Chapter 13 - What Nicholas Was Really Going to Do
For ten minutes, I hated my dead brother.
Then I read the documents carefully.
That habit saved me from believing Graham.
Nicholas had agreed to cooperate with federal investigators.
But the sections involving me were heavily marked.
He had negotiated immunity.
For me.
Nicholas planned to expose the laundering network while proving I had not participated in it.
He had been trying to save me.
Graham had shown me only the pages designed to look like betrayal.
“You always were better at lies than numbers,” I said.
His face changed.
I placed the full agreement on the table.
Brendan had already obtained the archived copy through one of Nicholas’s old contacts.
Nicholas’s handwritten statement appeared on the final page.
My brother Vincent knows nothing about B.D. Holdings. My father intentionally excluded him because Vincent would oppose using the legitimate businesses.
I read the sentence twice.
For years, I thought Nicholas left because he hated what I had become.
He had actually died trying to give me a chance to become something else.
Graham realized the conversation was over.
He stood.
“You think turning over those files will make you clean?”
“No.”
That was the first honest answer I had given anyone about my empire.
“I think it gives me a place to start.”
I had already contacted attorneys.
Already separated legal businesses from everything connected to the old network.
Already agreed to turn over my father’s archives through counsel.
Graham stared at me as if I had betrayed some sacred code.
Maybe I had.
Good.
Then he smiled.
“You still have one problem.”
“What?”
“Tessa.”
My blood went cold.
“She knows too much.”
“She’s protected.”
“Is she?”
Brendan’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed instantly.
The safe property was empty.
No forced entry.
No struggle.
Just one envelope on the table.
Inside was a handwritten message from Tessa.
Vincent,
Graham contacted me before he came to you.
He says he has the last recording Nicholas made.
He says Nicholas left a message for Eli.
I have to know if it’s true.
I’m sorry.
At the bottom was an address.
May you like
The old Moretti warehouse at Pier 16.
Exactly where Nicholas’s final route had begun nine years earlier.
