Chapter 3 - The First Audit
The transition from working at a wobbly kitchen table to having a sprawling corner office on the sixty-fifth floor of Moretti Enterprises felt like waking up inside someone else's fever dream.
By Friday morning, my nameplate—Helena Sloan, Chief Contract Auditor—was bolted to a heavy walnut door. My laptop had been replaced by a state-of-the-art secure workstation, and my desk was already piled high with thick leather-bound folios.
Angela, who I quickly discovered was less of a receptionist and more of an elite executive gatekeeper, walked me through my digital access protocols.
"Mr. Moretti doesn't like surprises," Angela warned me, her tone professional yet carrying a subtle undertone of warning. "If you find an anomaly in any of these portfolios, you don't call the police, you don't call a reporter, and you don't mention it to anyone in the outer offices. You take it directly to him."
"Understood," I murmured, sliding my glasses up the bridge of my nose.
For the next four hours, I buried myself in the paperwork. It was exhilarating. For years, at Hendricks and Lowe, I had been relegated to writing dry footnotes and formatting corporate appendices while senior partners took all the credit. Then, during my marriage, my brain had atrophied under the constant drip of David’s psychological belittling.
Now, surrounded by the hum of the Manhattan skyline outside my floor-to-ceiling windows, my legal mind clicked back into gear with the precision of a Swiss watch.
The documents were complex—shell corporations registered in Delaware, offshore logistics hubs in the Cayman Islands, and real estate acquisitions spanning across Queens and Brooklyn. Adriano’s empire was vast, ancient, and layered with enough legal armor to withstand a federal siege.
At 1:00 PM, a soft knock rattled my door.
Before I could answer, the door swung open, and Adriano walked in. He wasn't wearing his suit jacket today; his white sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, revealing lean, corded muscles and a faint, jagged scar across his left wrist.
He didn't knock because he had to; he knocked because it was polite.
"How are the files treating you?" he asked, leaning against the edge of my pristine mahogany desk.
"They're messy," I said without looking up from a complex shipping manifest. "Whoever set up the subsidiary structure for the Brooklyn docklands in 2021 was either an incompetent moron or a professional thief."
A low chuckle vibrated in Adriano’s chest. "That would be my former chief legal counsel, Marcus Vance."
My head snapped up so fast my neck popped. "Vance? As in... related to—"
"Cousin to your ex-husband," Adriano supplied smoothly, his gray eyes glinting with sardonic amusement. "Small world, isn't it? Marcus handled my acquisitions for a decade. He was very good at making things look legal while quietly siphoning five percent of every port contract into private family accounts."
A cold spike of fury pierced my chest. "David’s family. They’ve been stealing from you for years."
"They thought they were clever," Adriano said, his voice dropping an octave, turning flat and dangerous. "They thought because I focused on the big picture, the fine print belonged to them. Marcus retired last month to a very comfortable estate in Palm Beach. Or, at least, he thought he was retiring."
I stared at him, suddenly realizing the sheer scale of the chess game I had accidentally stepped into. "You knew."
"I suspected," Adriano corrected. "I just needed someone with the technical skill and the personal motive to tear through his bookkeeping without tipping him off." He pushed a fresh, untagged manila folder across the desk toward me. "Speaking of the Vance family, this arrived this morning."
I picked up the folder, my fingers brushing against the heavy cardstock. "What is this?"
"A joint venture proposal," Adriano said. "Brought forward by David Vance’s investment firm. They want to partner with Moretti Enterprises on a major commercial redevelopment project in Long Island City."
I opened the folder. My eyes scanned the preamble, skimming past the standard corporate boilerplate until my gaze hit Section 4, Paragraph C.
My breath hitched.
"They're trying to backdoor a lien on your primary shipping terminals," I whispered, my voice trembling with sudden, fierce outrage. "If Moretti Enterprises defaults on a single quarterly tax assessment—which they control through their municipal contacts—ownership of the entire Long Island City waterfront reverts to David's holding company."
Adriano leaned in closer, his face inches from mine. The scent of cedar and rain wrapped around me.
"Impressive," he murmured softly. "You found it in under ten seconds."
"They're not just trying to steal from you, Adriano," I said, my voice rising as the injustice of it all washed over me. "David is trying to ruin you. He thinks you're distracted by the port restructuring. He thinks a woman with a broken solo practice won't know how to look beneath the surface."
May you like
Adriano straightened up slowly. A slow, terrifying smile spread across his face—not a smile of mirth, but the expression of a predator who had just watched his prey walk directly into a snare.
"Then I suppose," Adriano said quietly, "we need to teach Mr. Vance a lesson in contract law he will never, ever forget."
