Chapter 8
Deleting the emails changed everything.
Dominic claimed it was routine cleanup.
Grace recovered enough metadata to show the deletions were selective.
Messages involving North Harbor.
Vendor reviews.
Property discussions.
Community-relations budgets.
Rocco faced a choice.
The Castellano way was obvious.
Bring Dominic into a room.
Close the door.
Demand the truth.
Handle whatever happened privately.
That was how his father would have done it.
How Rocco himself had done things for decades.
Claire offered another path.
“Authorize a full independent forensic audit.”
Rocco looked at her.
“Of the club?”
“And the family entities financially connected to it.”
That was the problem.
The Castellano Club was legitimate.
Not every company around it had always been so clean.
An independent audit could discover things unrelated to Dominic.
Old tax problems.
Questionable payments.
Transactions Rocco would rather explain to nobody.
“You understand what you’re asking.”
“Yes.”
“I could hurt my own family.”
“Yes.”
“People who had nothing to do with Dominic.”
“If the records show misconduct, then they didn’t have nothing to do with it.”
Rocco disliked that sentence.
Which usually meant he needed to hear it.
He looked through the office window.
Maeve and her mother had come to deliver documents Claire requested.
The little girl was sitting outside with a coloring book one of the receptionists found for her.
Months earlier, Dominic had trained everyone in that lobby to see children like Maeve as contamination.
Now the receptionist was helping her choose crayons.
Rocco signed the audit authorization.
Once the forensic team entered the records, he could not control what they found.
He could not quietly withdraw only the embarrassing parts.
He could not protect Dominic without exposing himself.
The decision was nearly impossible to reverse.
Claire took the signed document.
“You sure?”
“No.”
Rocco looked toward Maeve.
“That’s why I signed it.”
The forensic team began the following Monday.
Three days later, they found something neither Rocco nor Grace expected.
May you like
The club’s neighborhood-support fund was almost empty.
It should have contained more than $1.8 million.
