Chapter 11
Dominic’s defense changed.
He no longer denied the structure.
He argued legality.
Businesses fail.
Lenders lend.
Buyers buy.
Managers negotiate aggressively.
His attorneys insisted that commercial pressure was not automatically criminal.
Rocco’s lawyers agreed with one part of that.
Aggressive business was not itself a crime.
False performance reports were another matter.
So were misleading financial representations, concealed conflicts of interest, undisclosed related-party transactions, and using management authority to benefit a company Dominic secretly controlled.
Investigators focused on evidence.
Not outrage.
That mattered.
Dominic eventually agreed to cooperate after several former Meridian employees confirmed he directed the acquisition strategy.
His cooperation was not heroic.
It was practical.
He faced exposure.
He chose to reduce it.
He admitted instructing staff to manufacture quality-review holds.
He admitted failing to disclose his interest in DCC Management.
He admitted using nonpublic vendor-payment information to identify distressed acquisition targets.
Then investigators asked about Maeve.
Dominic’s face changed.
“That wasn’t part of this.”
The investigator waited.
“She came up to some bum in the lobby.”
“Your uncle.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Would it have been acceptable if he were homeless?”
Dominic looked down.
No financial theory helped him.
No presentation about integration.
No argument about legacy inefficiency.
He had struck a child’s food from an adult’s hand, kicked away her coins, and shoved her when she tried to pick them up.
Because he could.
Rocco read that section of the transcript twice.
It mattered more to him than Dominic’s explanation of North Harbor.
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The financial scheme revealed what Dominic wanted.
The lobby revealed who he had become while pursuing it.
