Chapter 9: The Last Move Dominic Made
We spent two hours in that café.
By the time we left, we had a plan, a lawyer's name from Renata's contact list, and a meeting scheduled for the following morning.
Cecilia took photographs of every page in the folder.
Renata kept the originals.
I wrote out a formal statement — three pages, handwritten, covering everything I had seen from the moment I noticed the cake to the moment Harlan had let me leave the building.
The lawyer's name was Patricia Osei.
Renata had worked with her once before, years ago, on a case involving financial misconduct inside a family estate.
She was not the kind of lawyer who needed things explained twice.
Patricia met us the next morning in her office on the fourteenth floor of a building that smelled like old paper and certainty.
She read my statement first, then the financial records, then a separate document Renata produced from the bottom of the satchel — a copy of the original autopsy report on Cecilia's husband, with three handwritten annotations in the margins that a forensic toxicologist had added after a private review.
Patricia set it down.
She looked at Cecilia.
"How long have you suspected?" she asked.
"Since the week after the funeral," Cecilia said.
"He was forty-four.
He ran six miles every morning.
He had a full cardiac workup three months before he died and everything was normal." She paused.
"But I had no proof.
And Dominic was very kind to me in the weeks after.
Very present.
Very helpful with the estate arrangements."
"Of course he was," Patricia said.
She picked up her phone and made a call.
She spoke for four minutes in a low voice, using terms I only partially understood.
When she hung up, she looked at all three of us.
"I have a contact at the financial crimes unit who has been building a separate case against Dominic Voss for eighteen months," she said.
"Unrelated to this — a pattern of asset concealment across three family trusts.
They've been waiting for something that breaks the surface." She tapped the folder.
"This breaks the surface."
"What about Warren?" I asked.
"Warren Holt will be interviewed before the end of the week.
The payment records alone are enough for that." She looked at Cecilia.
"He will almost certainly cooperate in exchange for reduced exposure.
That is not good news emotionally, but it is very good news evidentially."
Cecilia nodded once.
"And Dominic?"
"Dominic will know something has moved within forty-eight hours.
He has people in enough places that word will reach him." Patricia leaned forward.
"That is why I need you to take Oliver somewhere Dominic doesn't know about, starting tonight.
Not forever.
Ten days.
Two weeks at most."
"My sister," Cecilia said immediately.
"In Edinburgh.
Dominic has never met her."
"Go tonight if you can."
Cecilia looked at me.
"Will you be safe?"
"Harlan has my name," I said.
"But I'm not the threat he's focused on."
"You're still a witness."
"I know." I looked at Patricia.
"Is there anything I should do?"
"Stay reachable.
Don't discuss this with anyone outside this room.
And if Harlan or anyone connected to Dominic contacts you —" she slid a card across the desk — "call me before you respond to them."
I took the card.
That afternoon, Dominic Voss made his last move.
He didn't know it was his last.
He sent Harlan to the temp agency with a story about a theft at the banquet and a request for my full employment records and home address.
The agency manager — following protocol — told Harlan that any such request required a formal written complaint filed with their legal department.
Harlan filed it.
By the time it reached the legal department, Patricia had already contacted the agency and placed a flag on my file.
That evening, Patricia called me.
"The financial crimes unit executed a search of Dominic's primary residence this afternoon," she said.
"They found a secondary phone in his study.
The messages on it include a conversation with Gregor Saal from three weeks ago." A pause.
"The phrase used is 'the boy's portion.' That phrase appears four times."
I sat down on my kitchen floor.
"They're treating it as a conspiracy to commit grievous harm to a minor," she said.
May you like
"Dominic's attorney has already been contacted.
He is not, at this moment, a free man."
