat rigidly.
Vittorio relaxed.
Then Vittorio placed a photograph on the desk.
Lorenzo looked down.
Everything in his face changed.
Five minutes later Vittorio left.
Before stepping into the elevator, he paused at Khloe's desk.
"Be careful in this family, Miss Higgins."
Khloe met his eyes.
"I'm not in this family."
Vittorio smiled.
"That's what Isabella thought."
The elevator doors closed.
Khloe stood.
Mateo swore quietly.
They entered Lorenzo's office.
The photograph remained on his desk.
Khloe saw a group of people standing beside a Moretti Maritime vessel nearly eighteen years earlier.
A much younger Salvatore Moretti.
Vittorio.
Several port officials.
Nathan Higgins.
Khloe touched the image.
Her father was smiling.
Beside him stood a woman Khloe did not recognize.
Lorenzo pointed.
"That's Isabella's mother."
Khloe stared.
"What?"
"Marina Rosi. She worked in compliance."
Mateo flipped the photo.
Something was written on the back.
FOUR PEOPLE KNOW.
S.M.
V.M.
N.H.
M.R.
Khloe read the initials.
"Salvatore Moretti. Vittorio Moretti. Nathan Higgins. Marina Rosi."
Lorenzo nodded.
"Four people knew what?"
Nobody had an answer.
Khloe turned the picture again.
Her father and Marina were standing close.
Not romantically.
Like colleagues sharing a secret.
Something occurred to her.
"Isabella wasn't investigating my father randomly."
Mateo understood.
"Their parents worked together."
Exactly.
The conspiracy had begun a generation earlier.
The files from Isabella's drive provided fragments.
Seventeen years earlier Moretti Maritime had been hemorrhaging money despite record shipping volume.
Nathan Higgins and Marina Rosi were assigned to investigate discrepancies.
They discovered a hidden revenue stream called the Orpheus Account.
The account received enormous transfers from shipping subsidiaries, port contractors, city infrastructure projects, and anonymous international entities.
Nobody could determine where the money ultimately went.
Then events occurred rapidly.
Marina Rosi died in an apartment fire.
Nathan Higgins died in a car accident three months later.
Salvatore Moretti suffered a fatal heart attack the following year.
Vittorio became temporary head of the family until Lorenzo was old enough to assume control.
"Three of four people died," Khloe said.
Mateo stared at the photograph.
"And the fourth became chairman."
Lorenzo's expression darkened.
Khloe looked at him.
"You've thought this before."
"My father's heart attack always bothered me."
"Why?"
"He was fifty-one."
"Healthy people have heart attacks."
"Not usually after vomiting blood."
Khloe stared.
"You were told heart attack?"
"Medical examiner ruled cardiac failure."
"Who arranged the examiner?"
Mateo answered.
"Vittorio."
Another piece clicked into place.
Khloe returned to the drive.
Isabella's last files referenced something called ATLAS.
Not an account.
A physical object.
Nathan apparently took it before his death.
Khloe's mother might know.
She had avoided involving Diane Higgins.
Now that became impossible.
Two hours later, three black SUVs stopped outside a modest brick house in Astoria.
Khloe's mother opened the front door.
She looked at Lorenzo.
Then Mateo.
Then the armed men on the sidewalk.
Then at Khloe.
"No."
Khloe blinked.
"Hi, Mom."
"No."
"Can we come inside?"
"No."
"Mom."
Diane pointed at Lorenzo.
"That man is a Moretti."
Everyone froze.
Khloe stared.
"You know him?"
Diane's face lost color.
She grabbed Khloe and pulled her inside.
"You promised me you would stay away from those people."
"I have never promised that in my life."
"I meant your father."
Silence.
Diane realized what she had said.
Khloe's heart began pounding.
"What did Dad promise?"
Her mother's shoulders collapsed.
Twenty minutes later they sat around the kitchen table where Nathan Higgins once spread his files.
Diane made coffee because she did not know what else to do.
Nobody drank it.
"Your father wasn't simply a port inspector," she said.
Khloe waited.
"He was working with federal investigators."
Lorenzo leaned forward.
"Which agency?"
"He never told me. He said knowing could put us in danger."
"Apparently not knowing worked wonderfully," Khloe muttered.
Diane flinched.
Khloe immediately regretted it.
"I'm sorry."
Her mother shook her head.
"You deserve to be angry."
Nathan had discovered that money was being siphoned through Moretti Maritime into a private network.
At first he believed Salvatore Moretti controlled it.
Eventually he became convinced Salvatore was also being deceived.
Nathan secretly approached Marina Rosi.
Together they gathered evidence.
