Chapter 7 - She Went Back to School With a Mafia War Behind Her
Charmian took her accounting midterm at 1:10 p.m.
Vincent called it reckless.
Matteo called it insane.
Evan called it the most Charmian thing she had ever done.
She called it Tuesday.
The campus of St. Jude’s looked almost offensively normal under the afternoon sun.
Students carried coffees across the quad. Someone played guitar badly near the library steps. A professor rode past on a bicycle with one pant leg tucked into his sock.
Nothing about the place suggested that millions of dollars had been washed through its foundations or that a dead woman had named one of its senior administrators in a twelve-year-old recording.
Charmian walked toward Harlan Hall with a backpack over one shoulder.
Under her sweater, the body armor pressed awkwardly against her ribs.
Three Costa men were scattered across campus in civilian clothes.
Vincent was parked two blocks away in a black sedan because she had refused to let him stand outside her classroom like an armed parent at orientation.
She had also made one condition.
No one would interfere unless she used a specific phrase.
Tell Evan not to miss algebra.
Evan had completed algebra the year before.
If she said it, something was wrong.
Professor Daniel Harlan was waiting outside the lecture room.
He was forty, perpetually rumpled, with wire-rim glasses and a coffee stain on his tie.
When he saw Charmian, relief crossed his face.
“Ms. Blake.”
“Professor.”
“Where have you been?”
Charmian stopped.
“I emailed you.”
“I emailed you.”
They stared at each other.
Harlan pulled out his phone.
“I sent six messages. I called twice. Your voicemail was full.”
“I got one automated attendance warning after my third absence. Nothing after that.”
Harlan frowned.
“That’s impossible.”
“No. It’s suspicious.”
His eyes narrowed.
Charmian lowered her voice.
“Can we talk somewhere private?”
His office was small and overflowing with journals.
Charmian closed the door.
“I need to know whether anyone changed my attendance file.”
Harlan sat at his computer.
“Why?”
“Please.”
He studied her bruised cheek.
Then typed his password.
The student portal loaded.
Charmian’s attendance record appeared.
Nine absences.
But beside each absence was a notation.
EXCUSED BY ADMINISTRATIVE OVERRIDE.
Harlan frowned.
“I didn’t do that.”
“Who can?”
“Dean’s office. Registrar. Scholarship administration.”
“Can you see which account?”
He clicked deeper.
The override history displayed a user code.
MV-01.
Malcolm Vane.
Charmian felt a cold pulse in her stomach.
Harlan looked at her.
“That’s Dean Vane.”
“I know.”
“Why would the dean personally excuse your absences?”
“So no one would look for me.”
Harlan stared.
Charmian took out a folded page from Elena’s bank documents.
She did not show him the whole thing.
Only a list of transfers into the Jude Academic Advancement Foundation.
“Have you ever seen this foundation?”
Harlan adjusted his glasses.
“It funds scholarships and capital improvements.”
“Who controls it?”
“The dean chairs the board.”
“Anyone else?”
“Trustees. Donors.”
“Salvatore Costa?”
Harlan’s expression shifted.
“He’s one of the major donors.”
Charmian already knew the answer, but hearing it aloud tightened the pattern.
Harlan leaned back.
“Ms. Blake, what is this?”
“My father died investigating money connected to this school.”
Harlan went silent.
“Elias Blake?”
Charmian froze.
“You know his name?”
Harlan took off his glasses.
“My father was a union attorney.”
Harlan sat back down and opened a locked drawer beneath his desk.
“I didn’t know you were Elias Blake’s daughter when you enrolled. I only realized last year after I saw your emergency contact paperwork during a scholarship review.”
Charmian stared.
“You knew for a year?”
“I knew the name. I didn’t know whether you wanted to talk about it.”
He pulled out a thin file.
“My father kept notes from union cases. After he died, I inherited boxes of them. I found this one because your surname bothered me.”
Inside was a photocopy of a handwritten message.
