Chapter 13 - THE OFFER
Dominic put the call on speaker.
Nobody spoke.
The distorted voice continued.
“You have spent three weeks looking inward.”
Dominic’s expression remained calm.
“That was the point?”
“Yes.”
“To make me distrust my people?”
“You should distrust them. Look how easy it was.”
Arthur.
Caleb.
Forged credentials.
Blind cameras.
The voice was not entirely wrong.
That irritated Dominic.
“What do you want?”
“Vale Holdings.”
Several council members shifted.
Dominic almost laughed.
“You caused all this to buy my company?”
“Not buy.”
A pause.
“Absorb.”
“Into what?”
“You’ll know when you sign.”
Dominic leaned back.
“You sabotaged my leg.”
“No.”
Interesting.
“Then who did?”
“Someone who was paid.”
“Name.”
“No.”
“You tried to take Ellie.”
“That was Caleb’s stupidity.”
Across the room, Caleb shouted, “Liar!”
Vincent forced him back into his chair.
Dominic listened carefully.
The caller had just separated himself from the abduction attempt.
Possibly true.
Possibly strategy.
“What happens if I refuse?”
“Nothing today.”
“And tomorrow?”
“You’ll discover how many people around you have already accepted better offers.”
The line went dead.
Dominic stared at the phone.
Vincent immediately began tracing.
No result.
Clare entered ten minutes later after the fire department confirmed the basement blaze had been contained.
Ellie stayed upstairs with two trusted guards.
Clare looked at Caleb in handcuffs.
“Is he the man who tried to take her?”
“He arranged the vehicle,” Dominic said.
Caleb glared.
“I never told anyone to touch a kid.”
Clare walked toward him.
Vincent moved to stop her.
Dominic shook his head.
Clare stopped inches from Caleb.
“My daughter woke up screaming three times last night.”
Caleb looked away.
“You helped make that happen.”
“I didn’t know.”
Clare’s voice became quiet.
“That seems to be everyone’s excuse in this house.”
Arthur’s excuse.
Caleb’s excuse.
Perhaps Dominic’s too.
He thought of his father.
How many things had Dominic chosen not to examine because knowing would force him to act?
The old ledger.
Thomas Rowan.
Companies built on secrets.
Power inherited without asking what lay beneath it.
Dominic suddenly felt tired of inherited things.
Inherited enemies.
Inherited crimes.
Inherited fear.
He turned to Vincent.
“Bring the detectives in.”
Several council members reacted.
One stood.
“Dominic, think about what you’re doing.”
“I am.”
“These records expose all of us.”
“Then I suggest you hire attorneys.”
The room erupted.
Dominic raised his voice once.
“Sit down.”
They did.
He looked around the table.
“For years, this organization survived because everyone believed silence was strength.”
Nobody spoke.
Dominic continued.
“Silence nearly left me unable to walk.”
He looked toward Clare.
“It left a woman without her husband.”
Then toward the upstairs hallway.
“And it put a four-year-old child in a stranger’s hands.”
His voice hardened.
“I’m finished protecting people who confuse loyalty with secrecy.”
The detectives entered.
Caleb was taken first.
Arthur followed an hour later.
When he passed Dominic in the foyer, the two men looked at each other.
Twenty-two years ended without a handshake.
Arthur stopped.
“There’s one thing I never understood.”
Dominic waited.
“Why did your father keep paying Thomas after he died?”
Clare froze.
Dominic turned.
“What?”
Arthur looked at the ledger.
“The T.R. payments.”
“They stopped after his death.”
“No.”
Arthur shook his head.
“The first ledger stops.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“There was another ledger.”
“Where?”
Arthur smiled sadly.
“I told you your father buried things.”
Then the detectives led him away.
That night, Dominic and Clare returned to the hidden archive.
They searched until after midnight.
Behind the compartment where Ellie had found the ledgers, Dominic noticed a narrow empty slot.
Something had once been there.
Another book.
Missing.
Clare stared at the gap.
“If those payments continued…”
Dominic nodded.
“Then someone took the record.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
For the first time in days, that answer did not make Dominic angry.
It made him determined.
But he also understood something else.
May you like
Not every truth needed to be found tonight.
Some truths could wait until the people who had already suffered were safe.
