Chapter 4 - A Dinner With the Man Who Knew
Victor Romano invited his nephew to dinner the following evening as though the Fourth of July had ended in nothing more serious than a disagreement over seating arrangements.
"Eight o'clock," he said in a voicemail. "There are matters of loyalty we need to settle. Come alone."
Dominic listened in the kitchen while Tessa spread cream cheese on a cracker.
"You're going," she observed.
"I need to hear what he says."
"Then don't go alone. Not with a private army either. Take Miriam. Let him know you intend to deal with this like an adult."
Dominic had once considered lawyers an expense that bought distance between his decisions and their consequences. Now he understood why Tessa wanted a witness who was not on anyone's payroll to frighten people.
He called Miriam. She agreed to attend only as an observer, not to negotiate criminal deals or conceal evidence. Dominic accepted her conditions.
Before he left, Tessa stopped him beside the stairs.
"There's something else," she said. "In April, Victor offered to pay for a private treatment suite. I refused. I didn't want my care tied to him. He was furious."
"What did he say?"
"That I should be more grateful. That most women in my position understood the cost of becoming a Romano."
"He said that to you?"
"Yes. And I didn't tell you because I thought you'd defend him."
There it was: the bruise he could not see on an X-ray. Whatever happened to her body, their marriage had been injured by years of learned silence.
"I'm sorry you had a reason to think that," he said.
"I don't want apologies to become another way we avoid changing."
"They won't."
Victor received them in his paneled library. No bodyguards stood inside, although Dominic noticed two outside the French doors. A silver tray held three glasses and a bottle of expensive scotch.
"Miriam," Victor said, displeasure slipping through his smile. "This is family business."
"Family business brought us here," she replied. "I'm not drinking."
Victor poured for himself. "Dominic, you're acting irrationally. Your wife is ill. Understandably, you're frightened. But the docks cannot stop because of a medical diagnosis."
Dominic remained standing. "You knew in February."
Victor's silence confirmed it.
"She asked you to help her tell me," Dominic continued. "Instead you showed her photographs and said the Morettis would kill her."
"I took precautions."
"You intercepted her letter."
"You weren't in the condition to hear it."
"That wasn't your decision."
Victor set down his glass. "I stood beside you after your father died. I kept men from tearing this family apart. You were inexperienced, furious, and ready to burn every agreement to the ground. I saved the business that gives your wife her beautiful house and pays for her doctors."
"Her treatment isn't paid for with an envelope you graciously hand over," Dominic said. "She has insurance and her own savings. And if she needed help, it would be hers to ask for."
Victor shook his head, disgusted. "She has made you sentimental."
"She has made me see you."
For the first time, the older man looked uneasy.
Dominic placed a copy of the Harbor Light transfer on the desk. "Why is a cancer transportation fund paying Rivergate Logistics hundreds of thousands of dollars?"
Victor glanced at Miriam. "Has she been advising you on things she doesn't understand?"
"You can answer the question," Miriam said, "or decline. But insulting me doesn't change the numbers."
"The foundation uses contractors. End of story."
"And Carlo Moretti attends your private fundraiser?" Dominic asked.
Victor's face changed for less than a second. It was enough.
"A donor brought a guest."
"You told me Carlo ordered the attack that killed our driver, Michael Torres. You told his widow we would avenge him."
"Because Moretti's organization is dangerous."
"That wasn't my question."
The clock ticked over the fireplace. Victor looked toward the windows, where his guards were just visible beyond the reflected lamplight.
"Your wife has been digging around where she doesn't belong," he said finally. "You need to keep her out of it."
Dominic felt his old reflex rise: the urge to cross the room, take Victor by the collar, and make the truth come out by force. Then he remembered Tessa saying, I don't want to wonder who survives your bad days.
"If Tessa has found something wrong," he said, "I'll help her bring it to the authorities. And I will not let you threaten her again."
Victor's eyes hardened. "You would put your own blood in prison?"
"You taught me blood was everything. Tessa taught me it doesn't excuse anything."
The older man laughed once, without humor. "You think the government will forgive what you've done if you arrive with a folder of invoices? They'll prosecute you too."
"Maybe they should."
Miriam glanced at Dominic. It was the first time she had heard him admit that possibility aloud.
Victor stepped close. "You're tired. You're scared of losing another woman to cancer. Go home. Sit by her bed. Let the grown men keep working."
Dominic did not move. "I want all access to my private residence revoked for anyone reporting to you. I want Gabriel's family left alone. And if you have another photograph of my wife, you will preserve it."
"Or what?"
"Or nothing theatrical. My lawyers will take action."
Victor looked almost disappointed. Intimidation had been the language he taught Dominic; he did not know how to negotiate with a nephew refusing to speak it.
On the library table Victor had left a family photograph taken the summer after Dominic's mother died. Dominic remembered the day with startling clarity: Sloan in a dress she hated, their father looking grim, Victor standing behind both children with a hand on each shoulder. Back then, Victor's attention had felt like safety. The adults were grieving, and Victor always arrived with a decision already made.
