Chapter 5
The billing review covered eighteen months.
Grant did not own the security company directly.
A longtime friend did.
But Grant selected the vendor, approved head counts, and authorized invoices through the Moretti Riders Foundation.
The foundation funded rehabilitation programs for injured first responders and motorcycle safety initiatives across Cook County.
The money came from donations.
That changed the stakes.
Rebecca warned Raffaele:
“If charitable funds were misused, this stops being an internal vendor dispute.”
The auditors found phantom shifts.
Duplicate personnel.
Security posts billed during events that never used them.
Nothing yet proved Grant personally received money.
But the vendor had received hundreds of thousands more than the documented staffing supported.
Then Adrian came to the estate voluntarily.
He carried a spiral notebook.
“I think this is why Grant hates me.”
Raffaele opened it.
Motorcycle numbers.
Helmet locker numbers.
Security badge numbers.
Adrian explained that he liked event logistics.
At rallies, he helped Eric match helmets to riders and kept track of volunteer wristbands.
Three months earlier, he noticed two security men wearing badge numbers that had already been assigned to other workers.
“I thought they grabbed the wrong badges.”
“What did you do?”
“I told Grant.”
“And?”
“He told me to stop playing detective.”
The next rally was the first time Vanessa publicly humiliated Lily in front of Adrian.
She made Lily pick up Grant’s discarded riding gloves while Adrian watched.
Adrian intervened.
Security restrained him.
Grant wrote the first incident report.
Raffaele looked at the notebook again.
Adrian had accidentally noticed something adults were paid not to notice.
“You kept tracking numbers?”
Adrian nodded.
“I wanted to prove I wasn’t imagining it.”
Raffaele understood that instinct painfully well.
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His nephew had learned the same lesson Sofia? no Sofia. Need no wrong character. His nephew had learned that inside the Moretti family, suspicion without proof could be turned against the person who spoke.
And somebody had decided the easiest way to discredit a fourteen-year-old boxer was to make him keep throwing himself between adults and a three-year-old girl.
