Chapter 5
Malcolm had been lending money to vendors that depended on Venturi contracts.
Then he approved higher company payments to those same vendors.
The vendors repaid Malcolm.
Technically, several arrangements had legitimate contracts behind them.
Practically, Malcolm had created a system where people profited only if he remained powerful.
Gabriele understood why vendors stopped work the moment Malcolm was suspended.
They did not simply rely on him.
They owed him.
“How long?” Gabriele asked.
Melissa looked through the records.
“At least three years.”
Laura had still been alive when it started.
That mattered because Laura had once told Gabriele she did not trust Malcolm.
He remembered the argument now.
She had been standing in their kitchen, six months pregnant with Theo.
“Everybody around you owes somebody a favor,” she said.
“That’s business.”
“No. That’s a trap.”
Gabriele had laughed.
Laura had not.
He had forgotten the conversation.
Now Melissa showed him an email recovered from an old company archive.
Laura had written to her eighteen months before she died.
Do these vendors actually compete for work, or does Malcolm decide who “wins” before bids are submitted?
Melissa had answered that she would review it.
Then Laura died two weeks later.
Gabriele looked at Melissa.
“What happened to the review?”
Her face tightened.
“You shut down everything Laura had been involved in.”
He remembered.
For months after the accident, he could barely enter his own office.
Anything carrying Laura’s name was boxed.
Postponed.
Ignored.
Malcolm stepped in.
Cordelia ran the household.
They had helped him survive.
At least that was what he had believed.
Melissa continued.
“Malcolm told me you didn’t want Laura’s concerns pursued while you were grieving.”
“Did I say that?”
“Not to me.”
Another message delivered through someone else.
Gabriele stood and walked toward the window.
The hidden truth was not simply that Malcolm had been making money.
It was that Laura had seen the pattern.
And after her death, Malcolm used Gabriele’s grief to bury the review.
“Was Cordelia involved?”
“I don’t know.”
Melissa hesitated.
“But Laura sent one other email.”
She opened it.
Laura had written:
Cordelia knows exactly how Malcolm gets people loyal. She thinks it’s how this family has always survived.
Gabriele stared at the sentence.
His aunt had not merely defended Malcolm because he was her son.
She believed his system was correct.
Debt.
Dependency.
Silence.
Loyalty purchased by making departure expensive.
May you like
That philosophy did not stop at business.
Theo had just experienced the household version of it.
