Chapter 10 - THE SISTER'S SIGNATURE
The Moretti Family Foundation occupied six floors of a glass building in the financial district.
By day, it funded children's hospitals, addiction clinics, scholarships, and housing programs.
At 2:46 in the morning, it became the most suspicious charity in the city.
Norah watched the building from a parking garage across the street.
No lights were visible except on the fourth floor.
Elena Moretti's office.
Gabriel stood beside her in a black coat borrowed from Victor.
His face revealed nothing.
Norah knew him well enough now to understand that meant too much was happening underneath.
"You think your sister took my mother?"
"No."
"That was quick."
"Elena would threaten me before she threatened you."
"Comforting family dynamic."
"She is direct."
Norah looked at the lit office.
"Direct people can still lie."
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
"Yes."
Declan remained at the bunker with Serrano because his concussion had worsened.
Victor had wanted Gabriel to stay too.
Gabriel's response had been unprintable.
Now Victor sat in a surveillance van one level below them, monitoring the foundation's cameras through a local hardline tap.
"Fourth floor shows one heat signature," Victor said through Gabriel's earpiece.
"Could be Elena."
"Any guards?"
"Lobby has two."
"Hers?"
"Yes."
"Then we go through the garage."
Norah started toward the stairwell.
Gabriel caught her arm.
"You stay with Victor."
She stared at him.
"My mother is potentially inside."
"Which is why I don't want you walking into another trap."
"You were unconscious during the last trap."
"So were you."
"Togetherness."
His eyes narrowed.
Norah pulled her arm free.
"I'm going."
Gabriel stared at her for two seconds.
Then he handed her a small pistol.
Norah looked down at it.
"I don't know how to use this."
"Point away from yourself."
"Excellent training."
"Safety is here."
He showed her.
"Finger off the trigger until you intend to fire."
"I don't intend to fire."
"Good."
"What if someone fires at me?"
"Then reconsider."
They crossed through a connecting service tunnel between the garage and foundation building.
Victor disabled one alarm for ninety seconds.
Gabriel opened the internal door with an executive credential.
Norah noticed the prefix when the reader flashed.
74.
Every time she saw those digits now, she imagined invisible copies moving through the system.
They took the stairs.
On the fourth floor, Gabriel stopped outside Elena's office.
The door was unlocked.
He pushed it open.
Elena Moretti stood behind her desk with a gun aimed directly at them.
She was thirty-seven, elegant even at three in the morning, dark hair pulled back, cream blouse immaculate.
Her hands were steady.
Her eyes were not.
"Gabriel."
"Put it down."
"You first."
He lowered his gun slightly.
"Where is Margaret Vale?"
Elena looked at Norah.
"Who?"
Norah studied her face.
Confusion looked real.
Gabriel believed it too.
"Someone sent us a photograph from this address," he said.
Elena's expression changed.
"Show me."
Norah placed the tablet on the desk.
Elena looked at the image once.
Then she sat down.
"Oh God."
"What?" Gabriel asked.
Elena closed her eyes.
"They used my access again."
Norah stepped closer.
"Again?"
Elena looked at her brother.
"You should have stayed out of the construction accounts."
Gabriel became very still.
"You knew."
"Some of it."
"How much?"
"Enough to know people die when the payments stop."
Norah's voice sharpened.
"Declan's mother died while the payments were still running."
Elena looked at her.
"Then someone believes the arrangement is already broken."
Gabriel came around the desk.
"Who?"
Elena's face hardened.
"I can't tell you."
He laughed once without humor.
"We are past that answer."
"You don't understand."
"Then make me."
Elena reached into a drawer slowly.
Gabriel's gun rose again.
She placed a folder on the desk.
Inside were copies of wire instructions.
Norah recognized the fourteen-percent transfers.
Many bore Elena's digital signature.
Her stomach tightened.
"You authorized them."
"For three years."
"Why?"
Elena looked at Gabriel.
"Because they had Nico."
Gabriel's face changed.
"What do you mean, had?"
"Not kidnapped."
Her voice shook now.
"Watched."
Nico was Elena's eight-year-old son.
Publicly, his father lived in Paris.
Privately, Gabriel had guards around the boy every day.
"They sent photographs," Elena said.
"School."
"Soccer practice."
"Sleeping in his bedroom."
Gabriel's face became murderous.
"Who?"
"I never saw the same messenger twice."
"Who gave you instructions?"
Elena looked away.
"Luca."
Norah felt the room shift.
Gabriel did not speak.
Elena rushed on.
"He said it was an old debt."
"Whose debt?"
"Dad's."
"To whom?"
"He wouldn't tell me."
"And you believed him?"
Elena stood.
"He showed me a photograph of Nico asleep."
Her voice cracked.
"What would you have believed?"
Gabriel's anger stopped.
For a moment, they were simply brother and sister.
Both afraid of the same thing.
Norah turned back to the wires.
"Why exactly fourteen percent?"
Elena shook her head.
"I never knew."
"Who chose which invoices?"
"Luca's office sent a list."
