Chapter 9
The board investigation became public within the Moretti business network even though nobody released it to the press.
Chicago was large.
Their world was not.
Vendors started calling.
Employees whispered.
Club members chose sides.
Some said Sylvia had been brave.
Others said she had embarrassed her husband and brother by making private matters formal.
The comments reached her.
She stopped reading them.
The forensic accountants found more questionable transactions, but Trent’s defense improved too.
His attorney produced emails Sylvia had sent during the first year of the arrangement.
Go ahead with the advance.
I’ll cover approval.
Don’t tell Alessio until Raymond is stable.
Taken alone, they looked terrible.
Trent began claiming Sylvia had created an informal financing system and later blamed him when their marriage deteriorated.
Raymond adopted the same version.
“She was the one moving money,” he told investigators.
Sylvia’s credibility was suddenly part of the case.
Then another complication appeared.
The email Sylvia had planned to send on the night of the bathroom attack had been edited before she sent it.
Caroline noticed the metadata.
“Did you remove something?”
Sylvia looked uncomfortable.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“A paragraph about the first year.”
“You disclosed the original payment.”
“Not everything.”
Alessio felt his stomach tighten.
Sylvia sat down.
After the first emergency advance was repaid, she had approved two more.
Both were real services.
Both bypassed normal review.
She had done it because the process worked and because she liked proving she could solve problems without Alessio.
Trent praised her independence.
Raymond treated her like an equal.
For a twenty-three-year-old woman who had spent her life being “Alessio’s little sister,” that validation mattered.
“I liked being the person they needed,” she admitted.
“So you kept doing it.”
“For a while.”
Then the amounts grew.
When Sylvia tried to stop, Trent reminded her that exposing the system meant exposing herself.
Alessio looked at her.
“You should have put that in the email.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She looked ashamed.
“Because I still wanted there to be one version of this story where I was only the victim.”
The room stayed quiet.
Caroline finally spoke.
“There isn’t.”
Sylvia nodded.
May you like
“I know.”
And that uncomfortable truth was about to change the entire investigation.
