Chapter 16
The Locked Linen Room
Alessandro wanted to drive straight to Harbor House. Ortiz stopped him with one sentence: “If you care about Rosalie, let us do this without giving whoever's inside a warning.”
He waited in his car with both hands clenched on the wheel. Six minutes passed. Then his phone lit up with a location pin Rosalie had shared earlier that morning. The pin hadn't moved.
Inside the clinic, officers found a smashed laptop and Rosalie locked in a supply room. She was shaken, with a bruised shoulder, but conscious. Two masked men had demanded the computer password. She'd refused, then hidden a flash drive in the lining of a clean pillowcase before they trapped her.
When Alessandro arrived after the officers cleared the building, Rosalie was sitting beneath a wall painted with children's handprints.
“I'm sorry,” she began.
“Stop. You didn't do anything wrong.”
“They took the laptop. I should have—”
“You should have been able to work without being threatened.” He took a breath. “Livia asks for you every morning. I should've known you were never just another employee.”
Rosalie looked away. “I stayed because your wife once helped my brother. But I won't stay if this house becomes dangerous for Livia again.”
“That sounds fair.”
Ortiz brought over the recovered flash drive. It contained a spreadsheet matching the forged invoices to two shell companies: North Harbor Advisory and a Moretti-owned logistics firm. The transfers had continued after Sofia's death.
An officer interrupted them. “Detective, the men who broke in used a company van. We've located it.”
“Where?”
May you like
“In a garage leased by Gabriel Voss.”
