Chapter 3 - The Price of Coming Clean
By noon, June's dining room held two attorneys, a federal agent, and more secrets than the little house deserved.
Audrey's attorney arrived first.
Marisol Vega wore navy, carried a briefcase, and asked Vincent to leave the room while she spoke with her client.
He started to say the records belonged to his company.
Then he saw Audrey watching him.
Vincent went into the kitchen.
June handed him a potato peeler.
“If your hands need something to control, start there.”
He peeled six potatoes before Marisol called him back.
Special Agent Naomi Ellis had arrived with Leo's attorney. She listened without promising arrests, protection, or miracles.
“Records first,” she said. “Conclusions afterward.”
Audrey opened her laptop.
She showed invoices routed through three shell companies. Identical amounts appeared as consulting fees, then disappeared into a foundation connected to Councilman Harlan Pike.
Dante's name appeared nowhere.
Vincent's appeared everywhere.
“He used my credentials,” Vincent said.
Ellis looked at him steadily.
“Did you authorize anyone else to use them?”
Vincent remembered the late nights, the shortcuts, the times he had told Dante to handle whatever needed handling.
“Yes.”
Audrey closed her eyes.
There it was.
The weakness Dante had built his whole arrangement around.
Ellis turned a page.
“And these older payments?”
Vincent recognized the account numbers.
His father's businesses had left behind debts that never appeared on balance sheets. Vincent had paid men to stop asking questions. Later, he had used those same men to make competitors reconsider contracts.
He had called it survival.
Sitting beneath June's framed photographs, it sounded smaller.
“Some of those were mine,” he said.
His attorney lifted a hand.
“Vincent.”
“I want to answer accurately. After we speak privately.”
Marisol nodded.
Audrey looked at him with an expression he could not read.
The lawyers separated them. This time, Vincent did not resent it.
An hour later, he returned with a decision.
He would preserve every record, surrender devices through counsel, and discuss cooperation without demanding immunity as an opening condition.
Ellis made notes.
“That doesn't erase what you've done.”
“I understand.”
For the first time that day, she seemed to believe him.
Leo produced a small envelope.
Inside lay a photograph of a young woman standing on a dock.
“Nina Salazar,” he said. “The deckhand who pulled me out.”
Audrey recognized the surname from an old safety report.
“She disappeared.”
“She was threatened after helping me leave the hospital. She went to family in Arizona. I haven't heard from her in three years.”
Dante's message had not proved she was dead.
It had been designed to make Leo think she was.
Ellis took the photograph.
“We'll look for her.”
Then Audrey opened the archived cargo file.
“The current shipment is listed as legitimate medication. But the supplier's license number belongs to a company that closed last winter.”
Ellis leaned forward.
“Departure?”
“Tomorrow evening.”
“Do you have the original warehouse records?”
“No. The backup server should. Dante restricted my access yesterday.”
Vincent knew where that server stood.
A locked room beneath the company's original waterfront office.
He also knew Dante would expect him to go there.
“We don't walk into his building,” Audrey said before he spoke.
A corner of Ellis's mouth moved.
“Good advice.”
They discussed preservation orders, interviews, and keeping workers clear of the container. Vincent supplied names instead of commands.
At four, his phone rang again.
This time, it was the chair of his board.
“Dante called an emergency meeting. He says you've disappeared with an employee who embezzled two million dollars.”
Audrey went white.
Vincent put the call on speaker.
The chairman continued.
“He has bank statements, Vincent. Her name is on the receiving account.”
Audrey reached for her laptop.
Before she touched it, Marisol stopped her.
“Let me handle the accusation.”
Vincent looked at Ellis.
Dante had not merely prepared an escape.
He had prepared someone to blame.
Outside, a car slowed beside June's house.
A camera rose behind its windshield.
Ellis stepped away from the table and made a call.
Vincent moved toward Audrey, then stopped.
“May I sit here?”
She pulled out the chair beside her.
May you like
“Yes.”
It was the first permission he had asked for that cost him nothing but pride.
