Chapter 9 - THE NIGHT VICTOR STOPPED PRETENDING
The ledger changed everything.
Detective Monroe did not take it home in a purse.
She photographed it in the hotel room, called her supervisor, and obtained formal evidence procedures before moving it.
Elena appreciated that.
Chain of custody mattered.
Victor Sloane’s world began tightening within forty-eight hours.
Subpoenas.
Bank records.
Historic financial transfers.
Connections to Dr. Arden.
The old Port Belladonna fire.
No immediate arrest.
That frustrated Meredith.
“Elena, there are names.”
“Names aren’t convictions.”
“There are payments.”
“Payments require context.”
“You are extremely annoying when you become legally responsible.”
“I work in archives.”
“Same disease.”
Dante smiled from across the room.
Elena looked at him.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Very much.”
Their relationship remained strange.
He no longer assumed proximity.
No unexplained guards inside her space.
No information withheld after the lease revelation.
He answered questions.
Even uncomfortable ones.
Especially those.
“How much illegal income does your family still have?” Elena asked one evening.
Meredith nearly inhaled wine.
Dante considered.
“Less than ten years ago.”
“That’s not a number.”
“No.”
“Do you intend to become fully legitimate?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Working on it.”
“That sounds like a campaign promise.”
“It probably is.”
She did not romanticize him.
He did not ask her to.
That was perhaps why attraction became harder to ignore.
Dante was dangerous.
Not in the silly way society women whispered about men in dark suits.
Actually dangerous.
He had ordered violence in the past.
He admitted it without pride.
Elena hated parts of what he represented.
But she also saw the man trying to unwind a family structure built before he was born.
Neither truth erased the other.
Victor made the next move.
At 11:26 p.m. on a Monday, the fire alarm sounded in Elena’s hotel.
She woke instantly.
Smoke drifted beneath the door.
She called 911.
Then Meredith.
No answer.
Her blood went cold.
Meredith had been staying two rooms down.
Elena ran into the hallway.
Sprinklers activated.
Smoke filled the corridor.
She reached Meredith’s door.
Locked.
“Elena!”
Meredith screamed from inside.
Elena slammed her shoulder against the door.
Nothing.
Then someone came through the smoke.
Dante.
He had been downstairs meeting one of his attorneys.
He kicked near the lock.
Once.
Twice.
The door broke.
Meredith stumbled out coughing.
Behind her, curtains burned.
A broken bottle lay near the window.
Accelerant.
This was no accident.
Dante grabbed both sisters.
“Stairs.”
They moved.
Guests poured into the hall.
Sirens screamed outside.
On the fifth-floor landing, a man in hotel maintenance clothing appeared.
Dante stopped.
The man reached inside his jacket.
Dante shoved Elena and Meredith behind the concrete wall.
A gunshot cracked.
Elena screamed.
Dante’s security came upward from below.
The man fled.
No one shot back blindly.
Thank God.
Police captured him in the service alley ten minutes later.
He carried a second incendiary device.
His phone contained one outgoing call shortly before the fire.
A prepaid number.
That number had contacted a Sloane corporate security manager fourteen times in the previous month.
Victor had stopped pretending.
Dante suffered a graze along his upper arm.
Nothing major.
He refused hospital care until Elena threatened to call an ambulance personally.
“You enjoy ordering people.”
“Only when they’re bleeding on hotel carpeting.”
At Northwestern Memorial, Elena sat beside him while a doctor stitched the wound.
Dante looked toward her.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m furious.”
“Good.”
“Stop saying fear and anger are good.”
“I didn’t.”
“Your face did.”
He smiled.
Then winced when the doctor tightened a stitch.
Elena stared.
“You could have been killed.”
“Yes.”
“Meredith could have been killed.”
“Yes.”
“I could have—”
Her voice broke.
Dante’s expression changed.
“Elena.”
She looked away.
He waited until the doctor left.
Then said quietly, “Come here.”
She looked at him.
“Is that an order?”
“No.”
She moved closer anyway.
He held out his uninjured hand.
She took it.
That was all.
No dramatic kiss.
No claim.
Just contact.
Her pulse slowly settled.
“I hate this,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Needing anyone.”
Dante looked at their hands.
“Needing is not surrender.”
She looked up.
“Who taught you that?”
“No one.”
He gave a small smile.
