Chapter 8
Rosa brought the dress back down.
This time, Dominic did not touch it immediately.
He looked at Vivienne.
“What were you looking for?”
Her eyes remained on the fabric.
“I didn't know.”
Marcus stared at her.
“You searched it?”
She looked at him.
“After Elena died.”
His face changed.
Dominic saw.
Even Marcus had not known.
Vivienne continued.
“Elena told me she made copies.”
“Did she say where?”
“No.”
“Then why the dress?”
“She wore it at the dinner.”
Dominic looked at the torn seam.
Vivienne had spent eighteen months wondering whether something had been hidden inside.
Tonight Aria appeared wearing it.
Vivienne panicked.
The cruelty began to make a terrible kind of sense.
Not acceptable.
Understandable.
She saw Elena’s dress.
She saw Aria.
She saw the past walking directly toward the engagement party.
Dominic handed the dress to Rosa.
“Check every seam.”
Slowly.
Carefully.
No ripping.
No knives.
Rosa examined the lining.
Nothing in the shoulder beyond the claim receipt.
Nothing in the sleeves.
Nothing in the hem.
Vivienne’s breathing eased.
Then Rosa felt something beneath the interior waist seam.
A small hard rectangle.
Marcus stood.
Dominic’s eyes moved toward him.
He sat again.
Rosa opened three stitches.
A microSD card slid into her palm.
No one spoke.
Vivienne covered her mouth.
Marcus stared at it.
Dominic looked at the dress.
Elena had hidden two things inside.
The claim receipt where the shoulder could be opened easily.
The memory card much deeper.
Perhaps she expected one to be found.
Perhaps not the other.
The card contained scanned invoices.
Emails.
Payment logs.
Enough to confirm the overbilling.
But it also contained photographs.
Marcus meeting with Ravello suppliers privately.
Vivienne signing two approvals.
And one screenshot that made Dominic’s hands go still.
A transfer authorization carrying his own digital signature.
$600,000.
Approved eleven months before Elena died.
Dominic stared.
Marcus saw his confusion.
“There.”
His confidence returned.
“You knew.”
Dominic looked at him.
“No.”
“That's your credential.”
“I did not approve this.”
Marcus laughed.
“Everyone says that when paperwork becomes inconvenient.”
Vivienne looked at Dominic carefully.
He recognized his own phrasing from earlier confrontations.
The hypocrisy stung.
The digital specialist reviewed the file.
The authorization had indeed used Dominic’s valid credential.
Not forged.
Not copied.
Used legitimately from his device.
Dominic searched his memory.
Eleven months before Elena’s death, Aria had been hospitalized overnight with pneumonia.
Dominic barely left the pediatric floor.
Vivienne had been there.
Marcus had been there.
So had Elena.
His phone had passed between assistants because he refused to leave Aria.
Dominic looked at Marcus.
“You brought me papers at the hospital.”
Marcus's face changed.
Just slightly.
Dominic remembered.
Vendor approvals.
Security invoices.
Routine transfers.
Stacks of documents while he held his sleeping daughter.
He had signed them without reading closely.
Marcus had not forged Dominic’s authority.
May you like
Dominic had handed it over because he trusted him.
And Elena had discovered the consequences before he did.
