Chapter 8 - THE SECRET LORENZO DIED FOR
The truth about Harbor Medical Logistics emerged slowly.
The company had been used to move money through fraudulent contracts and inflated invoices.
Some shipments were legitimate.
Others existed only on paper.
The construction consortium used the same network.
Lorenzo Raldi had discovered the arrangement eighteen months earlier.
He had planned to report it.
Then he was killed.
Victor Sanz had been one of the men who benefited from the scheme.
Ryan Mercer had worked beneath him.
And the evidence suggested Ryan had been gathering information about hospital logistics to expand the operation.
I sat beside Aleandro as he explained what the investigators had found.
My hands were cold.
“So Lorenzo died because he found out?”
Aleandro looked away.
“That's what the evidence suggests.”
I swallowed.
“And Ryan knew?”
“We don't know how much.”
I stared at the documents.
For months, Ryan had accused me of being suspicious.
Paranoid.
Unstable.
Now I understood.
He hadn't wanted me asking questions because questions were dangerous to him.
I looked at Aleandro.
“Are you going to tell the police?”
He nodded.
“Our attorneys have already contacted the appropriate investigators.”
I exhaled.
Then noticed something.
A photograph.
Lorenzo Raldi stood beside Aleandro outside a restaurant.
They were younger.
Laughing.
Aleandro's arm rested around his brother's shoulders.
I picked it up.
“He looks like you.”
Aleandro smiled sadly.
“He was better looking.”
I laughed softly.
He looked at the photograph.
“Lorenzo was the good one.”
I turned toward him.
“What does that make you?”
His smile faded.
“A complicated man.”
I studied him.
“Everyone is complicated.”
He looked at me.
“Not everyone has done the things I've done.”
I didn't ask what he meant.
Not yet.
But I understood something important.
Aleandro wasn't a perfect hero.
He wasn't an innocent businessman.
He had a past.
A dangerous one.
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And if I was going to trust him, I needed to know what that past contained.
Not just the parts he wanted me to see.
