Chapter 10 - THE BROTHER HE DIDN’T KNOW
Brooks questioned them separately.
Dominic sat in a plain room with a bottle of water he never opened.
Across the table, she placed the invoice.
“Your attorney arranged the payment.”
“So it appears.”
“Your signature authorized it.”
“Yes.”
“You understand you may be describing a crime you helped finance.”
Dominic looked at his own name.
For years, he had kept his distance from details because distance felt like innocence.
Now a maid and a baby had dragged the details into his office.
“Yes,” he said.
In the next room, Hannah gave Brooks the flash drive.
Celia had called six times.
Hannah had answered none of them.
The protected folder still would not open.
A technician tried Julian’s birthday, then Grace’s name.
Nothing.
Hannah stared at the screen.
“He didn’t know she was a girl.”
“What did he call the baby?”
“Little trouble.”
They tried it.
Nothing.
Then Hannah remembered the medal.
Not the inscription.
The story Julian had told while fastening it around her neck.
“My brother gave me this because he thought I’d get lost.”
“What did he say?”
Hannah closed her eyes.
“Always come home.”
The folder opened.
A video filled the screen.
Julian sat at Hannah’s kitchen table, one arm bandaged.
Alive after the funeral.
Hannah pressed her fist against her mouth.
“If you’re seeing this, I didn’t fix it,” he said.
His voice was tired. Familiar. Terribly ordinary.
“Dom, the fire was supposed to be my way out. Vincent helped arrange it. No one was supposed to get hurt. They used a body, and I didn’t ask whose.”
He looked down.
“I told myself that made it different.”
Brooks watched without moving.
“Then Vincent found out about Hannah. He said the debt didn’t die with my name. I took money because I thought I could buy us enough distance.”
Julian rubbed his face.
“I was wrong.”
He lifted a stack of papers.
“The transfers go through Celia’s holding companies. Vincent moves the cash. She makes it look clean.”
Hannah began to cry silently.
Julian leaned toward the camera.
“Dom, they told me you knew.”
A pause.
“I believed them because I’d seen what you let happen when the money was good.”
In the other room, Dominic watched the same recording.
His brother’s final words came through the speaker.
“If you want to prove me wrong, don’t protect the name.”
May you like
Julian’s eyes filled the screen.
“Protect them.”
