Chapter 3 - THE SIGNATURES
By noon, the engagement was over.
Bianca did not cry when Vittorio told her.
She asked whether he understood what assault charges could do to a man with his reputation.
That told him enough about what mattered to her.
Marcus was taken to an urgent-care clinic by his attorney. Bianca left the Lake Forest estate with him soon afterward, carrying two suitcases and promising through clenched teeth that Vittorio would regret humiliating her.
Vittorio did not answer.
His attention had shifted elsewhere.
At Romano Freight & Warehousing’s offices near O’Hare, chief financial officer David Mercer spread six months of payment reports across a conference table.
Vittorio had called him away from his daughter’s soccer game.
David was not pleased about it.
Then he saw the numbers.
“These security vendors,” Vittorio said. “Who approved them?”
David pushed his glasses higher.
“Marcus.”
“That isn’t what the system says.”
David turned the laptop.
Every payment showed Vittorio Romano as final authorization.
There were twenty-three of them.
Some exceeded eighty thousand dollars.
Vittorio stared at his electronic initials.
“I never saw these.”
David hesitated.
“You gave Marcus delegated approval authority after Elena got sick.”
“For routine expenses.”
“He’s been using it for more than routine expenses.”
Vittorio remembered those months.
Hospital rooms. Morphine schedules. Lucy learning to walk while Elena was losing the strength to stand.
Marcus had placed documents in front of him almost every night.
Vittorio had signed because he trusted his wife’s brother-in-law by friendship if not blood, a man who had worked beside him for seventeen years.
David opened another file.
“One vendor doesn’t have employees that I can verify.”
“Who owns it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Vittorio looked toward the dark window.
For years, men had called him dangerous because he noticed weakness before anyone else.
Apparently grief had made him blind in his own house.
His phone rang.
His attorney, Rachel Stein.
“Bianca and Marcus are both considering complaints,” she said. “Before you say anything stupid, understand something. Emma’s video helps explain what happened. It does not erase what you did.”
“I know.”
Rachel paused.
“You don’t usually say that.”
“I’m learning.”
When Vittorio returned home that evening, Lucy was asleep in his sister Theresa’s guest room.
Emma waited in Elena’s study.
One drawer stood open.
“I checked because of what Lucy said,” she told him.
The drawer had held Elena’s personal accounting papers.
It was empty.
Vittorio looked at Emma.
She looked terrified again.
This time, he understood why.
“Tell me what you took,” he said.
Emma whispered, “I didn’t take it.”
May you like
Then she reached behind a row of Elena’s old gardening books.
“But I know who did.”