ELIAS BLAKE — REQUESTED MEETING RE: WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION. FEARS INTERNAL RETALIATION. SAYS RECORDS INVOLVE COSTA CHARITIES + ST. JUDE’S FUND.
Charmian sat down slowly.
The note was dated one day before the fire.
Her throat tightened.
“He was going to report it.”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t trying to run.”
“No.”
“He wasn’t stealing.”
“No.”
Harlan’s voice softened.
“He was trying to protect evidence and his family at the same time. According to my father, he was terrified he wouldn’t be able to do both.”
Charmian touched the paper with the edge of one finger.
For years she had imagined her father’s final days as a dark room she could never enter.
Now details kept appearing like lights switching on one by one.
He had been afraid.
He had still gone forward.
That mattered more to her than any fantasy that he had been fearless.
Fearless people were easy to admire from a distance.
Afraid people who acted anyway were harder to dismiss.
Harlan watched her.
“You chose accounting because of him, didn’t you?”
Charmian nodded.
“I thought if I learned enough, I could understand the ledgers he left.”
“And did you?”
“Not until this week.”
Harlan looked at the bruises on her face.
“I suspect this has been a very long week.”
“You have no idea.”
He stood and crossed to a filing cabinet.
From the bottom drawer he pulled an old newspaper clipping.
PIER FOURTEEN ACCOUNTANT DIES IN WAREHOUSE FIRE.
Elias Blake’s photograph stared up from the yellow paper.
Harlan set it on the desk.
“My father believed the theft accusation was false.”
Charmian’s eyes filled.
“Why?”
“Because Elias called him the day before the fire asking how to become a federal whistleblower.”
The room tilted.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“My father never made the meeting.”
“No.”
Harlan’s voice softened.
“My father kept the clipping because it bothered him for the rest of his life.”
Charmian stared at Elias’s photograph.
For twelve years she had carried the certainty alone.
Now evidence was appearing from dead people, old files, forgotten phone calls.
Her father had tried to do the right thing.
And the right thing had gotten him killed.
A knock sounded.
Both of them looked up.
“Professor Harlan?” a voice called.
Harlan opened the door.
Dean Malcolm Vane stood outside.
He was sixty-one, silver-haired, elegant, with the polished warmth of a man who had spent decades asking wealthy parents for donations.
His smile landed on Charmian.
“Ms. Blake. I heard you were back on campus.”
Charmian forced her breathing to remain even.
“Dean Vane.”
“I was concerned about your absences.”
Were you?
She smiled politely.
“Family emergency.”
“So I gathered.”
His eyes moved briefly to her bruised cheek.
“I’d like to discuss your scholarship status. My office?”
Harlan said, “She has an exam.”
“It can wait ten minutes.”
Charmian’s phone vibrated in her pocket.
Vincent.
She ignored it.
“I’ll come after the exam.”
Vane’s smile stayed in place.
“I’m afraid it concerns whether you’ll be permitted to take it.”
Harlan frowned.
“You excused her absences yourself.”
For the first time, something moved in Vane’s eyes.
A calculation.
Charmian saw it.
So did Harlan.
Vane’s smile faded slightly.
“My office. Now.”
Charmian had a choice.
Walk away and alert Vincent.
Or follow the man named in Elena’s evidence and see what he did when he believed she was isolated.
She made the choice Vincent would hate.
“Fine.”
Harlan started to object.
Charmian looked at him.
“Tell my brother not to miss algebra.”
Harlan blinked.
“What?”
Charmian repeated it.
Slowly.
“Tell Evan not to miss algebra.”
Then she followed Dean Vane down the corridor.
Two blocks away, Vincent heard the phrase through the open phone line Harlan immediately placed to the number Charmian had written on a sticky note before leaving his office.
Vincent was out of the car before Harlan finished speaking.
Vane did not take Charmian to his office.
He took her to the underground faculty garage.
The moment the elevator doors opened, she knew.
Damian Cole stood beside a black SUV.
He held a pistol low against his thigh.
Charmian stopped.
Vane’s pleasant academic mask disappeared.
“You should have taken the semester off, Ms. Blake.”
