Chapter 4 - Flight to Philadelphia
The helicopter ride to Philadelphia was smooth despite the autumn rain.
Inside the soundproofed leather cabin, Lily sat buckled into a wide captain’s chair, her small hands holding a silver cup of warm cocoa that my flight attendant had brought her. Her eyes were wide as she looked out the window at the tiny clouds and miniature trees below.
Anna sat beside her, holding a soft blanket over her daughter’s knees. She looked exhausted, the deep dark circles beneath her brown eyes testifying to months of sleepless, agonizing nights.
I sat across from them, reading through an updated digital brief sent by my corporate attorneys in Chicago.
“Mr. Moretti?” Anna’s quiet voice broke through the hum of the engine.
I lowered my tablet. “Yes, Anna?”
“I... I don't know how to thank you,” she said, her voice shaking with raw emotion. “For the helicopter. For Dr. Vance. For... everything.”
“You don't need to thank me,” I replied, keeping my tone matter-of-fact. “A failure occurred in my household governance. I am correcting it.”
“It’s more than governance to us,” Anna murmured, touching Lily’s soft hair. “For months, I felt like I was invisible. Like Lily was invisible. Every time her brace scratched that marble, I felt like my heart was breaking because I couldn't afford to fix her leg, and I couldn't afford to leave.”
I looked at the young woman. She was twenty-nine, but the stress of her daughter’s condition and Evelyn’s abuse had added ten years to her spirit. Yet beneath the exhaustion, I saw an incredible, resilient strength. She had stolen those yellow receipts. She had hidden them in her daughter’s toy box, waiting for a chance to fight back.
She wasn't just a housekeeper. She was a mother fighting for her cub.
“Dr. Vance is the head of pediatric surgery,” I told her. “I spoke with him directly twenty minutes ago. He cleared his surgical schedule for tomorrow morning. Lily will be admitted to the private wing at Shriners as soon as we land.”
Lily turned her head away from the window, looking at me. “Mr. Moretti?”
“Yes, Lily?”
“Are they going to take my brace away?” she asked in her soft, high voice.
“Eventually, yes,” I said, softening my expression as much as my face allowed. “The doctors are going to fix your knee so you can run without it.”
Lily looked down at her pink Velcro shoes. “Can I run in the grass?”
“You can run anywhere you want,” I promised her. “And if any floor gets in your way, we’ll tear it down.”
A small, genuine smile broke across the little girl’s face—the first real smile I had seen from her since I stepped into the kitchen that morning. She held up her crushed stuffed rabbit.
“This is Barnaby,” she said proudly. “He likes helicopters.”
I looked at the worn, gray plush toy with its missing button eye.
“Barnaby has good taste,” I remarked solemnly.
Fifty minutes later, the Sikorsky touched down on the rooftop helipad of Philadelphia Children’s Hospital.
A team of medical specialists led by Dr. Richard Vance—a silver-haired, distinguished surgeon in a white lab coat—was already waiting at the helipad doors with a comfortable pediatric wheelchair.
As Dr. Vance greeted Anna and examined Lily’s leg straps, my security chief, Vince, stepped up to my side, holding an encrypted satellite tablet.
“Boss,” Vince whispered, his tone sharp.
“What is it?”
“We ran a deep background audit on Evelyn Crane’s personal bank accounts following her eviction,” Vince said, tapping the tablet screen. “The eight thousand four hundred dollars she skimmed from your estate wasn't going to her husband’s medical debt in Florida.”
I turned my head slowly. “Where was it going?”
“To a private offshore account held in the Cayman Islands,” Vince revealed, his eyes dark. “Under the name of Castello Domestic Logistics.”
My blood ran cold.
May you like
The Castello family—our rival syndicate out of New York. The same organization that had been trying to find a wedge into my security network for five years.
Evelyn Crane wasn't just a petty thief. She was an informant.