For years he had called that decisiveness strength. But now he could trace the pattern it created. When his father lost his temper, Victor offered a target. When Dominic asked about money, Victor showed him a bigger enemy. When Tessa became ill, Victor offered her a plan that required silence. Fear always arrived first; obedience followed.
Dominic remembered how often Victor had said, "Let me carry this for you." What the older man really meant was, Let me choose what you are allowed to know.
Near the front gate, Victor's housekeeper was crossing the drive with a grocery bag. Her name was Margaret; she had worked there since Dominic was a teenager. She stopped and gave him a tentative nod.
"Your wife?" she asked. "Is she feeling any better?"
"She's having treatment," Dominic said. "There are good days and bad days."
Margaret touched the little cross around her neck. "My sister went through it. People kept telling her to be brave. She said she wished they'd ask whether she wanted soup instead."
Dominic surprised himself by smiling. "I'll remember that."
As he walked to the car, he realized he could recall the names of Victor's accountants but had never asked Margaret what her sister had needed. People around him had spent years trying to make small, humane gestures without his noticing. He had been too focused on grand displays of control to recognize them.
Miriam waited beside the passenger door. "Are you ready?"
"Almost." Dominic took his telephone out and blocked Victor from accessing the home's security system through a shared management account, following the steps the new independent security company had documented. He sent the company a formal notice to preserve relevant access logs.
There would be no dramatic raid on Victor's office, no hired men marching through the gates. Whatever evidence mattered would have to survive review by people who did not owe Dominic loyalty.
On the drive home, Miriam said, "That was a good start. It wasn't a confession. We need admissible records and people who will testify."
"Claire Goodwin," Dominic said. "Find out where she is."
"I will ask an investigator to check lawfully. No tracking phones, no threats, and no breaking into houses."
"You enjoy saying no to me."
"Someone should have begun years ago."
While Dominic was gone, Tessa called Leah Santos. Leah had been a registered nurse before leaving hospital employment to care for her aging father, and she now volunteered with a patient-support group. The two women had met at a local library months before the diagnosis. Leah was the friend who held Tessa's hand during the first frightening treatment.
"Can you bring the envelope I gave you?" Tessa asked.
Leah went silent. "Has something happened?"
"Victor knows I'm looking into the foundation. I need the copies where someone independent can keep them."
"You should have given them to a lawyer months ago."
"I was trying to survive Tuesday so I could make it to Thursday."
"I know, Tess. I wasn't judging you."
Leah arrived at seven carrying a padded envelope and a grocery-store bouquet of daisies. Tessa put the flowers into a chipped ceramic pitcher from the diner where she'd worked. She had kept that pitcher when she married because it reminded her of a life in which problems could usually be solved with a kind word and an extra plate of fries.
Inside Leah's envelope were photocopies of the volunteer desk's canceled transportation requests and a statement written by Mrs. Alvarez after she missed her appointment. The originals remained with the patients or clinic staff. Tessa had redacted medical details unrelated to the funding complaint.
There was also a note Claire Goodwin had left in a book Tessa lent her at the June gala: SOMETIMES PEOPLE THINK SAVING A FAMILY MEANS LYING TO IT. ASK YOUR HUSBAND ABOUT THE NIGHT MICHAEL TORRES DIED.
Tessa read the note twice.
"Why didn't you show me this before?" she asked.
"Because you said Dominic would hurt someone if he knew. And because I wasn't sure it was safe," Leah answered. "But I should have helped you find legal advice sooner."
Tessa turned the note over. A telephone number was written on the back. She called it from Leah's phone. An automated message said the number was no longer in service.
A few minutes later, the house alarm chirped. Dominic had returned.
He found the three women—Tessa, Leah, and Miriam, who had followed him in—sitting around the kitchen table. No one offered him a seat until Tessa pulled out a chair.
"We found something," she said. "I need you not to react until we explain."
The note about Michael lay between them.
Dominic read it. Michael Torres had been twenty-nine, a driver with a wife and a newborn daughter. He died in the fire at the west warehouse in February, the same night Tessa tried to call about her diagnosis. Victor had blamed Moretti's men, and Dominic had retaliated by ordering a series of illegal seizures that deepened the war.
"What does Claire know about Michael?" he asked.
"We don't know," Miriam said. "But the foundation reimbursed Rivergate for an emergency delivery the night of the fire. The dates overlap. We need to establish what was actually transported."
"Michael called me that night," Dominic said. "He said the manifest didn't match the trailer. Victor told me Michael had panicked."
Tessa leaned forward. "Did you listen to him?"
Dominic could still hear Michael's voice: Boss, I don't think we should move this one. I need you to see it.
"No," he said. "I sent Victor."
The silence that followed was merciless because no one tried to soften it.
Leah's phone vibrated. An unknown caller had left a voicemail without ringing. A woman whispered through static, "This is Claire. If Tessa Romano still wants the truth, tell her there were no Moretti men at the warehouse. And tell her I have the second book."
Then a door slammed, and the recording ended.
May you like
Dominic looked toward the dark kitchen windows.
For months, he had believed he was protecting his wife from a war. Now it appeared someone had invented part of that war to keep him from discovering what was happening behind his back.
