Chapter 5 - THE PAYMENT MADE IN MY NAME
The transaction was for eighty thousand dollars.
Consulting services.
That was the description.
The money left a Corvino Maritime reserve account at 2:06 in the morning.
My digital authorization approved it.
Except at 2:06 that morning, six months earlier, I had been in Boston.
Michael found the hotel security footage.
I was in the lobby arguing with a senator’s chief of staff while the payment cleared in Ohio.
“Who could access your credentials?” Sam asked.
“Dominic.”
“Anyone else?”
“My chief financial officer.”
“Harold?”
I nodded.
Harold Bennett had worked for me for twenty-two years.
I trusted him with accounts I didn’t trust family to see.
Sam called him.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Michael called Harold’s wife.
Her number had been disconnected.
By midnight, we learned Harold had resigned quietly three weeks after my shooting and moved to Florida.
Except he never reached Florida.
His credit cards stopped being used in Kentucky.
His car was found months earlier at a long-term airport lot.
Nobody had told me.
Arya had intercepted the resignation.
Of course she had.
“What if Harold knew?” Tessa asked.
We were alone after Sam left.
“Knew what?”
“That somebody used your account.”
“Then he either helped them or got scared.”
“Or something happened to him.”
I didn’t answer.
Because I had spent my career knowing what happened to inconvenient men.
Not by my order.
Not for years.
But enough darkness had passed through the Corvino name that I couldn’t pretend innocence made us harmless.
Tessa noticed my silence.
“You think your family could have done something.”
“I think families like mine spend generations creating situations decent people never have to imagine.”
She sat across from me.
“That’s the first honest thing you’ve said about your name.”
I stared at her.
“You don’t know anything about my name.”
“My sister does.”
The sentence changed the room.
“What?”
Tessa looked immediately as though she regretted speaking.
“Nothing.”
“No.”
My voice hardened.
“You don’t get to drop that into the room and walk away.”
She folded her arms.
“My sister worked at Pier Nine.”
Pier Nine belonged to Corvino Maritime.
Or had.
It was temporarily closed after a crane accident eight months earlier.
Three workers were injured.
One permanently.
I suddenly understood.
“Mia.”
Tessa looked at me sharply.
“You know her name?”
“I read the report.”
“Did you?”
The anger in her voice surprised me.
I deserved it.
I remembered the report.
Equipment failure.
Contractor negligence.
Insurance settlement pending.
A line item among hundreds.
“How badly was she hurt?”
“Crushed pelvis. Nerve damage. Four surgeries.”
My stomach tightened.
“The medical bills.”
“Yes.”
“So you took this job because—”
“Because the agency pays twenty-five an hour.”
“That’s all?”
Her eyes flashed.
“At first?”
I waited.
“No.”
There it was.
“I wanted to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because your company kept denying responsibility.”
“That came from legal.”
“You own legal.”
I couldn’t argue.
Tessa stood.
“I expected you to be exactly what everyone said. Arrogant. Cold. Someone who could read three injured workers on a report and feel nothing.”
“Maybe I was.”
“That’s the problem.”
She moved toward the door.
“Tessa.”
She stopped.
“Did you know who I was before the agency assigned you here?”
“Yes.”
“Did Arya know about Mia?”
“I don’t know.”
I believed her.
Then she turned back.
“There’s something you should know about the Pier Nine accident.”
“What?”
“My sister kept saying the crane didn’t fail.”
I frowned.
“What does she think happened?”
“Someone ordered the safety shutoff disabled.”
My chest tightened.
“That would require executive authorization.”
“I know.”
“Whose?”
Tessa reached into her bag and pulled out a photocopy Mia had kept from the internal investigation.
At the bottom was an approval code.
D.CORVINO.
Dominic.
May you like
The same man trying to seize my harbor property had overridden a safety system months before my shooting.
And three days after the accident, he had personally ordered the original maintenance logs destroyed.
