Chapter 11 - NO MORE CLEAN HANDS
They released Dominic late the next morning after his new attorney arrived.
He was not cleared.
Brooks made that plain.
“We’ll be seeking your business records. All of them.”
“You’ll get them.”
“People say that until we ask for the accounts they actually use.”
“You’ll get those too.”
Hannah waited in the hallway.
Grace slept against Rosa’s shoulder nearby. Seeing her daughter broke something Hannah had been holding together all night.
She crossed the hall and took her.
Dominic stopped several feet away.
For a moment, he wanted Hannah to look at him with gratitude.
The wish disgusted him.
She owed him nothing.
“Did you know?” she asked.
“About Julian’s murder? No.”
“About people getting threatened?”
He could have chosen careful words.
He had paid lawyers to choose them for years.
“Yes.”
She nodded once.
“And you let me clean your house.”
“Yes.”
“My whole life could fit into two bags. I worried about breaking a lamp that cost more than my rent.”
Dominic looked at Grace.
“I can’t change what I was.”
“Then don’t ask me to make you feel better about it.”
She walked away.
That afternoon, Dominic opened his accounts to the investigators.
The business began to shake.
Two lenders called in loans. A partner resigned. News vans gathered outside the estate.
Men who had called him brother stopped answering.
Celia released a statement describing the investigation as a misunderstanding caused by a former employee.
Hannah read it from the apartment Brooks had arranged through a witness-support contact.
Former employee.
Julian reduced to a problem on someone else’s payroll.
Then came the second story.
A source claimed Hannah had tried to extort Dominic using an unverified claim of paternity.
Her old apartment address appeared online.
Rosa sat beside her while Grace played with a wooden spoon.
“Don’t read it.”
“They’re making him into a thief and me into a liar.”
“People who know nothing talk cheaply.”
But rent was not cheap. Diapers were not cheap. Neither was the lawyer Hannah suddenly needed.
At six, an attorney called.
Dominic had offered to fund independent representation, with Hannah choosing the lawyer and controlling every decision.
No conditions.
She accepted after asking the attorney to put that in writing.
Then she called Dominic.
“Don’t send me jewelry. Don’t buy me a house.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Help me tell the truth.”
He closed his eyes.
“All right.”
When he hung up, an email arrived from Celia.
Attached was a recording.
Dominic’s own voice.
“If Julian won’t cooperate, cut him loose.”
May you like
Below it, she had written:
Imagine how that will sound to a jury.
