Chapter 3 - The Cookbook in Apartment 6B
The lock turned another quarter inch.
Adrian braced beside the door.
Victor moved Clara toward the far wall.
“Is there another exit?” she whispered.
“There is.”
Relief crossed her face.
Victor looked toward a mahogany bookshelf.
“It may also be compromised.”
“That is considerably less comforting.”
Victor pressed a hidden switch.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
The bookshelf remained stationary.
“Disabled,” Adrian said.
Victor’s jaw tightened.
Marcus had planned well.
Too well.
Another blow hit the archive door.
The biometric plate sparked.
Clara hugged her laptop against herself.
Victor glanced at her.
“Your backups.”
“What about them?”
“Where?”
“One on my firm’s encrypted cloud.”
“Marcus can reach it.”
“One scheduled email.”
“To whom?”
“Myself.”
“Marcus can reach that too.”
Clara pushed her glasses up.
“The third is harder.”
Victor waited.
“I printed it.”
Adrian actually looked at her.
“Printed?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Clara hesitated.
“In a cookbook.”
Victor stared.
“A cookbook.”
“My mother gave it to me. Nobody in accounting touches anything without a search bar.”
A crash sounded at the door.
Victor’s mouth almost curved.
“Where is the cookbook?”
“In my apartment.”
“Good.”
“If whoever is outside kills us, I’m not sure the cookbook helps.”
“They’re not killing you.”
The certainty in Victor’s voice startled her.
She looked at him.
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can.”
“How?”
“Because they need to know who else has the information.”
Clara’s expression went pale again.
“That was somehow worse.”
Victor turned toward the window.
The archive occupied a corner of the tower.
Forty-seven floors down, Park Avenue looked like a thin illuminated canyon.
No escape there.
Then Clara spoke.
“Ventilation.”
Victor looked back.
“What?”
“The air system.”
“What about it?”
“If they shut down the electrical grid but left environmental controls running, there may be an independent maintenance network.”
Adrian understood first.
“Mechanical access.”
Clara nodded.
“I saw facility diagrams inside the expense records. The archive has a separate climate system because of document preservation requirements.”
Victor stared at her.
“You remember engineering diagrams from invoices?”
“They were badly categorized.”
That answer somehow made perfect sense to her.
Victor pointed toward the rear wall.
“Show me.”
They found a service panel behind a cabinet.
Adrian removed the screws with a folding tool.
Inside ran wiring, pipes, and a maintenance conduit large enough for a person to crawl through.
Clara looked at the narrow opening.
Then at herself.
“I’m going to say something obvious.”
Victor already knew.
The conduit was built for technicians.
Clara was curvy.
The space would be tight.
She crossed her arms.
“If either of you makes a comment about the doughnuts, I am staying here out of principle.”
Adrian looked down.
Victor almost laughed.
Almost.
“We’ll manage.”
The archive door groaned.
Adrian removed the vent grille completely.
“Miss Higgins first.”
Clara crouched.
The opening was narrow but possible.
She shoved her laptop inside.
Victor held the panel.
“Go.”
She crawled forward.
Metal pressed against her shoulders.
Her skirt caught briefly on an exposed screw.
She muttered something Victor could not hear.
“What?”
“I said this is why forensic accountants should receive combat pay.”
Then she disappeared into the darkness.
Victor followed.
Adrian entered last and pulled the vent panel approximately back into position.
Seconds later, the archive door burst open behind them.
Voices filled the room.
Victor crawled through the conduit after Clara, guided only by the faint emergency light from her laptop screen.
She stopped ahead.
“Why aren’t you moving?” he whispered.
“Because there’s a drop.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know.”
Victor squeezed beside her enough to see.
The conduit opened over a maintenance room approximately eight feet below.
Victor climbed down first using structural braces.
He reached the floor.
“Come.”
Clara looked down.
“I hate this plan.”
“So do I.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
“Clara.”
Something in his tone made her move.
She lowered herself carefully.
Her shoe slipped.
She gasped.
Victor caught her around the waist.
For a moment, she hung against him.
His hands were firm at her sides.
Her palms landed against his chest.
They stared at one another.
Clara became acutely aware that Victor Romano was much warmer than she had expected.
Victor became equally aware that she smelled faintly of coffee and vanilla icing.
“You can let go,” she whispered.
“You’re still six inches above the floor.”
“Oh.”
He lowered her.
She stepped back quickly.
Adrian landed beside them.
“No time.”
The maintenance room opened into a dark service corridor.
Victor led them toward a private elevator used for deliveries.
The building’s main system was offline, but the freight elevator operated on backup power.
Adrian pressed the call button.
Nothing.
Then a green light appeared.
Clara exhaled.
The elevator arrived.
They entered.
Victor pressed the underground garage level.
The doors began closing.
A hand suddenly thrust between them.
Clara screamed.
The doors reopened.
A man in security clothing stood outside.
Adrian raised his weapon.
“Don’t!”
The guard lifted both hands.
“Mr. Romano, wait.”
Victor recognized him.
