Chapter 16
Inside was a faded photograph of my parents standing beside a lake.
My mother was laughing, one hand pressed against her stomach.
She had been pregnant with me then.
My father stood behind her, smiling at the camera with an expression I had almost forgotten existed.
There was also a hotel receipt.
Lakeshore Hotel.
Room 217.
The date was thirteen years earlier.
Beneath it was a note in my father’s handwriting.
*If anything happens, the records are with Elena.
She knows where to go.*
Elena.
My mother.
I unfolded another paper.
It was a ledger page, covered in columns of numbers and names.
Some had been crossed out.
Beside several entries were initials I didn’t recognize.
Beside one entry, my father had written:
*Payments made without authorization.
Copies secured.*
I looked at Dominic.
“What are these records?”
“Accounts,” he said.
“My father’s.”
“Illegal accounts?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your father’s business involved more than property development.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t soften it.
He didn’t pretend.
“My father used legitimate companies to conceal other dealings.
I knew that much.
I didn’t know the full structure.”
“And my father discovered it?”
“Apparently.”
I turned another page.
A list of dates filled the paper, followed by initials.
One set appeared repeatedly.
E.M.
My mother.
“She was keeping records,” I whispered.
Dominic stepped closer, but stopped several feet away.
“It seems so.”
“Why would she help him?”
“Maybe she wasn’t helping him at first.”
The thought took shape slowly.
My mother had worked as an accountant before I was born.
I remembered her telling people she had left the profession after I came along, but I had never questioned where she had worked.
She had always been careful with money, careful with documents, careful with the truths she placed in front of me.
“She found something,” I said.
“Probably.”
“And my father tried to expose it.”
“Probably.”
I looked at the hotel receipt again.
“Why did he give you the notebook?”
Dominic’s face tightened.
“I don’t know.”
“You were there.”
“I was seventeen.
My father told me to collect something from room 217.
When I arrived, your father was waiting.”
“What did he say?”
Dominic lowered his eyes.
“He said my father had sent me because he didn’t trust anyone older.”
“That sounds like him.”
“You remember?”
“Not clearly.
But he used to say adults were often too committed to their own stories to recognize the truth.”