Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO HIRED TESSA
The next morning, Tessa didn't come to work.
At nine, another aide knocked on my door.
I refused to let her inside.
At nine-fifteen, I called Tessa.
No answer.
At nine-thirty, I called again.
Still nothing.
By ten, something inside me had moved from concern to suspicion.
At ten-ten, she finally called.
Her voice sounded tight.
“They fired me.”
“For what?”
“Breaking confidentiality.”
“Meaning?”
“Elaine knows I showed you the document.”
I gripped the phone.
“How?”
Silence.
“Tessa.”
“She said there are cameras in employee areas.”
That answer bothered me.
Elaine Mercer hadn't merely employed my caregivers.
She had been watching them.
“Where are you?”
“In my car.”
“Come back.”
“I can't.”
“You can.”
“They'll call police for trespassing.”
“This house belongs to me.”
“For now.”
The words landed harder than she intended.
For now.
That afternoon, Arya arrived with Elaine Mercer.
Elaine was elegant, gray-haired, calm, and expensive in the way only people paid to manage other people's disasters could be.
“Mr. Corvino,” she said. “We are concerned about your recent emotional instability.”
“We?”
She sat across from me.
“Your fiancée. Your medical team. Several senior employees.”
“Dominic?”
She didn't answer.
Enough.
Arya folded her arms.
“Tessa manipulated you.”
“Tessa told me the truth.”
“She is a twenty-five-dollar-an-hour aide with debts.”
“And you're wearing a thirty-thousand-dollar engagement ring while trying to steal my company.”
Arya flinched.
Elaine didn't.
Instead, she opened a leather folder.
Inside was a psychiatric evaluation request.
My name was already printed on it.
“We believe an independent assessment is appropriate.”
I smiled.
“You mean necessary before the competency hearing.”
Arya's eyes widened.
They hadn't expected me to know.
Good.
Elaine closed the folder.
“You're misunderstanding the process.”
“No. I'm understanding it perfectly.”
I pressed the call button attached to my chair.
My attorney walked into the room.
Arya went pale.
I had brought him through the service entrance twenty minutes earlier.
He placed three documents on the table.
One froze Elaine's access to my medical records.
One revoked Arya's legal authority.
And the third ordered preservation of every security recording from the night I was shot.
Elaine finally lost her composure.
Only slightly.
But enough.
As she stood to leave, my attorney leaned toward me.
“Vincent, there's more.”
He waited until Arya and Elaine were gone.
Then he handed me a financial report.
Over the previous six months, nearly twelve million dollars had disappeared from three Corvino companies.
All of it had been transferred through a corporation created two weeks before my shooting.
The registered owner was Dominic Moretti.
May you like
But the mailing address belonged to someone else.
Elaine Mercer.
