Chapter 4
Victoria requested a meeting.
Dante refused to see her alone.
Claire attended.
Victoria brought her own attorney.
Her engagement ring remained on her finger.
Dante noticed.
He said nothing.
Victoria’s cheek showed faint bruising from the confrontation.
Her attorney opened with the issue.
“Before anything else, Dante, my client was struck by you.”
Dante nodded.
“Yes.”
“You understand that remains a separate matter.”
“Yes.”
No excuses.
No attempt to turn Victoria’s conduct into automatic permission for his own.
Claire had made that clear.
Victoria seemed unsettled by his refusal to argue.
Then Dante placed copies of the letters sent to Elena on the table.
“Did you know about these?”
Victoria looked at them.
“Yes.”
Not the answer he expected.
Claire leaned forward.
“How?”
“Preston told me.”
“When?”
“After Elena said she was pregnant.”
Dante watched her.
“Did you know Elena and I had been together?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You weren’t subtle.”
“We were private.”
“You were private in public. That isn’t the same thing.”
Fair.
Victoria continued.
“I knew she was contacting your office.”
“Why were you involved?”
“Because Preston said it could become a problem.”
“For whom?”
Victoria looked toward her attorney.
The attorney advised caution.
Dante waited.
Finally Victoria said, “For your reputation. For the joint venture. For everything.”
“That is not an answer.”
She looked at him.
“You were negotiating hundreds of millions in development financing. You were becoming more public. A pregnant twenty-six-year-old former girlfriend appearing at your house would have become a story.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“She was not appearing at my house.”
“She tried to contact you.”
“That is what people do when they’re carrying someone’s child.”
Victoria looked away.
Claire asked, “Did you authorize the letters?”
“No.”
“Did you help draft them?”
“No.”
“Did you tell Elena Dante knew?”
Victoria hesitated.
“Once.”
Dante went completely still.
“When?”
“About four months ago.”
“How?”
“She called me.”
Elena had never mentioned calling Victoria.
Rebecca later clarified why.
Victoria had called Elena first.
She said she was speaking on Dante’s behalf.
During that call, Victoria told Elena:
Dante knows. He wants the situation handled quietly.
Elena believed her because the formal letters had already arrived.
Dante leaned forward.
“You lied directly to her.”
Victoria’s eyes filled.
“I thought Preston had told you.”
“Did you ask me?”
“No.”
“Then you did not think that. You hoped it.”
She flinched.
That distinction mattered.
“What did Preston tell you?”
“That Thomas had briefed you and you wanted no direct contact.”
Dante looked toward Claire.
A chain of convenient assumptions.
Thomas supposedly told Preston.
Preston told Victoria.
Victoria told Elena.
Nobody asked Dante.
Victoria continued.
“I was trying to protect what we were building.”
“The engagement?”
“Yes.”
“And the Sloan deal?”
Her face changed.
Small.
But Dante caught it.
Claire did too.
Victoria’s attorney interrupted.
“This meeting should not drift into unrelated corporate matters.”
Dante looked at him.
“Then corporate matters are exactly where we go next.”
After Victoria left, Claire said, “She knows the letters are connected to Preston.”
“Yes.”
“She may not know everything.”
Dante nodded.
That possibility irritated him.
He wanted clean categories.
Victim.
Architect.
Accomplice.
Reality rarely cooperated.
Then Rebecca called from Elena’s side.
They had found something else.
The first two months of Elena’s rent were paid.
The third was not.
The support stopped one week after Elena refused to sign the confidentiality agreement.
That could be coincidence.
Then a letter arrived three days later.
Mr. Caradonna’s willingness to assist should not be mistaken for an invitation to create unnecessary public conflict.
Dante read the sentence.
May you like
This was no longer merely financial support.
Someone had used his name to pressure a pregnant woman into silence.