"Directly?"
"Through encrypted mail."
"Do you still have it?"
Elena opened a locked drawer and removed a flash drive.
"I kept everything."
Gabriel looked at her.
"Why?"
"Because Dad taught me the same lesson he taught you."
She met his eyes.
"Never trust a debt you can't prove."
Norah connected the drive to an offline laptop.
Hundreds of instructions appeared.
Dates.
Invoice numbers.
Amount percentages.
Routing codes.
One detail stood out immediately.
Every instruction arrived exactly fourteen hours before payment authorization.
"Fourteen again," Norah said.
Gabriel leaned over her shoulder.
"Pattern or signal?"
"Both, maybe."
She sorted by sender identity.
The messages appeared to come from Luca's legal office.
But the cryptographic certificate had been renewed twice.
Norah opened the certificate metadata.
The signing authority was Aegis Municipal Systems.
Victor's acquired security contractor.
"Anyone with the master certificate could impersonate Luca," she said.
Elena looked at her.
"Are you saying it might not have been him?"
"I'm saying digital signatures prove possession of a key."
"Not a person's hand."
Gabriel's eyes narrowed.
"Same trick as the stolen movement tokens."
Norah nodded.
Someone had cloned identities at scale.
Thomas Vale.
Elena.
Luca.
Gabriel.
Declan.
Victor.
The conspiracy's most effective weapon was not violence.
It was attribution.
Make every crime look like somebody else did it.
Make every ally suspicious.
Make everyone kill the wrong person.
Norah suddenly understood her father's warning.
Check who gave you the numbers.
"Your mother isn't here," Victor said through the earpiece.
"I searched the internal cameras."
Norah looked at the tablet image again.
"Could the photograph be old?"
"Timestamp metadata says eleven minutes before it was sent."
"Could the location be faked?"
"Yes."
"Then why choose Elena's building?"
Gabriel looked at his sister.
"To make me come here."
Elena's face lost color.
"Why?"
A muffled explosion answered.
The entire building shuddered.
Glass rattled.
Victor shouted through the earpiece.
"Garage!"
A second explosion followed.
The lights died.
Emergency alarms began screaming.
Gabriel pulled Norah down behind the desk.
Elena grabbed the folder and flash drive.
Smoke seeped beneath the office door.
"They're burning the records," Norah said.
"Not just records," Elena replied.
She looked toward the locked filing room behind her office.
"The original foundation books are in that room."
Gabriel stood.
"Leave them."
Norah grabbed his sleeve.
"No."
"Norah."
"If they are destroying originals, there is something in them they cannot forge."
Elena stared at her.
Then ran toward the filing room.
Gabriel swore and followed.
Norah followed him.
The room contained rows of fireproof cabinets.
Sprinklers activated overhead.
Smoke thickened.
Elena unlocked a cabinet marked 2015.
"These?"
Norah pulled out binders.
Most were ordinary donor statements.
Then she found a foundation reimbursement ledger from March 2015.
One handwritten line had been crossed out.
AIR TRANSPORT - A. MORETTI.
$117,600.
Destination field: H4.
Hangar Four.
The date was March 18.
The night Thomas Vale died.
"Arturo used foundation money to pay for a flight," Norah said.
Gabriel stared at the line.
"Where to?"
The destination after H4 had been blacked out.
But the accountant who made the entry had pressed hard enough that the next page carried an impression.
Norah angled it toward the emergency light.
Letters emerged.
S A I N T V I N C E N T.
Norah's pulse jumped.
S.V. WILL KNOW.
It was not a person.
It was a place.
"St. Vincent's Hospital," she whispered.
Gabriel looked at her.
"Why would Arturo fly someone from Hangar Four to a hospital?"
Norah thought of Jonah Drake.
Officially drowned.
Unofficially alive after the Saint Agnes incident.
"Because somebody survived."
A figure appeared in the filing-room doorway.
Gabriel raised his gun.
The man was one of Elena's guards.
He collapsed before speaking.
A bullet hole darkened his jacket.
Behind him stood another man in a firefighter's coat.
He aimed directly at Elena.
Norah saw the gun first.
"Down!"
Gabriel fired.
The attacker fell backward into the smoke.
Elena hit the floor.
Norah crawled toward her.
The alarm roared.
Somewhere below, more shots erupted.
Gabriel grabbed the 2015 ledger.
"We're leaving."
They escaped through a service stairwell seconds before the fourth-floor windows blew outward.
Outside, fire engines filled the street.
Victor pulled up in an ambulance he absolutely did not own.
They climbed inside.
Elena was coughing.
Norah still held the flash drive.
Gabriel still held the scorched 2015 ledger.
Victor accelerated through a red light.
"Where?"
Norah answered.
"St. Vincent's."
Elena looked at her.
"Why?"
Norah opened the ledger to the impressed page.
"Because eleven years ago, Arturo Moretti paid to fly someone there from Hangar Four."
Gabriel's voice turned cold.
May you like
"And I want to know who survived."
THE FOURTEEN PERCENT LEDGER
