Chapter 11 Emptied Out
Del's phone rang four times before eight in the morning, which never happened, and by the third call she knew before she'd even picked it up that something had gone badly wrong.
"Del." Nico's voice, tight, no greeting. "Payroll account's at zero. Not low, zero. Somebody drained it overnight."
She was out of bed and dressed in four minutes, hair still wet, and drove to Marea with her hands locked white on the wheel, running the math the entire way, staff she owed by Friday, vendors already owed on net-thirty terms, a payroll cycle that ran like clockwork every two weeks because clockwork was the only thing that kept forty employees trusting her with their rent money.
Nico met her at the office door with his laptop already open, three browser tabs of the bank's login screen refreshing uselessly in a loop.
"Talk to me," Del said, dropping her bag on the desk.
"Account showed a balance of forty one thousand at close of business yesterday.
This morning it's zero. One withdrawal, routed through what looks like three different shell transfers before it hits a dead end account in the Caymans.
" Nico's voice stayed clipped, professional, though his hands weren't quite steady on the keyboard.
"Bank's fraud department is useless, they're saying it'll take five to seven business days to even open an investigation. "
"Five to seven business days. Payroll's due Friday."
"I know."
"I have forty employees who need that money to make rent.
" Del pressed her palms flat against the desk, forcing her breathing to slow, the same trick she'd used the night of the alley, the night she'd learned exactly what it cost to own this club instead of just running it.
"What's our cash position outside payroll? "
"Enough to cover about half of it if we pull from the operating account, but that guts our supplier payments for the month, and half of forty employees' rent isn't a solution, Del, that's a smaller disaster."
"I know that."
"I called the county already about a fraud report, and I've got a call into a cybersecurity contact about tracing the transfer, but neither of those helps by Friday.
" Nico closed the laptop, finally, and looked at her directly, something careful in his expression that she recognized as him weighing whether to say the next thing out loud.
"You need to think about who benefits from Marea going dark for even one pay cycle. "
Del already knew the name sitting behind that sentence, had known it the second Nico said the word zero on the phone twenty minutes ago, and something cold and furious settled into her chest that had nothing to do with the money and everything to do with the memory of a man's forehead pressed to hers on this same bar top three nights ago, telling her he didn't know what to do with her.
"Get me everything on the warehouse listing," she said. "The one two blocks over I've been eyeing for the second location."
Nico's expression shifted, confused by the pivot. "Why?"
"Because my real estate contact called me yesterday to say it went under contract overnight to an anonymous buyer paying full ask with no negotiation. I didn't think much of it at the time. I think a lot of it now."
Understanding crossed Nico's face fast, followed immediately by something harder. "You think Cristea drained payroll."
"I think Cristea took the warehouse and drained my payroll in the same forty eight hours we slept together, and I think I was an idiot to believe anything that happened between us meant something other than reconnaissance.
" The words came out flat, controlled, the particular calm she used when the alternative was screaming, and Del picked her phone up off the desk with hands that had finally stopped shaking, replaced entirely by something colder.
"Get the bank on the phone. See if there's any way to expedite even a partial recovery. I'm going to go have a conversation."
She found him at Obsidian less than twenty minutes later, walking through the VIP floor with the same momentum that had carried her there the day of the DJ poach, staff scattering out of her path with the particular instinct people developed for recognizing a woman who wasn't going to be stopped by a velvet rope.
Matteo was at his desk, on a call, and looked up the second she cleared his office doorway with an expression that shifted fast from surprise to something more guarded.
"I'll call you back," he said into the phone, and hung up without waiting for a response. "Del."
"You took the warehouse."
"I did." No hesitation, no deflection, and the honesty landed worse than a lie would have, confirming exactly the pattern she'd walked in here expecting to find. "I authorized the lease yesterday morning. I'm not going to pretend otherwise."
"After the night before."
"Yes."
"You woke up the morning after sleeping with me and decided the first thing you'd do was cut off my expansion plans."
"That's not exactly how it happened, but I understand why it looks that way.
" Matteo stood, slow, and Del watched him choose his words with more care than she'd ever seen him use in a business conversation, which somehow made the whole thing worse instead of better.
"I authorized it because I told myself the war didn't stop just because we did something that mattered.
You said the same thing to me, in your own office, the night we slept together. This wasn't different."
"That's not the only thing that happened."
Something in his expression sharpened. "What else?"
"My payroll account was drained overnight.
Forty one thousand dollars, gone, routed through shell transfers to an account in the Caymans, and I have forty employees who need that money by Friday.
" Del's voice cracked on the last word, the first crack in her composure since she'd walked in, and she hated it, hated that he got to see it, hated that some part of her had walked in here already knowing this confrontation would cost her more than the money itself. "Tell me that wasn't you too."
"It wasn't me."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I expect you to look at the fact that I just admitted to the warehouse without a single second of hesitation, and ask yourself why a man who's about to lie to your face about payroll theft would tell you the truth about real estate thirty seconds earlier.
" Matteo crossed the room, closing the distance between them without touching her, close enough that she could see the exact moment his composure cracked underneath the calm delivery.
"I don't deny things I've done, Del. I never have with you.
If I'd drained your payroll, I'd stand here and tell you exactly that, the same way I just told you about the warehouse. "
Del stared at him, fury still burning hot in her chest, and forced herself to actually weigh the argument instead of dismissing it purely on the strength of how badly she wanted to keep being angry at someone.
He had a point. An infuriating, inconvenient point.
"Prove it," she said.
"I don't have proof standing here right now.
What I have is Ronan, who's been running down a lead for the last three days on a threat that has nothing to do with our business dispute and everything to do with something considerably more dangerous circling this district.
" Matteo's jaw tightened, and something crossed his face that looked, uncomfortably, like guilt, though Del couldn't yet place what he had to feel guilty about beyond the warehouse.
"I intercepted an unauthorized shipment on my own dock four nights ago.
Interrogated the courier. He gave up a name, Sorin, connected to money laundering operations that trace, as far as we've been able to confirm, through a produce distributor that services both my club and yours. "
Del's stomach dropped. "My distributor."
"Your distributor."
"You knew this and didn't tell me."
"I found out three days ago and I wanted confirmation before I brought you a theory instead of proof, because I was afraid you wouldn't trust it, especially given everything else happening between us right now.
" Matteo's voice had gone low, rough, and Del recognized in it the particular register of a man admitting to a mistake he wasn't used to making.
"That was the wrong call. I see that now, standing here, watching you find out about a threat to your business four days later than you should have because I was protecting a theory instead of protecting you. "
"You should have told me the second you had a name."
"I know."
"You let me walk in here today thinking you'd drained my payroll because you were sitting on information that might have actually explained it."
"I know, Del." He said it quiet, no defense in it, no attempt to soften the accountability, and something about the flatness of the admission cracked through her fury faster than an apology would have.
"I made a calculated decision to gather more before I said anything, and it cost you four days you didn't have. That's on me."
Del stood in the middle of his office, the fury she'd walked in with tangled now with something more complicated, fear underneath it, a cold understanding settling into her chest that this had never been purely about a business rivalry, that somewhere in the last month a third player had been circling both their operations while they'd been focused entirely on each other.
"If it's not you," she said, "and it traces through my own supplier, then whoever's doing this has access to my accounts, my logistics, possibly my staff. That's not a competitor. That's someone inside my walls."
"I know."
"How long has this been happening?"