Chapter 3
By morning, the canceled engagement was already becoming a business problem.
Dante’s companies owned restaurants, warehouses, private clubs, and the planetarium.
Preston managed vendor relationships across several of them.
Victoria’s family had also committed capital to a planned hotel development.
Removing the Sloans would cost Dante millions.
He did it anyway.
Preston’s company credentials were suspended.
Victoria was removed from every guest and residence list.
The hotel partnership was frozen pending review.
Dante expected anger.
He got fear.
At 9:40, Victoria called him twelve times.
At 10:15, Preston’s attorney sent a letter demanding his access be restored and accusing Dante of assault.
Rachel read it across Dante’s office.
“They’re going to use what happened last night.”
“I hit him after he swung at me.”
“That part may be defensible.”
She paused.
“Victoria is different.”
Dante said nothing.
He knew.
Stopping her from reaching Elena was one thing.
The slap would be examined separately.
“I’m not asking anyone to lie.”
“Good.”
Rachel closed the letter.
“Because Elena needs you credible more than she needs you intimidating.”
That irritated him because it was true.
A digital review of Dante’s personal phone found no calls from Elena.
But his carrier records showed something strange.
Two calls from her number had reached his account.
Both were forwarded automatically to an office line.
Dante had never set that rule.
His technology manager traced the change.
It had been made five months earlier from an administrator account assigned to Preston.
Then Rachel received the certified-mail record.
Preston had personally signed for Elena’s letter.
One intercepted letter could be explained.
A call-forwarding change could be explained.
Together, they were harder.
Dante went home that evening to a house still decorated for an engagement celebration that would never happen.
Victoria’s flowers remained in the foyer.
Her dress bags were upstairs.
Her photographs sat beside Dante’s.
He removed none of them.
Not yet.
Rachel had warned him not to touch anything that might later matter.
At 7:12, Dante received a photograph from Elena.
It showed the passenger side of her damaged car after the Evanston incident.
Dante enlarged it.
There was a streak of black paint along the door.
Beneath the photograph Elena wrote:
The police said the other vehicle was probably an SUV.
Dante stared at it.
Preston drove a black Escalade.
That proved nothing.
But the Caradonna vehicle logs could prove where it had been.
Dante called his security director.
“Pull every record from six weeks ago.”
The answer came twenty minutes later.
Preston’s Escalade had not been in Chicago that night.
But another Caradonna vehicle had.
May you like
A black company Suburban.
And Preston had checked it out personally.