Then Marina died.
Nathan panicked.
"He came home one night and told me if anything happened, I should take you and disappear."
Khloe's throat tightened.
"Why didn't you?"
"Because he died four days later."
"And you believed the accident?"
"I wanted to."
Diane looked at Lorenzo.
"Then Vittorio Moretti came to my house."
Lorenzo's expression hardened.
"What did he say?"
"He said Nathan had gotten involved with dangerous people. He gave me fifty thousand dollars."
Khloe stared.
"You took it?"
"I had a nine-year-old daughter and no income."
Diane's voice broke.
"I was terrified."
Khloe reached for her hand.
Her anger disappeared.
"What about ATLAS?"
Diane looked confused.
"What?"
"Did Dad ever mention that word?"
Her mother thought.
Then she stood.
She walked toward a cabinet and returned carrying an old cardboard box.
Inside were photographs, school papers, birthday cards, and childhood objects Khloe had not seen in years.
Diane removed a battered mathematics workbook.
"Your father became obsessed with your homework near the end."
Khloe almost laughed.
"He hated math homework."
"Exactly."
Nathan had filled several pages himself.
Random multiplication problems.
Number sequences.
Geometric diagrams.
Khloe flipped through them.
At first nothing made sense.
Then her memory began aligning.
The sequences matched account references from Isabella's drive.
"ATLAS isn't an object."
Lorenzo moved closer.
"What is it?"
"A cipher."
Nathan had hidden financial data inside his daughter's elementary-school mathematics workbook.
Every multiplication answer corresponded to a transaction.
Every geometry angle represented account routing.
The childish book contained a map of seventeen years of theft.
Khloe's hands shook.
"He hid it with me."
Diane nodded.
"He said nobody would ever search a child's backpack."
Khloe remembered something suddenly.
The night before her father's death.
Nathan kneeling beside her bed.
Telling her never to throw away the workbook.
She had forgotten the conversation.
Not the numbers.
The memories returned like lights turning on.
"There's another page."
She flipped toward the back.
One sheet had been torn out.
Diane frowned.
"I never removed anything."
Lorenzo asked, "What was on it?"
Khloe closed her eyes.
She had seen it once.
Age nine.
Numbers.
Columns.
A handwritten name.
She concentrated.
Her breathing slowed.
Then she opened her eyes.
"Vittorio."
Everyone went silent.
Nathan had written Vittorio Moretti's name on the missing page.
Before anyone could speak, glass exploded.
Lorenzo threw Khloe to the floor.
Gunfire tore through the kitchen.
Mateo returned fire toward the street.
Diane screamed.
Lorenzo covered Khloe with his body while bullets struck cabinets.
The attack lasted less than thirty seconds.
Then tires screeched outside.
Silence.
Mateo looked through the broken window.
"They're gone."
Khloe crawled toward her mother.
Diane was unharmed.
Lorenzo's shoulder was bleeding.
Khloe stared.
"You're hit."
"Graze."
"You were covering me."
"That's generally how protection works."
"This isn't funny."
"I wasn't joking."
Police sirens sounded in the distance.
Mateo found something on the floor near the shattered window.
A peppermint candy.
Still wrapped.
Khloe stared at it.
Lorenzo did too.
Vittorio was no longer pretending.
That evening Lorenzo moved Diane to Oyster Bay.
Nobody argued.
Khloe sat beside her mother in the armored SUV.
Across from them Lorenzo held pressure against his wounded shoulder.
Diane watched him carefully.
"You look like your father."
Lorenzo's expression hardened.
"You knew him?"
"Only through Nathan."
"Did Nathan trust him?"
Diane considered.
"At first."
"And later?"
"He believed Salvatore discovered what Vittorio was doing."
Lorenzo looked toward the dark road.
That changed everything.
If Salvatore had discovered Vittorio's network, his death was no longer suspicious.
It was part of the pattern.
Marina.
Nathan.
Salvatore.
Isabella.
Arthur.
Everyone who reached the truth disappeared.
Khloe looked at Lorenzo.
"You were supposed to inherit an empire."
He met her eyes.
"No."
She understood.
"You inherited a crime scene."
Back at the estate, Khloe examined the childhood workbook until two in the morning.
One repeated sequence appeared dozens of times.
Lorenzo recognized it.
"March fourteenth, nineteen eighty-eight."
"What happened then?"
"My cousin was born."
"Which cousin?"
Lorenzo's expression changed.
"Gabriel."
Mateo looked up sharply.
Khloe asked, "Who's Gabriel?"
May you like
Lorenzo answered quietly.
"The man Vittorio has spent twenty years telling everyone is dead."
