Chapter 10 - No More Private Deals —
That evening, Lorenzo called Andrea.
Victor wanted a meeting.
Private. No lawyers.
He offered to pay Mom two hundred thousand dollars and disappear from the company.
Andrea put the call on speaker only after Mom agreed.
“What did you tell him?” she asked.
“That I won’t meet him alone.”
Mom laughed once.
“Now you understand?”
Lorenzo accepted it.
“Yes.”
The man arrested at the office was a debt collector who had done work for Victor. He claimed he only wanted to persuade Mom to take a call.
Ruiz wasn’t impressed.
Neither was I.
I sat at the hotel desk doing math homework while the adults talked.
A fraction blurred on the page.
All I could see was his hand reaching toward my arm.
Mom noticed.
She ended the conversation and sat on the carpet beside my chair.
“You don’t have to finish tonight.”
“I’m already behind.”
“We’ll talk to your teacher.”
“What if he comes back?”
“He’s in custody.”
“What if somebody else comes?”
Mom’s eyes shone.
“I can’t promise nothing bad will ever happen. I can promise you won’t handle it alone.”
I leaned into her so quickly my pencil fell.
For the first time since the text, I cried like a kid.
Not quietly.
Not politely.
Mom held me through all of it.
The next day, Lorenzo’s attorneys delivered records showing money had been approved for Dad’s death benefit.
One hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
Mom read the number three times.
We had gone hungry while that money sat somewhere under Dad’s name.
The transfer had been marked completed.
The receiving account belonged to a company called Harbor Family Services.
Andrea frowned.
“That isn’t an insurance provider.”
It was a shell company.
Victor controlled it.
There were other payments too.
Other dead workers.
Other families.
Ben had thought Dad’s case was one bad truck and one lie.
It was bigger.
By afternoon, investigators were comparing at least six claims.
Lorenzo signed a statement authorizing access to additional company records. His lawyers warned him the review might expose his own conduct.
He signed anyway.
Then Ruiz called Andrea with news.
Victor’s office was empty.
His house was empty.
His passport was gone.
May you like
But he hadn’t left Detroit.
An hour earlier, someone had used his access card at Northline’s old records warehouse.
