I didn’t call Vanessa.
I didn’t call Derek and accuse him of anything.
I’ve been in commercial real estate for eleven years. If you want to win, you don’t argue. You check facts. You build a file.
At ten o’clock, I walked into Luca Ferrara’s little office above the kitchen at Taivera Luca. It smelled like garlic and espresso.
Luca was sitting at his desk in front of a computer monitor. He didn’t say hello. He just turned the screen toward me.
“Security camera,” he said. “Saturday night. Front entrance. 6:52 p.m.”
It was black-and-white footage of the hostess stand.
At 6:52, twenty-three minutes before I arrived, Vanessa walked in through the front door. Alone. She found Greg. She talked to him for almost four minutes. She was pointing at the door. Shaking her head. Touching his arm.
Greg nodded the whole time.
Then she handed him something. A folded bill.
Luca froze the frame. He zoomed in.
It was a hundred-dollar bill.
“She paid him,” I whispered.
“She called on Friday too,” Luca said. His voice was tight with anger. “I asked the hostess, Maria. Your sister told her there was a family member who might show up uninvited. Somebody with problems. She said if he came, please, for the safety of her father, do not let him in.”
“Somebody with problems.”
“That’s what she said.” Luca shook his head slowly. “I have run this restaurant forty-one years, Michael. I have never thrown out a man for being somebody’s son.”
“What are you going to do about Greg?”
Luca looked at me for a long moment.
“First,” he said, “I want to understand what your sister is really doing.”
That afternoon, I called a man named Paul Chandler. He’s a senior loan officer at Atlantic Union Bank. He’s handled my financing for six years.
“Paul,” I said. “Off the record. Have you ever heard of Holloway Residential? Derek Holloway?”
There was a pause on the line.
“Michael,” Paul said carefully. “Why are you asking?”
“Family.”
Another pause.
“I can’t tell you anything official,” Paul said. “But a friend of mine at the Virginia Real Estate Board mentioned there’s a preliminary inquiry. Holloway Residential. Something about tenant security deposits and the company’s escrow account. It’s not public yet.”
My stomach dropped.
In Virginia, a property management company has to keep tenants’ security deposits in a separate escrow account. It’s the law. You’re not allowed to touch that money. You’re not allowed to use it to pay your bills.
“How serious?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “But if I had family thinking about putting money into that company, I’d want somebody independent looking at the books first.”
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