“I’m learning late.”
Police arrested the maintenance impersonator.
His name was Owen Keller.
Former private military contractor.
Current consultant for Sloane Risk Management.
Victor denied knowledge.
Then Keller asked for a lawyer.
By morning, federal investigators entered the case due to interstate financial crimes and corruption allegations.
The ledger had become bigger than the Voss family.
Garrick received protective security.
He hated it.
Meredith found that funny.
“Dad spent his entire life controlling doors. Now someone else tells him where he can walk.”
Preston came to the hospital.
Not for Elena.
For Meredith.
She met him in the cafeteria.
Two hours later, she returned.
“He wants to stay married.”
Elena waited.
“What do you want?”
Meredith sat.
“I want him to choose me when it costs him something.”
“What would that look like?”
“He leaves the Hale board.”
Elena blinked.
“That’s significant.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask?”
“No.”
“He offered.”
Interesting.
“And?”
“He also gave investigators every Hale document involving Sloane and Dad.”
Elena studied her sister.
“You believe him.”
“I believe he is trying.”
“That wasn’t my statement.”
Meredith smiled.
“No. It wasn’t.”
Maybe their marriage could become something chosen after beginning as something arranged.
Maybe not.
But at least Meredith was deciding now.
The breakthrough against Victor came from an unexpected place.
Dr. Michael Arden.
He was alive.
Living in Arizona.
Retired.
And once investigators confronted him with ledger payments, he asked for immunity discussions.
Elena flew to Phoenix with Detective Monroe’s team only as a victim witness, not investigator.
She did not attend the first interview.
Afterward, Monroe told her what Arden admitted.
Sloane money had paid his gambling debts.
He altered Lucia’s prescription.
Elena stopped breathing.
“How?”
“He increased one opioid dosage.”
“Why?”
“To make her cognitively impaired.”
“Not kill her?”
“He denies intending death.”
“Who asked him?”
“Edmund Sloane.”
Victor’s father.
“Did Garrick know?”
“Arden says no.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Her father was guilty of concealment afterward.
Not the act.
That distinction mattered.
“Did the overdose kill Mom?”
“No clear evidence.”
Lucia had terminal ovarian cancer.
Medical records suggested the dosing event worsened dehydration and confusion but occurred months before her eventual death.
It might have shortened her life.
Might not.
There was no way to prove.
Elena cried anyway.
Her mother had been dying.
And someone still decided she needed to be easier to control.
Arden also admitted Edmund Sloane ordered him to report Lucia’s conversations with doctors and attorneys.
Victor knew about some of it.
How much remained unclear.
But Victor had later inherited the ledger, the debts, and the strategy.
He continued the pattern.
Family alliances.
Pressure.
Marriage.
Control.
By the time Elena returned to Chicago, prosecutors had enough to charge Victor with conspiracy, bribery, fraud, witness tampering, and attempted obstruction related to the hotel attack pending Keller’s cooperation.
Victor disappeared before the arrest warrant could be served.
Private jet grounded.
Passport flagged.
Home empty.
Dante received the call at 6:40 a.m.
“He ran.”
Elena felt fear become cold.
“Where?”
“Unknown.”
Meredith whispered, “Will he come after us?”
Dante did not lie.
“Possibly.”
Elena hated him for that honesty.
Loved him a little for it too.
Three hours later, Garrick vanished.
His security detail found his office empty.
His phone remained on the desk.
A note sat beneath it.
Bring Elena to Port Belladonna. Midnight. Come alone if you want your father alive.
Meredith went white.
Elena stared at the note.
Dante said one word.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“What?”
“You are not going alone.”
“It says—”
“I can read.”
“That is my father.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going.”
“Elena.”
She stepped close.
“This is the part where you prove whether you heard me.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
She continued.
“I decide.”
Silence.
Then Dante nodded once.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“But you’re not going alone.”
“That sounds like you didn’t hear me.”
“No.”
His eyes held hers.
“It sounds like I’m allowed to decide whether I let someone I care about walk into a trap without trying to help.”
Elena stopped.
Someone I care about.
No possession.
No order.
Choice meeting choice.
“What do you suggest?”
A faint smile.
“Now we’re negotiating.”
By midnight, Victor Sloane believed Elena was coming to Port Belladonna alone.
May you like
He was wrong.
But he was not wrong in the way he expected.
