Chapter 9 - The Payment That Wasn't What It Looked Like
Monday morning did not produce the clean answer Domenico expected.
North Jersey Industrial Systems was a real company.
The CNC router was real.
The quoted price was within market range.
The owner had not heard of Anthony Bellini, Teresa DeLuca, or any old family debt.
For thirty minutes, Domenico almost believed Marco had simply rushed a legitimate equipment purchase.
Then Sharon found the problem.
The deposit should have been eighteen thousand dollars.
Not seventy-two.
The remaining fifty-four thousand was due only after delivery, installation, and acceptance testing.
“Why is the bank showing seventy-two?” Domenico asked.
Sharon rotated her screen.
“Because someone changed the payment instruction attached to the vendor record.”
“Can we tell who?”
“System log says Camilla.”
Camilla sat at the conference table across from them.
“I didn’t.”
Domenico believed her.
That frightened him more than if he had not.
Sharon continued.
“The vendor’s invoice is correct. Eighteen thousand. The payment instruction says seventy-two.”
“So where does the extra fifty-four go?”
“That’s the strange part.”
Sharon opened the routing information.
The first account matched North Jersey Industrial Systems.
The second did not.
A split payment instruction had been added.
Eighteen thousand to the vendor.
Fifty-four thousand to a second account.
Camilla leaned closer.
“Whose?”
“We can’t tell from this screen.”
The bank would not disclose the owner merely because Domenico asked. Sharon knew that.
But the transfer could be stopped because it had not yet settled.
They froze it.
Then Domenico called Marco.
No answer.
Camilla called.
No answer.
At noon, Gina called Camilla.
“Is Marco with you?”
“No.”
“He came by my house at six this morning.”
Camilla put the phone on speaker.
“What did he want?”
“He wanted Dad’s old papers.”
Domenico frowned.
“What papers?”
“He kept asking if Anthony had anything from 1997. Receipts. Letters. Tax records.”
“Did you give him anything?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he scared me.”
The conference room went quiet.
Gina continued.
“He wasn’t angry. I almost wish he had been. He was desperate.”
Camilla asked, “Did he say why?”
“He kept saying, ‘I just need to know the number.’”
Domenico remembered Gina’s warning.
Marco was trying to calculate how much of his own behavior he could still justify.
But fifty-four thousand changed that calculation.
If Marco believed only thirty-one thousand two hundred remained unpaid, why was he attempting to route fifty-four thousand somewhere else?
Camilla voiced it.
“The numbers don’t match anymore.”
Domenico nodded.
Sharon looked uncomfortable.
“There’s something else.”
She had found a note attached to the altered vendor record.
A short internal memo.
“Final Bellini adjustment.”
Domenico stared at the screen.
The phrase was unmistakable.
Marco had used his father’s surname.
This was not simply a purchasing mistake.
It was a private accounting system built on a family grievance.
But even that did not explain the amount.
Camilla reached for the yellow legal pad she had carried all weekend.
She added the suspicious invoice differences.
The monthly overcharges.
The attempted fifty-four-thousand-dollar split.
Then she stopped.
“Dad.”
“What?”
“If Marco really thinks he’s collecting what Anthony was owed…”
She turned the pad toward him.
“…he’s already over sixty thousand.”
Domenico looked at the total.
She was right.
Even using the most generous interpretation, Marco had crossed the amount of Anthony’s original loan.
Which meant one of two things.
Either Marco had stopped believing his own justification.
Or Anthony’s sixty thousand had never been the real number Marco was chasing.
Domenico looked toward the locked office cabinet where he had placed Teresa’s envelope that morning.
May you like
For the first time, he did not see it as the source of the mystery.
He saw it as the one surviving witness to the version of Anthony Bellini that everyone had spent twenty-nine years protecting.
