The Price of a Name
Chapter 10 - The Price of a Name
The first time Enzo told Adeline about the 2024 transfer, they were standing outside the bakery before dawn. Carmen was inside rolling pastry. Across the street a street sweeper passed slowly, leaving dark stripes on the wet pavement.
“I signed the financing document,” Enzo said. “My brother described it as a consolidation of loans on three properties. I didn't ask which properties.”
“Was Saint Agnes one of them?”
“Yes.”
“Then you made money from it.”
He did not answer at once. “My company collected fees on the transaction.”
“That's a long way of saying yes.”
He looked at her. “Yes.”
Adeline had been waiting for him to deny it, to blame a secretary, to explain the ordinary business of moving millions from one account to another. His simple answer made her angrier.
“My mother died trying to keep people from doing exactly that.”
“I know.”
“You don't. You got to become a man with clean offices and a driver. I got to grow up asking my aunt whether we could afford new shoes.”
She turned to go inside. Enzo made no move to stop her.
“Adeline,” he said, “I'm giving the records to Miriam and the investigators. If that implicates me, so be it. I won't ask you to forgive me.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I don't.”
The conversation stayed with her all day. She could dislike him and still recognize that he had told her the truth without bargaining for affection. It was an uncomfortable distinction. At twenty-six she was learning that people did not fit neatly into the parts they had played in her childhood.
Miriam worked with a forensic accountant named Janet Wu to reconstruct transfers between the trust, Cain-Rinaldi Holdings, and several related companies. Janet was fifty-three and had the habit of sliding her glasses to the end of her nose when a number offended her.
She found that Preston's management company had been charging Bellwether for services it never supplied. Some payments went into accounts linked to Matteo. Others funded the very loans that now put the building at risk.
“It's like charging a woman rent for her own home,” Janet said, “then borrowing against the rent you collected.”
“Can we prove it?” Adeline asked.
“With records, witnesses, and patience. The first two are easier to acquire than the third.”
Marisol kept gathering pay records. Former employees called her late at night. Some were furious and wanted to sue. Others asked whether Preston would find out they had spoken. She told them she was frightened too. It felt better than pretending to be a fearless person who never had to pay rent.
One evening Carmen brought her a plate of dinner and found her at the table surrounded by screenshots. “You can't carry everyone,” Carmen said.
“I know.”
“You're trying anyway.”
“Someone should.”
Carmen sat beside her. “Someone should. But not one person. That's the part Grace understood before the rest of us.”
At the next preliminary hearing, Preston's lawyers produced a stack of payroll acknowledgments bearing Marisol's and Beth's signatures, supposedly authorizing deductions. Miriam asked that the originals be preserved and compared to the scans. The judge granted another temporary restriction on demolition pending the fuller case.
Outside the courthouse a local reporter asked Adeline whether she intended to seek the entire building for herself. Preston had been telling people that the daughter of a former employee was using Enzo to demand a fortune.
“My mother wasn't just an employee,” Adeline said. “And the building was never meant to be mine alone.”
The reporter wrote it down. Adeline wished she had said something cleverer, then decided the truth was enough.
That evening two investigators visited Lucia's apartment. They were not Detective Sullivan's officers. One introduced himself as working with a state financial-crimes unit. He asked Adeline to accompany them for questioning about an account opened using her identification and a signature on a loan application.
Miriam was called immediately. She insisted on meeting them at the office and told Adeline not to answer substantive questions without counsel.
At the station, the investigator laid a form before them. It carried Adeline's full name, an old address, and an electronic signature dated the previous year. The loan had been guaranteed against a purported distribution from Saint Agnes. More than eighty thousand dollars had moved through the account.
“I've never seen this,” Adeline said.
“Your signature is on it,” the investigator replied.
The letters were unmistakably hers: the narrow A, the long, falling line of the V. She stared, almost impressed by the precision.
Miriam asked for the document's creation history. The investigator said it was a signed PDF, generated by a commercial service, and had already been linked to the same email account used for Adeline's former city-records employment. The account had been deactivated, but old credentials had apparently remained accessible to an administrator.
A headache began behind Adeline's eyes. “They used my work information.”
“That's one possibility,” Miriam said.
The investigator didn't accuse her outright. He asked where she'd been when the application was completed and why the loan proceeds had later been withdrawn at a branch near her aunt's home. Adeline answered only after conferring with Miriam. She had been staying with a friend at the time, looking for another job. Evelyn's name had not appeared on the account records they'd obtained.
The interview lasted three hours. When they finally left, Adeline was exhausted, not arrested, and far from cleared. Outside, a news van had somehow learned of the questioning. The camera operator raised his lens as she emerged.
Enzo stood across the street beneath a streetlamp. He did not approach until the van drove away.
“I heard,” he said.
“Everybody hears when a poor woman is accused of something.”
He accepted the rebuke. Then he handed Miriam an envelope. Inside was a copy of the 2024 financing approval he had signed, together with a company access report.
“The loan application was prepared by Preston's office,” he said. “I found the template on our system. I think someone copied Adeline's signature from an employment form.”
Miriam examined the report. “This could be important.”
Adeline looked at Enzo. “You knew your company's people were involved?”
“I found out tonight.”
She was too tired to decide whether she believed him. She turned away.
May you like
Then Miriam opened the attached form. It showed the original signature Preston's office had used as a template. At the bottom of the page, beneath Adeline's name, was the name of the person who had approved her employment access.
Preston Cain.
