Chapter 3 - A NAME ON THE WIRE
The first call came from the bank.
The second came from a reporter.
By ten in the morning, Elena had learned that Carter & Reed’s operating
account had been flagged for review because of a suspicious transfer
allegedly connected to Moretti Holdings. By eleven, a business reporter
had emailed asking whether her company had received money in exchange
for confidential information about the Dubai acquisition.
Maya read the message over Elena’s shoulder.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“I know.”
“They’re trying to make it look like we sold something.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you sitting there like you’re waiting for the ceiling to
fall?”
Elena closed her laptop. “Because I’m thirty-two weeks pregnant, our
operating account is under review, and the company has six employees who
expect their paychecks on Friday.”
Maya softened. “We’ll make payroll.”
“How?”
“We’ll use the reserve account.”
“That account covers the new studio build-out.”
“Then the studio build-out waits.”
Elena looked at her. “You shouldn’t have to do that.”
“I’m your partner. That’s what partners do.”
For the next two hours, they gathered contracts, invoices, and bank
statements. Carter & Reed had never billed Moretti Holdings. Its only
connection to the Dubai acquisition was a proposal Elena had sent
eighteen months earlier for the interior redesign of a private
residential suite. The proposal had been declined.
The suspicious invoice, however, described confidential consulting
services and included a digital signature that looked like hers.
Natalie Brooks arrived shortly after lunch.
“Do not answer the reporter,” she said. “Do not post anything. Do not
contact the company yourself. We will send a formal denial and request
the bank’s transaction records.”
“What about the money?” Maya asked.
“If it was never deposited into Carter & Reed’s account, that helps. But
we need to know where it went.”
Elena opened the bank portal. The transfer did not appear in any account
she controlled. The invoice showed a routing number that belonged to a
closed business account.
“That’s not ours,” Elena said.
Natalie leaned forward. “Can you prove when that account was closed?”
“I can get the closure letter.”
“Do it.”
Elena’s phone buzzed.
ADRIAN: I need to speak with you about the transfer.
She showed Natalie.
“Tell him to speak with me,” Natalie said.
Elena typed the message, then deleted it. She was tired of being
represented by people while the man who had shared her bed for six years
stood on the other side of a legal table.
She called Adrian.
He answered immediately. “Elena.”
“You asked about the payment. I never received it. Carter & Reed never
worked on your acquisition. The invoice is fake.”
“I believe you.”
“You didn’t believe me when it mattered.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I don’t think you understand what it means to be
accused of stealing from your own husband while carrying his child.”
“I didn’t make the accusation.”
“You filed for divorce based on information you never checked.”
He was silent.
“I want the original approval records,” she continued. “Not a summary
from your finance team. The source documents. If your company is using
my name, I want to know who did it.”
“I’ll get them.”
“Send them to Natalie.”
“Can I see you?”
“No.”
“Elena—”
“No. You don’t get to turn every crisis into a reason to enter my life.”
She ended the call.
An hour later, a courier delivered a sealed envelope to the studio.
Inside were copies of the invoice, the transaction log, and a printed
email chain. One message had been sent from a Moretti Holdings account
to a Northbridge Consulting address.
The sender was Victor Hale.
The recipient was listed only as V.M.
The message read: As requested, the Carter & Reed vendor profile is
ready. The invoice can be processed once the executive approval is
entered.
Maya looked up. “V.M.?”
“Vivienne Moretti,” Natalie said.
Elena stared at the page. “Why would his mother use my company?”
“To make a payment look legitimate,” Natalie replied. “Or to make it
look like you received the money. We don’t know which yet.”
A new email arrived. It was from an unknown address, with no subject
line.
The message contained one sentence.
You should have stayed in the mansion. Some doors are safer when they
remain closed.
Maya read it and went pale.
Natalie took the laptop. “Forward this to me. Do not reply.”
“Is that a threat?” Elena asked.
“It may be. We’ll preserve it.”
The studio door opened. A delivery driver entered with a long cardboard
tube. Maya signed for it, then set it on the table.
