Chapter 7 - THE MAN WHO REMEMBERED MY GRANDFATHER
His name was Arthur Vale.
Seventy-three.
Retired security contractor.
Living in Florida.
Federal investigators found him before Marco’s lawyers could.
Arthur requested counsel.
Then cooperation.
He admitted entering Samuel Miller’s apartment in 1987.
His instructions came from Salvatore Bellini.
“Retrieve the corrected translation.”
“Threaten him?”
Arthur looked toward the prosecutor.
“Yes.”
“Kill him?”
“No.”
I believed him only because the next part made Salvatore look worse.
Arthur’s crew broke into the apartment.
Samuel had already moved the original.
They found copies.
Destroyed some.
Two days later, Salvatore called again.
Samuel had contacted a federal regulator.
“He said the problem had escalated.”
“What happened?”
Arthur looked down.
“One of Salvatore’s other men followed him.”
“Who?”
“Frank Delano.”
Dead now.
Arthur claimed Delano confronted Samuel behind the parking structure.
The confrontation became physical.
Samuel fell.
Hit his head.
Delano panicked.
Salvatore ordered everyone silent.
Not a planned murder, perhaps.
Still violence ordered to suppress truth.
Still a death concealed afterward.
I sat outside the interview room once it ended.
Dominic found me.
He stopped several feet away.
“Do you want company?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
He walked away.
That mattered.
Twenty minutes later, I found him near the elevators.
“Dominic.”
He turned.
“You can sit.”
We sat.
Neither spoke for a while.
Then he said:
“My father knew.”
“Probably.”
“Lorenzo’s letters show he learned Samuel had been threatened.”
“Yes.”
“He stayed silent.”
“Yes.”
Dominic looked at his hands.
“I spent my entire life thinking my father was ruthless but principled.”
“Those words often coexist only in family stories.”
He almost smiled.
Then:
“I have to turn over the criminal books.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“Not only the title records.”
The hidden part of his empire.
Cash routes.
Extortion income.
Illegal logistics contracts.
Bribery.
He had begun separating legal and criminal operations years earlier but never fully dismantled them.
“Why now?”
“Because I can’t stand in court arguing my father’s silence was cowardice while preserving mine.”
Good answer.
Dangerous answer.
“You could go to prison.”
“Yes.”
“Lose the company.”
“Yes.”
“Victoria?”
“We’re done.”
That was not my concern.
I said so.
He nodded.
“Right.”
Then he added:
“I’m not doing this for you.”
Better.
“I hoped not.”
He looked toward the floor.
“For years, I thought control proved strength.”
“What do you think now?”
“That control is often just fear with staff.”
I laughed despite myself.
Then Elena called me back.
There was another discovery in Victoria’s investigative file.
The dossier did not begin four months earlier.
It began three years earlier.
Before I worked at Maison Étoile.
Before my dissertation focused on Russo title.
Someone had been tracking my academic career since my first Columbia conference paper.
I looked at Victoria.
“Why?”
Her face tightened.
“I didn’t start it.”
“Who did?”
“Marco.”
“Why?”
She looked toward Samuel’s archive.
“Because he knew your grandfather’s missing original correction still existed somewhere.”
May you like
Marco had been waiting for Samuel Miller’s family to lead him to it.
And my dissertation had convinced him I might eventually do exactly that.
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