Chapter 9 - An Employee Who Couldn't Work
"It's a false account," Simone said. "They use identities to make fake workers look real."
Dahlia typed rapidly. "Somebody drew payments in Sophie's name for thirteen months. They listed her as a night janitor, sixty hours a week."
"She's six," Nico said.
"That's why nobody expected an ordinary payroll audit to catch it," Simone replied. "They buried her among hundreds of entries."
Then Dahlia found something worse. The payments had been routed through a trust account funded by the original Rivas family holding company.
Nico recognized the fund his father had created for emergencies. Gideon had called it inactive.
"He didn't just steal money," Nico said. "He hid it inside my father's name."
"And inside a little girl's," Simone added.
In a protected apartment, Sophie sat with Tessa and social worker Ms. Ortega. A detective asked whether she remembered meeting Gideon.
"He gave me a cookie," she said. "But I didn't eat it."
"Why not?"
"He said my mom was a troublemaker. And he said I should tell people Mommy was tired all the time."
Ms. Ortega let the silence settle before asking, "When was this?"
"When Mommy got scared of the mail. She put the letters in the freezer because she said nobody looked there."
The social worker notified Simone immediately.
An hour later, police entered Mara's apartment with a key supplied by the landlord. A small bag of frozen peas covered three envelopes in the freezer. Each contained copies of complaints to the state labor department. All had been stamped received. None had been investigated.
One envelope held a note from Mara:
If this goes wrong, please don't tell my child I was brave. Tell her I was scared and did it anyway.
Simone turned to the last page. It was a bank transfer authorization signed by the person who had approved Northline's first contract.
May you like
The signature wasn't Gideon's.
It was Nico's.