Inside was a large-format photograph of the Moretti mansion’s formal
dining room. It had been taken from the garden, through the windows.
Elena recognized herself sitting at the table on the night Adrian had
asked for a divorce.
Across the bottom, someone had written in black marker:
HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.
Elena felt the baby move.
For the first time that day, fear was stronger than anger.
Natalie called the police and documented the delivery. Maya locked the
front door and pulled the blinds.
“I’m taking you home,” she said.
“I am home.”
“Then I’m staying.”
Elena looked at the photograph. Whoever had sent it had known where she
was, what had happened, and exactly which wound to press.
That evening, Adrian arrived at the studio with Gordon Pike. He did not
come inside. He waited on the sidewalk until Natalie went out to speak
with him.
Elena watched from the window.
Adrian looked exhausted. His tie was loosened, and his coat was
unbuttoned against the wind. He held a folder in one hand.
Natalie returned ten minutes later.
“He has the original server logs,” she said. “The invoice was uploaded
from a terminal assigned to the executive floor in Chicago. The user
account belonged to Vivienne Moretti’s office.”
Elena felt her stomach tighten. “Does Adrian know?”
“He does now.”
Through the glass, Adrian looked up and saw her.
He did not wave. He did not knock.
He simply stood there, holding the folder, as if he had finally
understood that there were consequences to arriving at a door after the
person inside had learned to lock it.
The next morning, Elena and Maya went through the company archive from
the beginning. They pulled old proposals, vendor forms, bank
confirmations, and tax records. Carter & Reed had been careful from its
first day. Every invoice had a project code. Every deposit had a
matching contract. Every expense had a receipt.
The false invoice had none of those things.
Maya found the first inconsistency. “Look at the address.”
The invoice listed the studio’s former address, a small office Elena had
left two years earlier. The Moretti company had never used that address
for correspondence.
“Whoever created this copied an old vendor form,” Elena said.
“Which means they had access to your records.”
“Or they got them from someone who did.”
Maya opened the archived vendor portal. The original profile had been
created when Carter & Reed submitted a proposal for the Moretti
residential suite. It contained Elena’s old electronic signature and a
bank account that had been closed after the company changed banks.
“It’s a copy-and-paste job,” Maya said. “A very expensive copy-and-paste
job.”
Elena called Natalie. The attorney asked them to stop reviewing the
portal and preserve the login history. She also arranged for a forensic
accountant to examine the false invoice.
While they waited, a client named Mrs. Whitaker called. She had hired
Carter & Reed to renovate a historic townhouse and had seen the story
online.
“I don’t care what the headlines say,” Mrs. Whitaker told Elena. “You
listened to me when I said I wanted my grandmother’s dining room kept
intact. That’s the only evidence I need.”
Elena thanked her and hung up.
Maya smiled. “There. One person with a functioning brain.”
“Let’s not make that our marketing strategy.”
They laughed, and for a few seconds the studio felt normal.
Then the front desk called to say a man was asking for Elena. He gave no
name and refused to leave a message. Maya went to the reception area
while Elena stayed in the conference room.
Through the glass, Elena watched a tall man in a gray coat place a
business card on the desk. He looked toward the corridor, then left.
The card read NORTHBRIDGE CONSULTING.
No person’s name. No phone number. Only an address and a small embossed
logo.
Natalie told Elena not to contact the company. Instead, she arranged for
the forensic accountant to check the corporate registry. Northbridge had
been registered by an attorney who also handled several Moretti family
trusts.
That evening, the unknown sender’s message arrived with the photograph
of the mansion.
Elena saved the email and turned the laptop toward Maya.
“Do you think they want to scare me into dropping it?” Maya asked.
“I think they expected me to be too frightened to ask questions.”
“And are you?”
Elena glanced toward the nursery, where the yellow blanket lay folded
over the crib.
“Yes,” she said honestly. “But I’m asking anyway.”
May you like
Maya reached across the table and took her hand.
“Then we’re asking together.”