Charmian looked at Damian.
“You poisoned Pike.”
Damian smiled.
“He always talked too much.”
“You planted the drive.”
“Yes.”
“You hit me?”
“No. That was Pike’s idiot nephew. I would’ve told him not to mark your face.”
The casualness turned her stomach.
Vane opened the SUV door.
“Get in.”
Charmian did not move.
“Where are we going?”
“To settle an old account.”
“My father’s?”
Vane’s expression cooled.
“Your father should have understood that accountants are paid to count, not ask moral questions.”
Charmian’s heart slammed against the armor vest.
She slipped one hand into her coat pocket and pressed record on her phone.
“What did Salvatore do to him?”
Damian stepped closer.
“Enough questions.”
Charmian backed toward a concrete pillar.
Vane sighed.
“Your father found money that was none of his concern. He tried to hand it to Elena Costa. Salvatore tried to destroy the evidence. Your father ran back into a burning building like a fool.”
Charmian’s voice shook.
“And your people locked the door.”
Vane did not answer.
That was enough.
“Get in the car.”
A gunshot cracked across the garage.
Damian’s pistol flew from his hand.
He screamed and grabbed his bleeding wrist.
Vincent emerged from behind a concrete column, weapon raised.
Matteo and two men appeared from the opposite side.
Vane seized Charmian and pressed a small pistol beneath her jaw.
Everything stopped.
Vincent’s face became terrifyingly calm.
“Take that gun off her.”
Vane pulled Charmian tighter.
“You’ve changed, Vincent.”
“No.”
“You have. Arturo would have shot through the hostage.”
Vincent’s eyes stayed on Charmian.
His mother’s voice echoed in him.
Power is knowing you can force someone and choosing not to.
Vane smiled.
“Put the gun down.”
Vincent lowered it.
Matteo looked at him sharply.
“Boss.”
“Down.”
Vincent placed the pistol on the concrete.
Vane laughed.
Charmian felt his grip loosen by half an inch.
Enough.
She drove the heel of her shoe down on his foot, slammed her head backward into his nose, and twisted the way a self-defense instructor at St. Jude’s had taught her freshman year.
Vane shouted.
Vincent moved.
Charmian dropped.
A shot hit the ceiling.
Matteo tackled Vane before he could fire again.
Damian ran.
Vincent snatched up his gun and chased him toward the service ramp.
Damian reached a motorcycle parked near the exit.
He fired twice over his shoulder.
Vincent ducked behind a pillar.
By the time he returned fire, Damian was already through the gate and into traffic.
Vincent swore and turned back.
Charmian stood beside the SUV, shaking.
Vane was facedown in handcuffs.
Vincent crossed the garage quickly.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He checked her anyway.
Her jaw.
Her shoulders.
The armor vest beneath her sweater.
She pushed his hands away.
“I’m fine.”
“You followed him alone.”
“I had the signal.”
“You followed a man named in a murder conspiracy into a parking garage.”
“I got him to confess.”
Vincent stared.
Charmian pulled out her phone and stopped the recording.
Vane’s voice had been captured clearly.
Your father found money...
Salvatore tried to destroy the evidence...
Charmian held up the phone.
“Worth it.”
Vincent looked at her like he could not decide whether to yell or lock every door in the city.
Then Matteo’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“Vincent.”
Something in his tone silenced everyone.
“What?”
“The estate was hit ten minutes ago.”
Charmian’s blood turned cold.
“Evan?”
Matteo listened.
“Evan’s alive. Mrs. Gable too.”
Charmian exhaled.
Then Matteo looked at Vincent.
“But they took the four original ledgers.”
Vincent’s jaw hardened.
“And Salvatore?”
“He just sent a message to every captain in the organization.”
Matteo turned the screen around.
One sentence filled it.
COME TO PIER FOURTEEN TONIGHT IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH ABOUT WHO SHOULD LEAD THIS FAMILY.
Vincent stared at the message.
May you like
Charmian looked at him.
The place where her father died was about to become the place Salvatore tried to take Vincent’s empire.
