the mafia boss installed eleven cameras to catch a thief, but the stranger on the screen was feeding his starving daughters

The financial offices of Alvarez Holdings on Monday morning looked like a war room.

Marcus Vance stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Commerce Street, holding a thick stack of printed audit sheets with shaking fingers. Calvin Pierce sat in the leather armchair across from the desk, his arms crossed over his chest, watching Joseph with a look of cold amusement.

“Well?” Joseph asked, not looking up from his laptop.

“It’s... it’s worse than we thought, boss,” Vance stammered, dropping the papers onto the mahogany desk. “The discrepancies aren't just in the drayage logs. For the last eighteen months, the luxury food subsidies—the organic certifications, the import tariffs, the specialty dairy lines—were being funneled through a shell company registered in Franklin.”

“Whose name is on the registration?” Joseph asked quietly.

“A subsidiary controlled by a distribution broker named Arthur Pendelton,” Vance said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “He’s one of the primary suppliers for the downtown restaurants. He’s... he’s connected to the Southside syndicate.”

Joseph leaned back in his leather chair. The room was dead silent except for the hum of the air conditioner.

The pieces clicked together with the clean, mechanical snap of a breech-block sliding home.

Hilda hadn't just been covering for her niece out of charity; the systematic draining of the household grocery budget had been part of a wider siphon—a test of boundaries by men who thought Joseph Alvarez had grown soft behind his high iron gates.

“Call Pendelton,” Joseph said.

“Boss?” Vance asked, his eyes wide. “Pendelton has backing. If we move on him without going through legal—'

“I said call him,” Joseph interrupted, his voice dropping into that icy, lethal register that made even Calvin straighten up in his chair. “Tell him I want to review the delivery manifests for the north wing personally. Tell him to meet me at the warehouse on Second Avenue at midnight.”