Chapter 6 - The Woman Hiding Behind the Laundromat
Tasha Carter was hiding in the basement of a coin laundry beside a church thrift store.
Not a safe house.
Not one of my properties.
Not anywhere a Moretti would have thought to look.
That was the point.
Dante wanted to send six men.
I sent none.
Priya knew the church pastor. The pastor arranged the meeting.
I went alone except for Dante waiting across the street.
Progress had apparently become my new addiction.
Tasha stood when I entered the basement.
She was thirty-four, thin enough to make Eli’s hunger suddenly look inherited, with her hair pulled beneath a knit cap and one hand gripping the back of a folding chair.
“You found my son.”
“Yes.”
“Is he safe?”
“He chose a hotel through a youth outreach group. He has food. No Moretti men inside.”
Her shoulders lowered one inch.
“You said chose.”
“I’m learning the word.”
She almost smiled.
Then she looked at me again.
“My son told you about Camille.”
“Yes.”
“And you believed him?”
“Eventually.”
“Then you were slower than he hoped.”
Fair.
I sat across from her.
“Tell me what you found.”
Tasha did not start with Dominic.
She started with invoices.
That told me she understood evidence too.
The Camille Moretti Children’s Foundation ran nutrition programs in low-income schools. Most supplies came from ordinary vendors.
Six months earlier, a new item appeared in the purchasing system.
Code B-17.
No product name.
No normal description.
Moretti Medical Logistics supplied it.
Dr. Marcus Hale authorized it.
Camille’s digital signature approved reimbursement.
“Did Camille know what it was?” I asked.
“Not at first.”
My chest tightened.
“How do you know?”
“Because she asked me to find out.”
I stared.
Tasha continued.
“She noticed Lila hated the taste. She told Hale the drops were making her nauseous. Hale said that was normal.”
“Then why ask you?”
“Because she didn’t trust him completely.”
That made Camille’s later silence worse, not better.
Tasha copied a shipment invoice.
The B-17 containers were delivered not to the foundation clinic but to a warehouse Dominic controlled.
She followed the paperwork.
Then followed a driver.
“The driver took one box to Dr. Hale’s private office.”
“And the others?”
“Different clinics.”
“How many children?”
She looked away.
“I don’t know.”
That answer hurt more than a number.
This was bigger than Lila.
I felt anger rising.
Tasha saw it.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Become the man everyone is scared to tell things to.”
I sat back.
It irritated me that strangers had become so comfortable diagnosing my personality.
It irritated me more that they were right.
“What happened when you told Camille?”
“She cried.”
Eli had said the same.
“She wanted to stop giving Lila the drops?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t she?”
“Dominic came to the foundation that afternoon.”
“You saw him?”
“I heard him.”
“What did he say?”
Tasha’s face hardened.
“He told Camille, ‘One sick child is better than one dead sister.’”
My hands curled beneath the table.
There it was.
Brooke.
The threat.
Real.
But Tasha was not finished.
“Then Camille asked him something.”
“What?”
“She asked how long it had to continue.”
I went cold.
Not Will it hurt her?
Not What is it?
How long.
“She already knew by then?”
“I think she knew enough.”
That was the distinction I had been avoiding.
Camille had been deceived at the beginning.
Then frightened.
Then complicit.
People wanted moral stories to arrive in clean categories.
Victim.
Villain.
Innocent.
Guilty.
Real life was messier.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“I confronted Dominic.”
I stared.
“You confronted him?”
“I was angry.”
“You were reckless.”
“So are you. You just own more cars.”
That nearly made me smile.
Tasha told Dominic she had copied the invoices.
He smiled.
Then two men followed her home.
The next day, Hale reported money missing from the foundation.
The embezzlement story appeared before she could defend herself.
Tasha took Eli to a friend.
The friend panicked.
Then Tasha made the worst decision of her life.
She left Eli with Mrs. Green and disappeared, believing Dominic would follow her instead of him.
“Did he?”
“For a while.”
“You let your son think you abandoned him.”
Tasha looked at the floor.
“Yes.”
I had no right to judge her.
And every right.
Both can be true.
“Eli needs you.”
“I know.”
“He refused my money.”
That brought a tiny smile.
“That sounds like him.”
“He asked for you.”
Her eyes filled.
I gave her the prepaid phone.
She called.
I walked upstairs.
Some reunions do not need powerful men standing nearby.
Dante met me outside.
“What did she give you?”
I held up a flash drive.
“Copies.”
“Of?”
“Shipments. Hale. Dominic. And something called Lila Trust Amendment Four.”
Dante frowned.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
We opened it in the car.
The first page carried the name of Lila’s biological mother.
Aaliyah Moretti.
My first wife.
Dead three years.
The amendment said that if Lila were declared permanently medically incapacitated before age ten, voting control of her thirty-one percent share in Moretti Logistics would pass to an interim trustee.
May you like
Trustee name:
Dominic Moretti.
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