Chapter 5 - THE WAREHOUSE OF STOLEN NAMES
Conrad Pierce didn't deny moving the register.
Instead, he smiled.
“Records are transferred between company facilities every day, Victoria. That's called running a business.”
Victoria held the shipping record in front of him.
“This wasn't company property. It belonged to my family trust.”
“Which I was authorized to administer.”
“Not dismantle.”
Conrad glanced at his watch.
“Have Arthur explain the distinction in court. I'm sure he'll enjoy that.”
Arthur Bell looked away.
Ava noticed something strange.
For the first time since her mother had walked into the ballroom, Conrad seemed eager for the evening to end.
He was no longer trying to humiliate them.
He was trying to buy time.
“What's happening tomorrow?” Ava asked.
Conrad's eyes narrowed.
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Then you won't mind answering.”
Victoria turned toward Arthur.
“Check the transfer schedule.”
Arthur removed a small appointment book from his jacket.
He flipped through several pages, then stopped.
His expression changed.
“There's a closing scheduled for six tomorrow morning.”
Victoria went still.
“What closing?”
“Pier Fourteen. Three freight terminals. The South Hudson warehouse leases. All being transferred to a holding company registered in Delaware.”
Conrad reached for the book.
Arthur stepped back.
Victoria spoke quietly.
“Who owns the holding company?”
Arthur swallowed.
“The ownership is obscured behind several corporate entities.”
“And who approved the sale?”
He looked at Conrad.
“Conrad did.”
Ava watched her stepfather's face harden.
“You sold the docks?”
“I'm divesting underperforming assets,” Conrad replied. “Something your mother should have done years ago.”
“Those docks employ hundreds of people.”
“People get new jobs.”
Victoria looked at him with undisguised disgust.
“My father built those terminals.”
“Your father also left you a mountain of debt.”
“My father left me businesses that supported families.”
Conrad leaned closer.
“And you nearly destroyed them trying to play everyone's savior.”
Ava saw her mother flinch.
It was small.
But Conrad had found something that hurt.
Victoria turned away.
“Noah. Have our attorneys prepare an emergency application to preserve the assets. And contact the employees' representatives.”
Conrad laughed.
“You can file whatever you want. Until a court recognizes your authority, I'm still the authorized administrator.”
Victoria looked back.
“Then we'd better find the records you moved.”
Twenty minutes later, Ava stood outside the Hawthorne estate beneath the cold New Jersey sky.
Her cheek still burned.
Her black dress was torn near the shoulder where Sloane had grabbed it.
Victoria approached carrying her charcoal coat.
“Wear this.”
Ava shook her head.
“I'm fine.”
“You're shivering.”
“I said I'm fine.”
Victoria stopped.
After a moment, she folded the coat over her own arm.
“I understand.”
Ava looked toward the parked vehicles.
“Do you?”
Victoria didn't answer.
“You walked back into that ballroom and everyone remembered you were powerful,” Ava continued. “One word from you, and the guards let me go.”
Her voice tightened.
“I spent three years saying those same words. Nobody listened.”
Victoria looked devastated.
“I know.”
“No. You don't.”
Ava wiped her eyes.
“But I want to help find those records.”
“Because they're your inheritance?”
“Because the people who work at those docks shouldn't lose their jobs because Conrad wants to hide what he did.”
Victoria studied her daughter.
Something like pride moved across her face.
“You sound like your grandfather.”
Ava looked away.
“Don't make this easier with compliments.”
“I'm not trying to.”
They drove toward Port Liberty with Arthur and Noah.
The waterfront looked nothing like the ballroom.
Floodlights illuminated loading cranes, stacks of containers, and long stretches of chain-link fencing.
The warehouse stood beside a service road, its windows dark.
Ava recognized it.
During the worst months after losing her apartment, she had worked temporary shifts packing restaurant supplies at a neighboring facility.
She knew how the docks worked.
And she knew the people who worked there were rarely treated like people.
At the gate, Noah spoke to the night supervisor.
The man recognized Victoria.
His mouth fell open.
“Mrs. Moretti?”
“Hello, Manny.”
Manny Serrano, a broad-shouldered man in his sixties, stepped out of the guard booth.
“I thought you were dead.”
“So did I, for a while.”
He gave a shaky laugh.
Then he saw Ava.
“Miss Ava.”
She smiled faintly.
“Hi, Manny.”
He looked at her damaged dress.
His smile disappeared.
Victoria explained that they needed to inspect family records shipped to the warehouse.
Manny shook his head.
“Those crates aren't here anymore.”
Arthur stiffened.
“What?”
“Moved two days ago.”
“By whom?” Victoria asked.
Manny hesitated.
“Mrs. Pierce.”
Victoria's expression hardened.
“Which one?”
“Meredith.”
He pulled out the warehouse dispatch ledger and showed them the entry.
Three crates.
One wooden cabinet.
Destination listed as Hawthorne estate storage.
The transport had been authorized by Meredith Pierce.
Ava stared at the page.
“We were just there.”
Victoria nodded slowly.
Conrad had sent them searching the waterfront while the register was already back at the house.
But Manny wasn't finished.
“There was another shipment.”
He flipped back several pages.
“Eighteen months ago. Same day those family records arrived.”
Victoria leaned closer.
The second shipment had contained twelve boxes of employee benefit files, payroll registers, and retirement account summaries.
All marked for destruction.
Ava frowned.
“Why would those be sent here?”
Manny looked uncomfortable.
“They weren't supposed to be destroyed immediately. Someone ordered them held.”
“Who?” Arthur asked.
“My sister Ruth. She managed the records department before Conrad fired her.”
Victoria's eyes sharpened.
“Ruth Serrano?”
Manny nodded.
“She said something was wrong with the pension payments. She wouldn't sign the destruction order.”
Ava looked at Arthur.
“Did you know?”
Arthur shook his head.
“Ruth was dismissed for alleged misconduct. I never saw the underlying files.”
Manny opened a drawer and retrieved a small red notebook.
“Ruth left this with me in case anyone came asking.”
Victoria recognized the handwriting on the cover.
Inside were dates, employee identification numbers, and amounts.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Payments recorded as distributed to retired dockworkers.
Except several names had been crossed out.
Beside each one, Ruth had written the same word.
Unpaid.
Ava turned a page.
One name caught her attention.
Martin Hale — $86,400.
Martin had worked for the Moretti companies for thirty-two years.
He had died the previous winter.
Ava remembered his widow standing outside a bank in Hoboken, crying because she couldn't afford to keep their house.
“The company said his pension was gone,” Ava whispered.
Victoria's face went white.
Arthur examined the numbers.
“These payments were approved after Victoria disappeared.”
“By Conrad?” Ava asked.
Arthur hesitated.
“Under his authority. But we need the underlying bank records to know where the money went.”
Manny pointed at the final page.
“Ruth thought the money was being moved into a private insurance reserve.”
Victoria stared at the number written there.
It was a reserve account she had created years earlier for employees injured on the docks.
Money that was never supposed to be touched.
Ava looked at her mother.
“Conrad didn't just steal from us.”
Victoria closed the notebook.
“No.”
Then Manny spoke again.
“There's one thing Ruth never understood.”
He pointed to a signature on an old transfer authorization.
It wasn't Conrad's.
It wasn't Arthur's.
The signature was written in Victoria's familiar slanting handwriting.
Ava felt a chill.
“Mom?”
Victoria stared at the page.
May you like
Her voice became dangerously quiet.
“That transfer was approved eight months after my plane crashed.”
