Chapter 20 - The Deal Vincent Refused
The federal agents wanted Vincent to keep Raymond talking.
Vincent wanted to break the phone.
Those were not the same goal.
Elena wrote instructions on a legal pad.
DON’T THREATEN.
DON’T PROMISE.
ASK QUESTIONS.
Jenna sat across the table.
Raymond’s call had been routed through a system investigators hoped to trace, though nobody expected him to make it easy.
Vincent lifted the phone.
“What do you want?”
Raymond sounded relaxed.
“The waterfront holdings.”
Vincent frowned.
“Which ones?”
“All six parcels controlled through Marino Port Development.”
Elena’s pen moved.
The properties were worth hundreds of millions.
More importantly, three were subject to pending redevelopment approvals.
“Why?” Vincent asked.
“Because I have buyers.”
“You mean clients.”
“I mean people who understand value.”
“What happens if I refuse?”
Raymond chuckled.
“You already heard that part.”
Vincent’s eyes moved toward Jenna.
She held his gaze.
“Say it clearly,” Vincent said.
A pause.
“You’re learning courtroom tricks.”
“Say what you’ll do.”
“No.”
Raymond was too experienced.
“I’m offering an exchange. You transfer the properties to a trust I designate. I disappear.”
“And the archive?”
“Also disappears.”
Vincent almost laughed.
“You expect me to believe you only have one copy?”
“I expect you to understand that some copies are more dangerous than others.”
“To me?”
“To everyone.”
Raymond’s voice softened.
“Your wife should ask what happens when people discover who paid for the building where her shop sits.”
Jenna straightened.
Elena looked up sharply.
The shop landlord had no connection to Vincent.
As far as they knew.
Raymond continued.
“Ask about Harbor Municipal Credit.”
The line disconnected.
Elena was typing before the phone went dark.
Within an hour, they found the connection.
Jenna’s landlord had refinanced the building eighteen months earlier.
The lender was Harbor Municipal Credit.
One of its largest investors was a fund partially owned by a Marino affiliate.
Jenna stared at the documents.
“Did you know?”
Vincent looked almost offended.
Then stopped himself.
“No.”
“Did you influence my lease?”
“No.”
“Did anyone working for you?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer hurt.
Because it was honest.
Elena ordered a review.
The result came the next morning.
No special rates.
No instructions.
No communication mentioning Jenna.
The landlord had negotiated a standard commercial loan.
Jenna exhaled for what felt like the first time in twelve hours.
Raymond had taken a coincidence and shaped it into suspicion.
“He wanted me to doubt you,” she said.
Vincent nodded.
“Did it work?”
“For a few hours.”
He absorbed that without complaint.
“Good.”
She frowned.
“Good?”
“You checked.”
Jenna looked at him.
He touched her hand.
“I don’t want trust that survives by refusing to look.”
She squeezed his fingers.
The federal tracing effort produced one result.
Raymond’s call had briefly touched a relay system connected to a marina thirty miles north.
Agents searched.
They found an abandoned office, disposable phones, and a shredder still warm.
No Raymond.
But one trash bag contained partially destroyed documents.
Investigators reconstructed enough to identify a planned transfer.
The waterfront properties were not Raymond’s real goal.
His buyer was a consortium represented by Howard Pike.
The board member who had tried to remove Vincent.
Elena swore for the first time Jenna had ever heard.
“Pike is working with him.”
The evidence remained circumstantial.
But communications showed Pike’s private investment vehicle had negotiated future options on the waterfront parcels.
If Vincent could be forced to transfer them cheaply, Pike stood to make a fortune.
The crisis inside Marino companies had not merely embarrassed competitors.
Someone had been preparing to profit from it.
Vincent requested no confrontation.
He informed investigators.
That decision lasted six hours.
Then Howard Pike walked into a televised business interview and accused Vincent of intentionally destroying shareholder value to satisfy his wife’s “personal revenge campaign.”
Jenna watched from the temporary workspace a neighboring tailor had loaned her.
The interviewer asked Pike whether he supported removing Vincent permanently.
“Yes,” Pike said. “The Marino companies need leadership based on economics, not guilt.”
Jenna turned off the television.
Her assistant stared at her.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
Jenna picked up a hem.
“My job.”
That evening, shareholders announced an emergency vote.
Vincent could lose control of the companies his family had built.
At nearly the same moment, Detective Morse called Jenna.
The fire investigator had found DNA on the broken rear window of her shop.
The match was not Raymond Voss.
It belonged to someone Jenna knew.
May you like
Someone who had attended her wedding.
Marco.
