Chapter 17 - The File on Jenna
The report contained Jenna’s old addresses.
Her employment history.
Lily’s birth date.
Mrs. Alvarez’s name.
A debt Jenna had paid four years earlier.
A parking ticket.
Photographs of Jenna entering the hotel through the employee entrance.
The earliest photograph had been taken seven months before Vincent collapsed in the lobby.
Jenna read three pages.
Then pushed the file away.
“I’m going to be sick.”
Vincent stood across the room.
He did not approach without asking.
“Do you want me closer?”
She nodded.
He sat beside her.
Elena turned another page.
“The document appears to come from Voss Consulting.”
“Why would Raymond investigate me?” Jenna asked. “I was nobody.”
Vincent’s face tightened.
“You weren’t nobody.”
“You know what I mean.”
Elena tapped the date.
“This began shortly after Arturo Valli stopped doing direct work for the Marino wardrobe contract.”
Jenna frowned.
Arturo.
The tailor who had sewn the hidden collar structures.
The man who later tried to resist tighter modifications.
“What does he have to do with me?”
Elena had already called Sofia.
The answer came that afternoon.
Arturo remembered Jenna.
Not personally.
By reputation.
The hotel alterations department had occasionally handled emergency repairs when his shop could not.
Dominic had asked Arturo whether anyone at the hotel was skilled enough to notice structural alterations inside tailored jackets.
Arturo had named three people.
One was Jenna.
Vincent went cold.
“Dominic knew?”
Elena nodded.
“Possibly.”
“And Raymond?”
“Someone commissioned the background report.”
Jenna turned pages she no longer wanted to see.
One line had been highlighted.
Single parent. Financially constrained. Limited institutional support.
Her fear became anger.
“They calculated whether I could be pressured.”
Vincent’s hands curled.
“Yes.”
“They knew about Lily.”
“Yes.”
“And Dominic still came into the alterations room and asked what school she went to.”
Vincent stood so abruptly the chair moved backward.
Jenna caught his hand.
“Don’t.”
“I’m going to the prison.”
“No.”
“He knew.”
“Maybe. We have a document. We still need the chain.”
Vincent’s chest rose and fell.
“He looked at Lily.”
“I remember.”
“I let him near our wedding.”
“He was already in prison before our wedding.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
The sentence revealed how tangled fear could make memory.
Jenna touched his cheek.
“Stay here.”
He did.
Elena contacted federal investigators.
The background report transformed the case surrounding Raymond.
This was no longer merely a historical argument about aggressive business practices.
Someone had monitored Jenna before the public incident.
Someone had predicted that she could discover the jacket modifications.
Someone had assessed how vulnerable she would be if she did.
Detective Morse obtained warrants.
Voss Consulting resisted.
Lawyers appeared.
Servers disappeared.
A storage facility associated with a former Voss employee was suddenly emptied.
Then a break came from an unexpected source.
Dominic.
He requested to speak with prosecutors.
Vincent refused to attend.
Jenna supported that.
“You don’t owe him an audience.”
“He may know why Raymond watched you.”
“Then he can tell the people investigating.”
Dominic’s statement lasted four hours.
Elena received only a lawful summary.
Dominic admitted that he had hired Raymond to monitor anyone who might uncover the garment modifications.
He claimed Raymond expanded the surveillance beyond instructions.
He also claimed Raymond had eventually blackmailed him.
Vincent laughed when he heard that.
“Of course.”
Jenna looked at him.
“You don’t believe him?”
“I believe Dominic tells truth when truth is useful.”
“That doesn’t mean this part is false.”
“No.”
Dominic provided investigators with a location.
Locker 317.
A private document-storage facility near the river.
Raymond allegedly used it for materials he never trusted to corporate servers.
Police obtained a warrant.
The locker was empty.
Almost.
On the floor they found a single torn strip of paper.
A storage inventory number.
Elena’s investigators traced it to a box removed four days earlier.
The person who collected it used identification belonging to Cole Mercer, the private investigator who had delivered Lily’s photograph.
Detectives went to Mercer’s apartment.
He was gone.
His phone was off.
His car was found at the airport.
No evidence showed he had boarded a flight.
That evening, Jenna stood at the shop window while rain streaked the glass.
Vincent came behind her.
“Do you regret meeting me?”
She turned.
“No.”
The answer surprised him.
“I regret that people watched my daughter. I regret what happened to the Calders. I regret the things you did before me.”
He waited.
“But you?”
She touched his wedding ring.
“No.”
He lowered his forehead to hers.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
They both froze.
Jenna answered.
A man breathed on the line.
Then said, “Mrs. Marino?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Cole Mercer.”
Vincent motioned for her to put it on speaker.
Mercer continued.
“I have Raymond Voss’s archive.”
May you like
A pause.
“And if I give it to the police, I’m dead.”
