Chapter 78: Dominic's Revelation
Dominic said: “I want to tell you everything I did. Not because I’m proud of it.”
They were in the garden after dinner — the same garden where she had sat with the message from Arthur Reyes and thought about whether to reply. It was a cold evening in late autumn, clear enough that the night sky had the quality it only had in cold months, and Dominic had brought a blanket that he had placed over her shoulders without asking, which was the kind of thing he did without making it into a gesture.
He told her everything.
The Apex review commissioned through the Luxembourg entity. The timing — seventy-two hours, which had required relationships he had spent years cultivating with people who owed him precision in return for precision. Gerald Fitch, who had been identified and positioned weeks before the mall incident because Dominic maintained standing intelligence on anyone who had intersected with Lena’s past in ways that required attention. The investors who had been contacted through third parties — not coercion, simply information placed with people whose rational responses were predictable. The Marcus Webb arrangement, which he described with the flat precision of someone reporting a completed operation and not enjoying the report.
He told her about the Alderton lien on the apartment and how long it had been in place and when he had decided to activate it.
He told her about the article that had lasted eleven minutes, and the fourteen-page letter that had been waiting.
And then he told her why he had stopped.
“I stopped after the settlement,” he said. “Not because there was nothing left to do. There were things I could have continued. The class action inquiry — I had relationships that could have accelerated that considerably. The documentary team — I knew they were producing it, and I had information that would have made certain sections more comprehensive.” He paused. “I chose not to.”
She waited.
“Because you went to the meeting,” he said. “When you agreed to see him at the foundation, on your terms, in your room — I understood that you had taken it from there. That you didn’t need the machinery anymore. That what happened next was yours to complete, not mine.”
She looked at him.
“I am not proud of all of it,” he said again. “The Webb arrangement specifically. That was — the line between managing a liability and something crueler is not always clear to me in the moment. I think I crossed it there. I think I knew at the time.”
She was quiet for a while.
“Why are you telling me now?” she asked.
“Because you are my wife,” he said, “and I have been carrying something I had not told you completely, and that is a form of distance I don’t want between us.”
The garden was quiet around them.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
He looked at her.
“I already knew most of it,” she said.