Chapter 3 - THE BLUE LEDGER
Sebastian locked the study door.
“Who?”
Lauren shook her head.
“If I knew, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Emma stood.
She had caught only pieces, but Sebastian repeated the important parts facing her so she could read his lips.
Someone had remotely accessed her hearing-aid diagnostics.
Someone using Sebastian’s private computer.
She felt violated in a way she had not expected.
For months she had worried that being partially deaf made her miss conversations.
Now she learned someone might have been collecting them.
Sebastian turned to Mateo.
“Can you identify when my computer was used?”
“Security logs should tell us when your office door opened.”
“No,” Lauren said.
Both men looked at her.
“The person doing this knows your security system.”
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.
“How do you know?”
Lauren hesitated.
“Because I’ve been following the money for six weeks.”
Emma stared.
Lauren reached beneath the collar of her dress and removed a thin gold chain.
A small brass key hung from it.
“My mother didn't leave me money,” she said. “She left debt.”
Sebastian knew part of the story.
Lauren’s mother, Catherine Whitfield, had spent her final years fighting cancer.
Medical bills destroyed the family.
Lauren had built her career in healthcare philanthropy partly because of it.
“What does that have to do with my foundation?” Sebastian asked.
“Everything.”
She set the key on his desk.
“Your foundation pays for experimental treatment, transportation, rehabilitation devices, hearing equipment, medications. Last year, we approved eleven million dollars in patient grants.”
“I know.”
“Only nine-point-four million reached patients.”
Silence.
Sebastian’s face became dangerously still.
“Where did the rest go?”
“I don't know.”
“You accused Pierce on the recording.”
“I was testing him.”
Mateo frowned.
“Sounded real.”
“It was supposed to.”
Sebastian stared at her.
“You staged that conversation?”
“Parts of it.”
Emma understood first.
“The line about me.”
Lauren turned to her.
“Yes.”
Emma felt anger rise.
“You said my name because you knew someone was recording me.”
“I suspected.”
“So you used me.”
“I was trying to flush them out.”
“You crushed my hearing aid.”
Lauren’s voice weakened.
“I panicked.”
Emma stepped toward her.
“You humiliated me in front of ninety people.”
“Yes.”
“You grabbed me.”
“Yes.”
“And you were going to fire me.”
“I needed you outside the house before whoever was listening realized what had been captured.”
Emma stared at her.
It was not an apology.
But it was not the explanation she expected either.
Sebastian said quietly, “You could have told me.”
Lauren turned on him.
“No, Sebastian. I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because every time something threatens this family, you handle it like a Rinaldi.”
His expression cooled.
“What does that mean?”
“It means people disappear from payrolls. Contracts end. Doors close. Everyone stops talking because they’re afraid of you.”
“I don't hurt innocent people.”
“I know.”
Lauren swallowed.
“But the guilty people know how you react. I needed them comfortable enough to make a mistake.”
Emma looked at Sebastian.
That struck something.
He knew she was right.
Mateo returned to the computer.
“If someone has been accessing Emma’s device, maybe we can see what they downloaded.”
He worked in silence.
Sebastian picked up Lauren’s brass key.
“What does this open?”
“A locker at the foundation archive.”
“What’s inside?”
“The blue ledger.”
Emma frowned.
“I thought the blue book was in your bedroom.”
“It was.”
Lauren looked at her.
“Until Tuesday.”
Sebastian understood.
“You moved it.”
“To the archive locker.”
“Why leave something that looked like it behind?”
“To see whether anyone searched for it.”
Emma remembered.
The blue notebook under the gloves.
“A decoy.”
Lauren nodded.
Sebastian picked up his coat.
“We’re going to the foundation.”
Mateo stood.
“So am I.”
Lauren blocked Sebastian.
“No security detail.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Sebastian, think. If your office is compromised, your security staff may be too.”
He stared at her.
“Mateo comes.”
Mateo gave a humorless smile.
“Apparently I've been promoted from security to trusted chaperone.”
Emma moved toward the door.
Sebastian stopped her.
“You stay here.”
“No.”
“You’ve already been dragged too far into this.”
“Someone used my medical device to listen to me.”
“That’s exactly why—”
“I have spent half my life being told what I didn't hear.”
Emma’s voice shook, but she continued.
“I’m not spending tonight being told what I’m not allowed to know.”
Sebastian studied her.
Then nodded once.
“Stay beside me.”
Lauren looked away.
Twenty-five minutes later they entered the Rinaldi Foundation headquarters through the staff parking garage.
The building was dark.
Lauren used the brass key at a row of archival lockers.
Number 118.
She opened it.
Empty.
Her face drained.
“No.”
Sebastian checked inside.
Nothing.
Lauren reached to the back.
Her fingers found an envelope taped beneath the shelf.
She pulled it free.
Inside was a Polaroid photograph.
Four people stood outside a lakeside clinic.
Lauren’s mother Catherine was one.
Much younger.
Beside her stood Sebastian’s late father, Vittorio Rinaldi.
The third was Dr. Nathan Pierce.
The fourth person had been scratched out with something sharp.
On the back, handwritten in blue ink:
THE FIRST PAYMENT WASN’T STOLEN. IT WAS RETURNED.
Sebastian read it twice.
“My father knew Pierce?”
Lauren looked equally stunned.
“My mother knew your father.”
Emma pointed at the photograph.
“Look.”
Near Catherine’s wrist was a bracelet.
Blue sapphires.
The bracelet Lauren had accused Emma of stealing.
Lauren’s mouth opened.
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“My mother bought that bracelet two years before she died.”
Sebastian looked closer.
“This photograph is older than that.”
Mateo turned on a desk lamp.
The date printed along the Polaroid edge was nineteen years earlier.
Lauren had been twelve.
Sebastian was twenty-four.
Sebastian looked at her.
“Where did your mother really get the bracelet?”
“I don't know.”
Mateo’s phone buzzed with an internal security alert.
He read it.
Then looked toward Sebastian.
“We have a bigger problem.”
“What?”
“Someone just used your credentials.”
“Where?”
Mateo turned the phone around.
The Rinaldi Foundation’s patient-assistance account had authorized a transfer.
One point six million dollars.
Destination:
CATHERINE WHITFIELD MEMORIAL TRUST.
Lauren stared at the screen.
“That trust doesn’t exist.”
Mateo refreshed the page.
The authorization name appeared underneath.
SEBASTIAN RINALDI.
Emma looked at him.
Sebastian had been standing beside them the entire time.
Then another line appeared.
The approval had been authenticated using Sebastian’s private biometric security token.
A token he wore every day.
Sebastian slowly reached beneath his shirt.
The chain was still around his neck.
But the black metal token hanging from it was gone.
In its place hung something else.
A sapphire bracelet.
May you like
Lauren whispered:
“That’s my mother’s.”
