Chapter 12 - THE COST OF THE TRUTH
Daniel's notebook made the shipments real.
Dates matched gate records.
Weights matched copies kept by a freight contractor.
Payments matched accounts Richard had insisted were Rose's responsibility.
Owen's account still needed checking.
Investigators compared it with the old fire report, phone records, and the recovered papers.
Ada answered questions about Daniel's last call until her voice wore out.
Then she went home and washed the same clean plate three times.
Rose gently took it from her.
“You can stop.”
Ada gripped the edge of the sink.
“I keep thinking he must have waited for someone.”
Rose stayed beside her.
There was no useful sentence for that.
Gabriel arrived later with his attorney and a folder of his own records.
He had collected fees for protecting businesses around the harbor.
Some had paid because they wanted his connections.
Others had paid because refusing a Moretti did not feel like a choice.
Daniel's email had threatened an arrangement Gabriel preferred not to examine.
“I didn't order the fire,” he told Rose.
“But I helped build the place where Richard thought he could get away with it.”
His lawyer looked uncomfortable.
Gabriel kept speaking.
“The investigators will hear that from me.”
Rose studied him.
“Even if it costs you?”
“It already cost someone else.”
He handed Lena the signed cancellation of every marriage-related condition.
The document released any claim he might assert against Rose under the proposed arrangement.
The business purchase was stopped separately.
Her father's debts would be handled through the proper proceedings, without her body or future offered as payment.
Then Gabriel placed the diamond necklace on the table.
Rose looked at the closed case.
“I left that behind for a reason.”
He nodded and took it back.
At the door, she asked, “Why did you smile when I ran?”
He took a moment.
“Because you surprised me.
I treated your escape like something interesting happening to me.”
“And now?”
“Now I wish you hadn't needed a window.”
After he left, Ada's shop phone rang.
Richard's voice came through the speaker.
“Rose, we need to finish this without the lawyers.”
May you like
She turned toward the front window.
His car was already outside.
