Chapter 6
Dorian answered differently.
“No.”
We sat in my office before dawn.
He looked exhausted.
Good.
“Did Elspeth know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong.”
He flinched.
“You worked together for four years.”
“On the security scheme.”
“Not the dinner?”
“No.”
He claimed Vivian’s death shocked him.
I believed part of that.
He had not expected it.
But afterward, he understood immediately what exposure would mean.
If I learned Vivian had been investigating him, every false warning would unravel.
So he controlled the story.
Accident.
Tragic contamination.
No one’s fault.
A grieving husband does not interrogate everyone if his most trusted security man tells him there is nothing to find.
I stared at him.
“You used my grief.”
His face tightened.
“I contained a family disaster.”
There.
Language again.
“You contained yourself.”
He said nothing.
Then I asked about the kitchen.
Dorian knew one important detail.
Before dinner, Vivian had requested a separate dessert.
A staff member prepared one.
Safe for her.
It disappeared.
My hands tightened.
“Disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“Who moved it?”
Silence.
“Elspeth?”
“I never proved it.”
I stood.
“You never tried.”
That hurt him.
Good.
Dorian had been physically present near the service room when a server asked where Vivian’s plate had gone.
He told the server not to disturb the hostess.
He saw Elspeth carry another plate toward the table.
He did not stop her.
Why?
Because Vivian had confronted him earlier that evening.
She told him she was exposing everything.
Dorian was angry.
Humiliated.
He let the tension continue because he wanted Vivian discredited as emotional before she spoke to me.
He did not expect her to die.
But he watched the conditions form.
Then after she did, he buried the questions.
Not murderer.
Not innocent.
That distinction mattered.
“What happened to the server?”
“She quit.”
“Name.”
He gave it.
Claire Monroe.
For two years, Dorian knew there was a witness who had asked about Vivian’s separate plate.
For two years, he never told me.
I looked at him.
“You don’t work for me anymore.”
His face changed.
“Ronan—”
May you like
“No.”
Eleven years of loyalty did not survive one night of choosing self-preservation over my wife’s truth.
