Chapter 7
Helena refused to answer the question.
Instead, she asked Vincent one of her own.
“Do you know how many people would have lost everything if Dominic Construction failed seven years ago?”
“Not enough to justify stealing.”
“Four hundred employees.”
“Not enough.”
“Pensions.”
“Still not enough.”
“Families who depended on those contracts.”
Vincent stepped closer.
“You do not get to choose which poor family deserves to be robbed so another family can be protected.”
Helena looked at him with genuine anger.
“You say that because you’ve never had to choose.”
Vincent almost replied.
Then stopped.
That sentence mattered.
Helena did not see herself as someone who stole money.
She saw herself as the person who made an impossible decision.
That did not make her right.
But it explained how she had lived with it.
“What happened after the parking structure failed?” Vincent asked.
“You know what happened.”
“No. I know what the newspapers said.”
Helena looked away.
Vincent had Marco retrieve the old investigation.
The structure had failed because a subcontractor substituted lower-grade materials without approval.
Dominic’s company was legally responsible for supervision but had not ordered the substitution.
The subcontractor went bankrupt.
Dominic absorbed the losses.
Helena believed closing the company would punish hundreds of innocent employees for another firm’s fraud.
So she took money from the Relief Trust as a temporary loan.
She planned to repay it.
Then a second project lost money.
Then interest accumulated.
Then lawsuits matured.
Temporary became permanent.
By the time Dominic discovered the truth, the hole was too large to fill quickly.
Vincent understood her motive.
He also understood why she had become dangerous.
Every crime had been committed to prevent the consequences of the previous crime.
The last consequence was Vincent.
That evening Marco brought worse news.
The man suspected of forcing Vincent’s vehicle off the road had been identified through toll and traffic-camera records.
He was not a Caradonna soldier.
He was a private security contractor named Paul Renner.
His company had received three payments during the previous month.
All from a consulting firm controlled by Helena.
Renner had disappeared.
Now the attempted murder existed outside family suspicion.
It had a financial trail.
Vincent had enough to act.
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The question was whether he would keep the evidence inside the family.
Or open a door the Caradonnas had spent generations keeping closed.
