Chapter 3 - The Man Who Handled Everything
Silas Rook arrived at the hospital before dawn carrying flowers nobody had requested.
White roses.
Mara had always disliked white roses.
Dominic noticed that now.
For eleven years, Silas had prided himself on noticing everything. He remembered birthdays, enemies, shipping schedules, and which politicians preferred donations delivered through intermediaries.
Yet he stepped into Mara’s room holding flowers that belonged at somebody else’s bedside.
“How is our girl?” he asked.
Mara’s hand tightened beneath the blanket.
Dominic rose.
“She’s resting.”
Silas’s eyes moved toward the chair where her purse sat.
It was barely a glance.
Dominic saw it anyway.
“Terrible business last night,” Silas said. “The press office has already prepared a statement about exhaustion.”
“Mara will decide what we release.”
Silas paused.
“Of course.”
Dominic walked him into the corridor.
At the far end, Bennett stood beside a vending machine, holding two untouched coffees.
“What happened at the west loading entrance two years ago?” Dominic asked.
Silas sighed with remarkable speed.
“I wondered whether that would come up.”
“Then answer.”
“A contractor made a mistake. Your wife was shaken. We took care of it.”
“Did you threaten her?”
The flowers lowered slightly.
“Dominic.”
“Did you?”
“I warned her that involving you could turn an unfortunate accident into something much worse.”
Dominic looked through the small window in the door.
Mara had turned her face toward the pale morning light.
He remembered his promise.
“Give Bennett every record connected to the incident,” he said. “Original files. Insurance correspondence. Security footage. Maintenance logs.”
“The footage won’t exist anymore.”
“Give him the retention records too.”
Silas studied him.
Something in his expression shifted from concern to calculation.
“You’re exhausted. Let me handle this.”
For years, those words had comforted Dominic.
Let me handle this.
A delayed shipment.
A troublesome contractor.
A complaint from an employee.
His wife in a hospital bed.
“No,” Dominic said. “You’re done handling it.”
By seven that morning, Silas’s access to the company systems had been suspended.
By eight, Dominic had retained an outside attorney named Ruth Calder.
By nine, Ruth had explained that preserving evidence required more discipline than anger.
“If you want answers that survive scrutiny,” she told him, “you don’t get to frighten witnesses into giving you convenient ones.”
Dominic sat across from her in a hospital conference room.
“I understand.”
“I’ll believe that when someone tells you something you dislike.”
Bennett placed a folder between them.
The truck had not been driven by a contractor.
Its driver, Luis Ortega, had been a full-time employee.
He had filed three written complaints about its rear visibility system.
Two had disappeared from the active personnel database.
The third survived in an email attachment.
Dominic read it twice.
“Where is he?”
“Wisconsin,” Bennett said. “Working for a building supplier. He left the company six weeks after the collision.”
“Ask whether he’ll speak with Ruth.”
“Ask?” Bennett repeated.
Dominic looked up.
“Yes.”
The word felt small.
It cost him more than shouting ever had.
When he returned to Mara, her sister was there.
Elena stood between him and the bed before he had taken three steps.
“You don’t get to make this about being deceived.”
“I know.”
“She was trying to keep everybody alive.”
“I know.”
Elena searched his face, clearly prepared for a fight he had no intention of giving her.
Eventually she moved aside.
Mara looked tired.
“Did Silas come here?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I removed his access to the company. I hired an attorney. Bennett is preserving records.”
She stared at him.
“No one’s hurt?”
“No one.”
Her shoulders lowered a fraction.
Dominic sat beside her.
“I thought knowing everything made me a good husband,” he said. “I didn’t know what medication you took.”
“You couldn’t know what I hid.”
“I could have asked why you were afraid without making it an insult.”
She looked down at their hands.
After a moment, she let him hold hers again.
That afternoon, Ruth called.
There was a problem with the old settlement paperwork.
Mara’s signature appeared on a release she insisted she had never signed.
Below it was another signature.
Dominic’s.
He recognized the broad black strokes immediately.
May you like
For the first time since the gala, he had no one else to question.
He had to question himself.
