Chapter 3 - LUCA MORETTI WAS NEVER INNOCENT
The FBI did not storm Sterling House.
That surprised Clara.
She expected sirens.
Armored vehicles.
News helicopters.
Instead, Agent Rebecca Sloan met her in a diner twenty miles away at 1:40 in the morning.
Sloan was forty-three, dark-haired, exhausted, and wore the expression of someone who had learned that impatience ruined evidence.
Clara put the black folder on the table.
Sloan did not touch it immediately.
“Where did you get this?”
“Arthur’s study.”
“You removed it?”
“Yes.”
“Without permission?”
“Yes.”
Sloan closed her eyes.
“Okay.”
“That’s bad?”
“It complicates chain of custody.”
Clara felt foolish.
Then Sloan said:
“But the contents may still matter.”
She photographed the folder exactly as Clara produced it and documented the circumstances.
Then she opened it.
Her face changed at Michael Higgins’s photograph.
“You knew my father?”
“No.”
“But?”
“I know his name.”
Clara’s throat tightened.
“From what?”
Sloan looked at her carefully.
“Your father contacted the Bureau six years ago.”
Clara went still.
“He was an accountant.”
“Yes.”
“For who?”
“For Sterling Maritime Advisory.”
Clara stared.
She had never heard that company name.
Sloan continued.
“It was one of Arthur Sterling’s private holding companies.”
“My dad worked for a manufacturing firm.”
“He did. Publicly.”
Clara looked down.
Another life beneath the one she knew.
“What did he tell the FBI?”
“He believed Sterling was laundering money through private-equity transactions, medical charities, shipping insurance, and companies connected to organized crime.”
“Connected to Luca?”
“Yes.”
Clara’s stomach turned.
“So Luca is a criminal.”
Sloan gave her a direct look.
“Luca Moretti ran a violent criminal organization for years. Do not romanticize him because he’s chained in a basement.”
Good.
Clara needed that.
Sloan continued:
“Moretti and Sterling were business partners in some ventures and enemies in others.”
“Why would my father talk to him?”
“We think Michael was trying to verify records before becoming a cooperating witness.”
Clara stared at the photograph.
“My father died before that happened.”
“Yes.”
“Was his crash an accident?”
Sloan did not answer immediately.
“We couldn’t prove otherwise.”
That was not no.
Clara felt cold.
“What is Orchard?”
Sloan’s expression tightened.
“We don’t know.”
“You’ve seen the word?”
“Three times. Always in material connected to Sterling and Moretti.”
Then Sloan reached Lily’s medical pages.
She read them slowly.
“What?” Clara asked.
“Your sister’s bills.”
“What about them?”
“These shell-company identifiers are familiar.”
“From what?”
“A Sterling-controlled charity network under investigation.”
Clara’s pulse increased.
“Why would he pay for Lily’s care?”
Sloan looked at Michael’s photograph again.
“Leverage.”
Clara felt sick.
Agent Sloan leaned forward.
“Miss Higgins, I need to ask something difficult.”
“What?”
“Did your father ever give you a key, code, notebook, jewelry, or object he told you not to lose?”
Clara thought of old drawers.
Moving boxes.
Her father’s funeral.
Then remembered one thing.
A brass music box shaped like a little house.
Michael gave it to Lily the week before he died.
He said:
“Never sell this, even if we get broke enough to eat wallpaper.”
Clara had laughed.
Lily still had it.
Sloan watched her face.
“What?”
Clara whispered:
“I think Arthur isn’t watching Lily because she’s sick.”
May you like
She looked at the file.
“He’s watching her because Dad left her something.”
