Chapter 5 - The Price of a Convenient Woman
Three days later, Hannah’s bank balance changed.
Not by much at first.
A deposit notification appeared while she was buying groceries with June.
Then she saw the amount.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
She nearly dropped her phone.
June read the screen over her shoulder.
“Please tell me you won a depressing contest.”
Hannah called Denise before leaving the store.
The transfer came from an entity she had never heard of.
Its reference line read CONSULTING BALANCE.
Bennett’s response was immediate.
Do not move the money.
Preserve the notification.
Provide the bank records through counsel.
By evening, a second transfer had been attempted and flagged.
Hannah sat at June’s kitchen table feeling dirty.
“They can just put something in my account?”
“They can attempt to create a story,” Denise said. “That doesn’t make the story true.”
“But it looks—”
“Which is why we document it.”
At Dominic’s house, Evan placed printed records on the desk.
“The sender traces back to an Adrian-controlled company.”
Dominic read without speaking.
“They contacted Scott too,” Evan continued. “He’s telling people Hannah handled side accounts.”
“Who’s helping them?”
“Some of ours.”
Dominic looked up.
Evan held his gaze.
“You asked for the truth.”
For seventeen years, Dominic had assumed loyalty meant something durable.
Now he could see how much of it had been rented.
He opened the desk drawer and took out a small brass key.
Evan went still.
“You’re certain?”
“No.”
“Once you do this, there’s no pulling it back.”
Dominic looked toward the rain-dark garden.
“There wasn’t any pulling it back when they put her name on those invoices.”
The key opened a cabinet containing records Dominic had kept outside the normal accounting systems.
Not a complete history.
Enough.
Payments.
Ownership arrangements.
People authorized to act in his name.
Documents that could expose Adrian.
Documents that could expose him.
He called Malcolm.
“I want a meeting with the government.”
His attorney exhaled.
“Then we discuss your exposure first.”
“Yes.”
“And you do not assume cooperation buys immunity.”
“I’m not assuming anything.”
For once, it was true.
That night, an unfamiliar man appeared at Paul Mercer’s facility asking whether Hannah was visiting.
The receptionist followed the updated instructions Denise had helped arrange.
She gave no information.
She called the designated contact.
The man left.
Nothing happened.
That was almost worse than something happening.
Hannah moved temporarily to lodging arranged through investigators after a threat assessment. The location was not shared with Dominic.
She insisted on that.
Dominic agreed without asking for an exception.
Her world shrank to approved phone calls, appointments, and waiting.
On the fourth evening, June brought groceries and a cheap mixing bowl.
“I can’t keep talking about signatures,” Hannah admitted.
“Then talk about dough.”
They made biscuits on a counter too small for the task.
Hannah cried halfway through measuring flour.
June kept cutting butter into the bowl.
“I worked there eight years.”
“I know.”
“I thought if I did everything right, I’d be safe.”
June’s hands stopped.
“Oh, honey.”
Hannah wiped her face with her sleeve.
“I wasn’t even asking for much.”
“No,” June said. “You weren’t.”
Across the city, Dominic sat beside Malcolm in a federal conference room.
Bennett entered carrying a legal pad.
There was no handshake.
“This is a discussion through counsel,” Malcolm said.
Bennett nodded.
Dominic placed the first folder on the table.
“I know what my cousin is doing.”
She sat.
“Tell us what you know about what you’ve been doing.”
He looked at the folder.
Then at her.
May you like
Outside, somewhere beyond the walls, Chicago continued moving beneath the name he had spent his life protecting.
For the first time, he let that name become evidence.
