Chapter 15 - The Queen's Gambit
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The five bosses stared at Clara as if a piece of furniture had suddenly spoken.
"Silence, girl," one of the younger bosses snapped. "This is men's business."
Dominic’s eyes flashed with murder, but Clara placed a calming hand on his knee beneath the table. She opened her leather briefcase and pulled out a thick stack of printed financial ledgers, dropping them onto the center of the table with a heavy thud.
"This is everyone's business," Clara said, her voice echoing off the vault walls. "Since Dominic was kind enough to bring me into his world, I took the liberty of auditing the Commission's shared port accounts."
Morretti frowned. "Those accounts are encrypted."
"Not to me," Clara smiled sweetly. "And what I found was fascinating. Over the last four years, three million dollars has been systematically siphoned out of the shared pension funds and redirected into private offshore accounts."
The bosses shifted nervously, glancing at each other.
"Now, the interesting part," Clara continued, sliding specific documents toward each man. "The shell companies receiving this stolen money are directly tied to Morretti’s nephew."
The room erupted.
The other four bosses turned on Morretti with vicious, shouting accusations. Stealing from the shared fund was the ultimate betrayal.
"It's a lie!" Morretti roared, his face purple. "She fabricated these documents to save her husband!"
"I am a forensic accountant, Mr. Morretti," Clara said, leaning back in her chair with absolute composure. "I don't fabricate numbers. I expose them. The routing numbers are right there. Call your bankers and verify it yourselves."
One of the bosses pulled out a phone, furiously typing. A minute later, he looked up, his face pale with fury. "The accounts are real. Morretti, you've been stealing from us."
"You wanted to strip my husband of his territory because you thought he was weak," Clara said, her voice cutting through the chaos. "But he’s the only man at this table who isn't stealing from his own allies."
The dynamic of the room inverted instantly. Dominic sat back, watching his wife dismantle an entire mafia commission with nothing but a spreadsheet and an iron will.
Morretti realized he was trapped. He panicked, lunging across the table toward Clara with a concealed switchblade he had smuggled past security.
"You bitch!" he screamed.
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Dominic moved faster than lightning. He intercepted Morretti’s arm, twisting it backward with a sickening snap of bone. Morretti screamed, dropping the knife. Dominic slammed the old man’s face violently into the heavy oak table.
"You touch my wife," Dominic whispered, his knee pinning Morretti’s neck to the wood, "you die."
