Chapter 5 - THE AUDIT OF THE ESTATE
While Lily ate her warm meal at the massive kitchen island under the watchful, terrified eyes of three senior chefs, Adrien Romano retreated to his private study. The room smelled of old leather, expensive cigars, and dry parchment. But tonight, the atmosphere was charged with a lethal, controlled fury.
He sat behind his massive mahogany desk and opened the estate management terminal. With a few keystrokes, he bypassed the standard administrative layers and accessed the direct payroll, housing, and medical logs for every employee on the Romano estate.
What he found sickened him.
Six months ago, his chief of operations, a cold, ambitious man named Julian Vance (no relation to Dr. Viktor), had instituted a "cost-optimization initiative" for the staff quarters. Under this policy, medical stipends for lower-tier workers—cleaners, groundskeepers, and kitchen assistants—had been quietly slashed by seventy percent. Furthermore, sick leave requests were docked from wages, forcing workers to cover shifts even when running high fevers out of fear of destitution.
Clara’s file showed she had been hired as a single mother after her husband, a former junior soldier in the Romano syndicate who had died during a warehouse raid, had fallen off the books. Because she had no active protector within the syndicate ranks, she had been assigned the lowest wage tier and placed in the oldest, dampest cottage on the property.
Adrien's fingers tapped a slow, rhythmic tattoo against the polished wood of his desk.
He didn't yell. He didn't smash anything. Men who yelled were losing control. Adrien was a man who collected debts with absolute, chilling precision.
He picked up his desk phone and pressed a single intercom button. "Security Chief Miller."
"Boss? You're back early," Miller's voice crackled through the speaker, sounding slightly groggy. "Do you need the car brought around?"
"Get down to my study in five minutes," Adrien said, his voice entirely devoid of inflection. "And bring the complete personnel audit files for the last twelve months, specifically regarding estate operations managed by Julian Vance."
"Right away, sir."
Five minutes later, Miller—a hulking ex-military enforcer with a permanent scar across his left jaw—stood at attention in front of the desk. He took one look at Adrien's face and instantly recognized the look of a predator who had just found a wolf in the sheepfold.
"Boss," Miller murmured.
"Julian Vance," Adrien said, sliding a printed ledger across the desk. "Explain to me why my estate managers are cutting medical funds for staff who live fifty yards from my back door."
Miller glanced at the papers, his face draining of color. "Sir... Julian said it was part of the general overhead reduction you requested last quarter—"
"I requested a reduction in illicit cargo transit costs and federal bribe allocations, Miller," Adrien interrupted, his voice cutting through the room like a razor. "I never authorized starving the people who wash the floors of my home, and I certainly never authorized putting single mothers and their children at risk of dying from preventable pneumonia."
"I... I didn't know the details, boss. Julian handled the day-to-day HR approvals," Miller stammered, sweat beading on his forehead.
"Then Julian is an incompetent fool, or worse, a thief who is padding his own pockets by skimming from the bottom," Adrien said calmly, standing up from his desk. He buttoned his suit jacket, towering over the security chief. "Find Julian. Bring him to the basement holding room. Do not let him speak to anyone, do not let him use a phone, and do not let him leave until I get down there. Is that clear?"
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"Crystal clear, boss," Miller said, snapping a salute before turning on his heel and bolting from the room.
Adrien stood alone in the dark study for a long moment, looking out the floor-to-ceiling window toward the staff cottages. Then, turning away, he walked back toward the west wing to check on Lily and her mother.
