Chương 12
“No.”
Another silence, this one different.
Weston heard the calculation beginning.
“Dominic.”
“I’m here.”
“You will speak of this to no one.”
“Of course.”
“If Orsino’s dispatch system is not restored within ten minutes, you are finished.”
“You need me.”
“I needed the man who answered my calls ten years ago. I am speaking to someone else.”
“Don’t do this because she put a test in your hand.”
Weston’s fingers closed around the earring.
“She did not put anything in my hand,” he said. “You have nine minutes.”
He ended the call.
The dispatch system returned in seven.
By morning, Nolan’s audit team found that Dominic had authorized payments to the shell vendor behind the labor disruptions. He had created the disruptions against Kade terminals, blamed Orsino, then used the retaliation to justify broader conflict. The motive was not loyalty. Dominic had accumulated debt through private investments and expected a forced consolidation to raise the value of options he held through another entity.
Everett’s public return had given him cover.
Whether Everett knew remained unclear.
Weston summoned Dominic to the office at six thirty.
Dominic arrived angry rather than afraid, which Weston might once have respected.
“You searched my accounts?”
“I searched company accounts.”
“You had no right.”
“I have several.”
Dominic paced toward the window. “You think I did this for money?”
“I think you did it because money is easier to admit than resentment.”
Dominic turned. “I built those terminals while you hosted dinners for people who used to cross the street to avoid your father.”
“You were paid.”
“I was loyal.”
“You invoiced that too.”
Dominic’s face flushed. “She changed you.”
“No.”
“She made you ashamed of what you are.”
Weston thought of Odalys reading the employee handbook, selling the management company, underpaying herself at the studio while overpaying an assistant.
“She made shame more difficult to mislabel,” he said.
Dominic stared at him.
Weston slid a document across the desk. “You are suspended. Company counsel will contact yours. Do not enter any Kade property.”
“You’re choosing a Marchetti.”
“I am removing a thief.”
“You think the board will accept that distinction?”
“They will receive the evidence.”
Dominic’s laugh was sharp. “And when they learn your lover infiltrated you? When they learn she copied Victor’s records? You think they’ll trust your judgment?”
Weston went still.
Dominic saw it.
The satisfaction on his face lasted only a moment, but it was enough.
“You knew,” Weston said.
Dominic’s eyes shifted.
“How?”
“I hear things.”
“From whom?”
“Maybe your security chief is not as loyal as you think.”
“Nolan did not know until last night.”
Dominic’s silence betrayed him again.
Weston walked around the desk. “Everett told you.”
“He didn’t need to tell me personally.”
“How long?”
Dominic moved toward the door. Nolan entered before he reached it.
No one touched him.
Nolan simply stood in the doorway.
Dominic looked from one man to the other and seemed, for the first time, to understand that controlled rooms could be more frightening than violent ones.
“Everett’s office approached me six months ago,” he said. “They offered information. Said the woman was planted. Said you were compromised.”
“What did they want?”
“Pressure on Orsino assets. Nothing irreversible.”
“The labor disruptions.”
“A demonstration.”
“Of what?”
“That you would react.”
Weston looked at him.
Dominic swallowed.
“Did you send the pregnancy purchase to Everett?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nolan said, “Your assistant’s credentials accessed the household card feed yesterday morning.”
Dominic looked toward the window.
Weston understood then. Everett had monitored the account through the old identity structure, but Dominic had seen the purchase through Weston’s household office. One of them informed the other, or both watched separately.
The child had become information before either parent had spoken its existence aloud.
“Leave,” Weston said.
Dominic blinked. “That’s it?”
“You expected something else?”
The older rules of their world hovered between them. Men disappeared. Cars burned. Families received calls in the night. Weston had inherited those expectations even when he refused the acts themselves.
Dominic had counted on them.
Fear could become a form of protection when everyone expected the wrong response.
“Your access is terminated,” Weston said. “Your conduct goes to the board, the company’s monitors, and counsel. You will spend the next several years explaining numbers to people who do not care how insulted you felt.”
Dominic’s mouth twisted. “Your father would be disgusted.”
“Yes.”
Weston’s answer came easily.
Nolan escorted Dominic out.
At ten, Weston sent Odalys one message.
Dominic knew about Lisbon. Everett told him before the dossier arrived.
She called within a minute.
Neither spoke at first.
Weston sat behind his desk. Odalys stood in the back room of Miriam’s office, one hand against a filing cabinet. Through the wall, she could hear Miriam arguing with a courier about a signature.
“How much do you know?” Odalys asked.
“That you went to Lisbon for more than a museum.”
“I did go to the museum.”
“Of course you did.”
The bitterness in his voice hurt because it carried the shape of old affection.
She closed her eyes. “Everett sent me to find your father’s ledger.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
Weston’s breathing remained steady. “Did you copy it?”
“Seven pages.”
“Did you send them to him?”
“Three.”
“Why only three?”
“Because the ledger did not prove he killed my parents. It proved Victor paid a security company connected to the warehouse. Everett wanted the whole thing, not the truth.”
“You decided that after entering my home.”
“Yes.”
“After entering my bed?”
“Before.”
He was silent.
Odalys pressed her hand harder against the cabinet.
“I was going to leave after Lisbon,” she said. “I packed while you were at the closing dinner.”
“What stopped you?”
“You came back early.”
“That stopped you?”
“You brought soup.”
May you like
Weston remembered.
She had claimed to feel ill. He had skipped the dinner’s final hour, walked through rain to a restaurant she liked, and returned with soup that leaked through the paper bag onto his coat. She had been sitting on the hotel floor beside an open suitcase.
