Chapter 5 - The Charity That Stole From Its Own Workers
"Nobody goes outside," Bruno said.
Alessia took Giulia's phone and photographed the message on her own device before Giulia could accidentally close it. "We stay where the officer can find us," she said. "That person wants us to run or destroy something. We're not doing either."
Rosa pulled the blinds. Through their narrow gap, Alessia could see a delivery van reversing into the street. She could not see a photographer. There was no point pretending the photograph revealed more than it did.
The police took their statements separately. The officer arranged for a patrol to check the depot and advised them to report new threats. Nadiya arrived while Giulia was still giving her account. She was a compact woman in her forties with silver at her temples, an overstuffed canvas briefcase and a habit of listening without interrupting. When Giulia finished, Nadiya asked whether she wanted to go home with a friend or to an address the sender would not know.
"My sister's place," Giulia said. "She'll let me stay."
"Then call her yourself. Nobody needs the address except the people you choose."
Bruno offered a company van. Giulia declined. She had spent too long being driven where other people decided she belonged.
By noon, Alessia had given an account of the yellow bucket to the investigating officer and obtained a written acknowledgement of the documents she'd submitted. Nadiya took the women to a small workers' assistance office above a bakery, where a volunteer legal adviser explained how to request wage records without exposing other employees' private information. The advice was less glamorous than confronting a mafia boss, but Alessia felt her shoulders lower for the first time that day.
"We need a reason for the elevator," Giulia said as they spread their copies across the table.
"We have several possible reasons," Nadiya corrected. "A false accusation. A payroll scheme. Missing building records. We need to find out where they meet."
Alessia pointed to a date on the invoice. "Giulia complained on Tuesday. Bruno says the spare badge was ordered Wednesday. The elevator stopped Thursday night."
"And Mr. Vieri had been asking about these invoices," Bruno said from the doorway.
Nobody had invited him, but Nadiya let him in after Giulia agreed. He brought his own email thread. Four days earlier, Enzo's office had requested original time sheets for a review scheduled the morning after the elevator failure. The request was followed by a message from Marco Bellini: the review had been postponed because of a security emergency. Bruno had not questioned it.
"The emergency wasn't a surprise to the people who ordered the fake badge," Alessia said. "They made one."
Nadiya cautioned that a sequence of dates wasn't proof of responsibility. They assembled a timeline anyway, writing what each person knew beside the source of that knowledge. Alessia's notebook supplied the yellow bucket observation; Giulia's copy supplied the invoice; Bruno's emails supplied the scheduled review. They left several lines empty rather than guess.
Enzo arrived an hour later, alone. He stopped at the open office door instead of walking in. "May I speak to you?"
"All of us," Alessia said.
He accepted the condition and took the chair nearest the door. He looked tired enough that the shadows under his eyes showed beneath the expensive haircut. This didn't make him harmless, and Alessia wasn't inclined to comfort him.
"The finance department gave me copies of what the tower paid for night cleaning," he began. "Some payments were marked as support for an employee emergency fund. I created that fund after an accident at one of my warehouses. I believed it was paying rent and medical expenses for workers."
"Believed?" Giulia asked.
"I didn't inspect the beneficiaries. Marco managed it."
Nadiya held out the suspect invoice. "Where did the money for this fund come from?"
Enzo scanned the page. His eyes stopped at the line for Giulia's overtime, then at a note indicating that excess night-labor charges had been transferred to an account bearing the fund's name. The amount was modest beside his buildings and enormous beside Alessia's grocery budget.
"From us," Alessia said. "You gave speeches about helping workers with money taken in their names."
Enzo closed his eyes once. "It appears so."
"It didn't appear so when Giulia complained," Nadiya said. "You didn't hear her."
"My office says the complaint never reached me."
"Your office is your responsibility," Giulia replied. "I lost shifts. Nobody else in this room did."
He did not try to soften the accusation. He laid an email on the table, a request he'd written months earlier to have the wage fund audited. Marco's reply said the figures were clean and the auditor had withdrawn. Enzo had accepted that answer. His signature authorized the next payment.
Alessia stared at the signature. "You had one question. Somebody gave you a convenient answer, and you stopped."
"Yes."
"I have to check the number of hours on every paycheck. Why didn't you have to check a quarter of a million euros?"
For the first time, Enzo seemed to have no ready defense. "Because I could afford not to notice," he said.
Nadiya said the relevant account and payroll records should go to independent investigators, not back through Marco. Enzo agreed to preserve them and instruct outside counsel to cooperate. He also said he would remove Marco's control of the fund pending review. Alessia insisted any new arrangement must involve employees rather than appointing another friend of the owner.
As Enzo rose to leave, his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and answered on speaker at Alessia's request. Marco's voice filled the little office, smooth and irritated.
"The police are asking questions about that cleaning girl. I've prepared a statement. Tell her to stop spreading lies, and this can end quietly."
"I'm with the workers," Enzo said. "Bring every original invoice to the external auditor. Today."
Silence. Then Marco said, "You really don't know what your own charity pays for, do you?"
The call ended.
Giulia looked at Enzo, and he looked at the papers before him. The stolen wages had not disappeared into some nameless account. They had been hidden beneath a good deed that bore his name.
"If you want us to believe you," Alessia said, "don't tell us how angry you are. Show us what you do when the truth costs you something."
May you like
Enzo folded his phone into his pocket and left without a speech. At the bottom of the folder Nadiya had assembled, Bruno noticed a second signature authorizing the yellow cart's purchase. It belonged to Matteo Rinaldi. Beside it was an internal note, written by Marco: EXECUTIVE LIFT — OWNER MUST REMAIN UNAVAILABLE UNTIL RECORDS TRANSFER COMPLETE.
The purpose of the elevator failure was no longer an abstract possibility. Somebody had planned to keep Enzo out of the way while records moved, and had planned to leave Alessia holding the blame.
