That was enough.
“Where, Arthur?”
“A restaurant.”
“Which one?”
No answer.
Vincent supplied it.
“Gallo’s. Private room upstairs. Thomas showed Arthur shipping records proving millions were being diverted.”
Clare stared at Arthur.
Vincent continued.
“The next morning Thomas received a message from Arthur asking him to meet at Warehouse Seventeen.”
Arthur shouted, “Enough!”
Vincent smiled.
“Tell her.”
Arthur’s hand trembled.
Dominic saw it.
“Tell her.”
Arthur lowered the weapon.
“I sent the message.”
Clare’s face collapsed.
“Why?”
“I wanted the documents.”
“You killed my husband for documents?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Arthur closed his eyes.
“I arrived late.”
Vincent laughed quietly.
“Of course you did.”
Arthur ignored him.
“When I reached the warehouse, Thomas was already dead.”
Clare’s knees nearly buckled.
Dominic reached for her instinctively, but she pulled away from everyone.
“Who killed him?”
Arthur looked toward Vincent.
Vincent shook his head.
“No.”
Arthur’s voice cracked.
“It was Lorenzo.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
His father had been dead for five years.
Thomas died two years ago.
Arthur saw the contradiction on his face.
“Not your father personally.”
He swallowed.
“His organization.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“My father was dead.”
“His system wasn’t.”
Arthur looked around the room.
“You inherited legitimate companies, Dominic. But you also inherited a network of men whose loyalty was never to you. It was to what the Vale name used to represent.”
Vincent spoke quietly.
“Extortion. Smuggling. political payoffs. Blood.”
Dominic looked at him.
“And the money?”
Vincent stepped toward the black medical case.
“I was taking it away from them.”
“What?”
“One hundred eighty million dollars.”
Vincent looked toward Clare.
“Not stolen. Hidden.”
Arthur stared.
Vincent smiled grimly.
“That’s the part you never figured out.”
He turned toward Dominic.
“Your father maintained forty-seven offshore accounts tied to operations that should have died with him. When you started shutting those businesses down, the old network began moving money out before you could seize it.”
“You moved it first?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Trusts.”
“For whom?”
Vincent looked at Clare.
She stared back.
“For families.”
Nobody spoke.
“Families of employees killed in warehouses. Drivers imprisoned for orders they were told they couldn’t refuse. Widows of men who vanished. Children whose fathers carried crimes for Lorenzo Vale.”
Dominic stared at him.
“You stole dirty money to create restitution funds.”
“I recovered dirty money.”
“You lied to me for eight years.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you would have tried to do it legally.”
Despite everything, Arthur almost laughed.
Vincent continued.
“And legally, your father’s old partners would have buried you under lawsuits while they emptied the accounts.”
Dominic studied him.
Something still didn’t fit.
“If you were protecting those families, why sabotage my brace?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
Vincent looked at Arthur.
Arthur looked at Mercer.
Mercer looked toward the floor.
Ellie suddenly spoke.
“The Christmas man.”
Everyone turned toward her.
She pointed.
Not at Vincent.
At the darkened doorway behind him.
There was nobody there.
Then Ellie whispered:
“He was wearing Mr. Vincent’s coat.”
6
Vincent turned.
Dominic felt the answer arrive a second before anyone said it.
The peppermint smell.
The security coat.
Mercer’s spoofed number.
Arthur’s credential.
Someone wasn’t merely framing people.
Someone was wearing their identities.
Vincent’s expression sharpened.
“Uniform inventory.”
Arthur frowned.
“What?”
Vincent ran toward the security corridor.
They followed.
The emergency generators had restored partial power.
At the security office, Vincent opened the electronic inventory.
Every jacket and coat issued to senior protection staff carried a small RFID chip.
He searched.
One coat was missing.
His spare winter security coat.
Checked out eleven weeks earlier.
“By whom?” Dominic asked.
Vincent stared at the record.
“No name.”
“Impossible.”
“The entry was manually overwritten.”
Arthur said, “With administrator access?”
Vincent looked at him.
