Chapter 5: Seventeen Years of Lies
Dominic did not go back to the cellar.
He went to his study on the second floor, locked the door, and sat behind his desk with the envelope in front of him and his phone face-down beside it.
He thought about the burning car.
It had been January, eight years ago.
A Tuesday night on a highway outside Poughkeepsie.
The car had gone off the road and caught fire within seconds.
Nathan had pulled him out through the passenger window.
Had dragged him twenty feet through ice and gravel before the fuel tank went.
Dominic had woken up in a hospital with second-degree burns on his left forearm and Nathan sitting in the chair beside the bed.
He had thought about that night many times over the years.
He had thought about it the way a man thinks about the moment that defines a relationship — the proof that cannot be argued with.
He picked up his phone and called a number he had not used in two years.
It rang four times.
"Vale." The voice on the other end was flat and careful.
A man named Caruso, who handled financial intelligence for a network Dominic had built quietly over many years.
"I need everything you have on Gerald Foss.
Movement in the last six months.
Any legal filings, any asset transfers, any meetings with outside counsel."
"That'll take a few hours."
"You have one."
He ended the call.
He opened his laptop and pulled up the records from the Atlantic City meetings — the agenda Nathan had prepared, the contacts Nathan had arranged, the timeline Nathan had built.
He went through it line by line.
Forty minutes later, Caruso called back.
"Foss restructured three holding companies in the last four months," Caruso said.
"Two of them now share a registered agent with a shell entity out of Delaware.
The Delaware entity was incorporated eight months ago."
"Name on the Delaware filing?"
A pause.
"NRC Consulting LLC."
Nathan Richard Cross.
Dominic closed the laptop.
He sat for a moment with his hands flat on the desk.
Then he picked up the phone again and called Daniel.
"Bring Nathan to the study.
Don't tell him why.
Don't let him make any calls on the way."
He set the phone down.
He opened the top drawer of his desk and removed a small recording device — the kind that looked like a pen, that he had carried for years out of habit and had hoped never to need for this particular purpose.
He set it on the desk beside the envelope.
Nathan knocked three minutes later.
"Come in."
Nathan entered.
He had changed his shirt.
The new one was pale blue, pressed, the kind of shirt a man puts on when he wants to look composed.
He glanced at the desk.
At the envelope.
His eyes moved past it quickly.
"You wanted to talk," Nathan said.
"Sit down."
Nathan sat.
"NRC Consulting," Dominic said.
Nathan's expression held for exactly two seconds.
Then something behind it shifted, the way ice shifts before it breaks.
"That's not what you think it is."
"Tell me what it is."
"It's a separate business interest.
Nothing that touches your operations."
"It shares a registered agent with two of Foss's holding companies."
"That's a coincidence of paperwork.
The agent handles dozens of—"
"Nathan." Dominic placed the second photograph on the desk and turned it to face him.
"White Plains.
Eleven days before Atlantic City."
Nathan looked at the photograph.
He did not pick it up.
"Where did you get that?"
"Mia Carter had it."
The name landed.
Nathan's chin lifted slightly.
"She took that from your mail," he said.
"That's exactly the kind of thing I was trying to warn Claire about.
She was going through your—"
"She watched you intercept a courier delivery addressed to me.
She saw you pocket the envelope.
She retrieved it after you failed to find it in her room." Dominic leaned back in his chair.
"What were you going to do with Foss's money, Nathan?"
Silence.
"What did he offer you?"
More silence.
"Seventeen years," Dominic said.
"I want you to understand that I am sitting here giving you the chance to tell me yourself because of seventeen years.
That chance expires when you walk out of this room."
Nathan looked at the photograph for a long moment.
Then he looked up.
"Foss offered me a buyout," he said.
"A clean exit.
Enough to disappear.
I'm fifty-three years old, Dom.
I've been doing this since I was thirty-six.
I wanted out."
"You could have come to me."
"And what would you have said?"
"I would have let you go."
Nathan shook his head slowly.
"You don't let people go.
You never have.
You hold on.
You keep people close because you need them close, and you call it loyalty, but it's—" He stopped.
"Finish it."
"It's control," Nathan said.
"It's always been control."
The room was quiet.
"So you chose Foss," Dominic said.
"I chose myself."
"And Mia?"
Nathan's jaw tightened.
"That wasn't supposed to happen the way it happened."
"But it happened."
"Yes."
Dominic picked up the recording device from the desk.
He held it up so Nathan could see it clearly.
Nathan stared at it.
"Claire is still downstairs," Dominic said.
"I'd like you to think carefully about what you want to say next."
Nathan's hands went to the arms of the chair.
He didn't stand.
But his knuckles went white.
May you like
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"That depends entirely on what you tell me in the next ten minutes."