Daniel Price.
Night-shift supervisor.
“Whose side?”
Daniel looked terrified.
“Yours.”
“That answer needs evidence.”
Daniel tossed his weapon into the elevator.
“Marcus took Security Control twenty minutes ago. He has six men inside. Maybe more.”
Adrian pulled Daniel inside.
The doors shut.
“Police?” Clara asked.
Daniel shook his head.
“Building communications are blocked.”
“Cell networks?”
“Jammed locally.”
Victor looked at Daniel.
“What does Marcus want?”
“You.”
“That was obvious.”
Daniel swallowed.
“He scheduled a board emergency meeting for eight this morning.”
Victor’s expression turned cold.
“On what grounds?”
Daniel looked at Clara.
“Financial misconduct.”
Clara frowned.
“Whose?”
“Mr. Romano’s.”
Victor gave a humorless laugh.
Of course.
Marcus had stolen millions through Victor’s companies, manipulated records, then intended to blame Victor.
By sunrise, forged documents would make Victor appear responsible for laundering money through his own subsidiaries.
If Victor disappeared before the meeting, Marcus could claim flight.
If Victor died, Marcus could claim suicide.
Either way, control of Romano Holdings would shift.
Clara hugged the laptop tighter.
“He’s not stealing four million dollars.”
Victor looked at her.
“No.”
“He’s staging a takeover.”
“Yes.”
“And those shell companies are probably just the money trail for the setup.”
Victor studied her.
“How quickly can you prove it?”
“With complete records?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe a day.”
“We have five hours.”
Clara stared.
“Then maybe I should’ve eaten more doughnuts.”
The elevator reached the garage.
The doors opened.
A black SUV waited thirty yards away.
They moved quickly.
Victor opened the rear door for Clara.
Before she entered, a gunshot cracked across the garage.
Glass shattered beside them.
Victor grabbed Clara and pulled her behind a concrete pillar.
Adrian returned fire.
Daniel yelled.
A second bullet struck the SUV.
Victor covered Clara with his body.
She trembled beneath him.
“You hit?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
Victor looked into her face.
She was terrified.
But she was thinking.
He could see it.
“Victor.”
It was the first time she had used his first name.
“What?”
“My apartment.”
“What about it?”
“If Marcus knows about the audit, he’ll search it.”
Victor understood.
“The cookbook.”
She nodded.
“We need to get there before he does.”
Adrian appeared beside them.
“Car’s compromised.”
Victor looked across the garage.
“There’s another exit.”
They ran through the loading bay.
Daniel remained behind to cover the corridor.
Victor found an old company sedan used by maintenance supervisors.
The keys were inside.
Adrian drove.
Victor sat in the rear beside Clara.
As the car accelerated out of Romano Tower, Clara looked back at the black glass building rising above Manhattan.
“What happens if your uncle wins?”
Victor’s eyes remained on the tower.
“He takes the company.”
“And you?”
Victor did not answer.
She understood anyway.
A few minutes passed.
Then Clara said quietly, “My apartment is in Queens.”
Adrian glanced in the mirror.
“That’s forty minutes at this hour.”
“Thirty-two if you take the Queensboro Bridge.”
Victor looked at her.
“You time your commute?”
“I’m an auditor.”
He almost smiled again.
As they entered the empty streets, Clara opened her laptop.
Victor watched financial records flash across the screen.
She worked while afraid.
That impressed him more than fearlessness would have.
Most people treated Victor carefully because of his reputation.
Clara seemed increasingly irritated by the inconvenience of people trying to kill her.
“What?” he asked.
She had stopped typing.
“This payment.”
Victor leaned closer.
A transfer of $780,000.
“What about it?”
“It didn’t go to a shell company.”
“Where?”
Clara enlarged the beneficiary.
A charitable foundation appeared.
Victor knew the name.
The Romano Family Medical Foundation.
His mother’s foundation.
Clara opened another record.
Then another.
Her face changed.
“Victor.”
He did not like her tone.
“What?”
“Someone has been moving money through the foundation.”
Adrian glanced back.
“How much?”
Clara calculated.
“Nearly eleven million dollars.”
Victor went completely silent.
His mother had founded the charity before dying of cancer sixteen years earlier.
It funded treatment for children whose families could not afford specialist care.
Victor had protected it from every dirty part of the Romano organization.
Marcus knew that.
Which meant he had not merely stolen money.
He had contaminated the one thing Victor considered sacred.
Clara looked at him.
There was something different in his expression now.
Not anger.
Pain.
She lowered her voice.
“We’ll find it.”
Victor looked at her.
She seemed surprised by her own words.
“We?”
Clara glanced toward the darkness outside the window.
“Your uncle trapped me in an archive and tried to shoot me.”
She opened another spreadsheet.
“I’m emotionally invested now.”
For the first time that night, Victor Romano smiled.
It lasted less than a second.
May you like
But Clara saw it.
And neither of them knew yet that somewhere across the city, Marcus Romano had already sent two men to Clara’s apartment.
