Chapter 8 - THE MAN WHO COULD NOT APOLOGIZE|
Roman did not open the ledger in front of Norah's aunt.
He took the box back to the car and ordered Marcus to secure it. Then he sat beside Norah in silence as the city passed outside the windows.
She watched him carefully.
He had become unusually quiet.
“Your father knew your family was involved in this?” she asked.
“I don't know.”
“That's not the same as no.”
Roman looked at her.
“My father built the organization I inherited. He made deals with men who believed the law was something other people had to obey.”
“And you?”
“I continued what he built.”
“Without asking what it cost?”
The question landed between them.
Roman stared through the windshield.
“For a long time, I thought control was the same thing as strength.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
The answer was so honest that Norah did not know what to say.
Back at the estate, Roman ordered a private meeting with his accountant and security chief. Norah asked to be present.
“You don't have to sit through a financial review,” he told her.
“It's my father's evidence.”
“Then you have every right to hear it.”
He stepped aside.
The small gesture mattered more to her than he realized.
The accountant opened the ledger.
Page after page contained payments to shell companies, transfers to offshore accounts, and records of shipments that did not appear in the organization's official books.
Several entries were signed by Victor Costa.
Others bore the initials of Roman's late father.
At the bottom of one page was a payment made two days before Norah's father died.
The recipient was a private security company.
The amount was enough to buy a house.
Norah gripped the edge of the table.
“Who received that money?”
The accountant adjusted his glasses.
“The records are incomplete.”
Roman looked at Marcus.
“Find the company.”
Marcus nodded.
Then the accountant turned another page.
A handwritten note appeared in the margin.
Bennett has a copy. If he talks, silence him.
Norah's face drained of color.
Roman stood so abruptly that his chair struck the wall.
“Who wrote that?”
The accountant examined the handwriting.
“I can't be certain.”
Roman leaned over the table.
“Try.”
The man swallowed.
“It resembles your father's handwriting.”
Silence filled the room.
Norah felt as though the floor had vanished beneath her feet.
Roman looked at the note again.
“My father died twenty years ago,” he said.
“Your father died fifteen years ago,” Marcus corrected quietly.
Roman's jaw tightened.
He had been fourteen when his father died in a car accident outside Boston. The organization had called it an unfortunate tragedy. Roman had accepted the explanation because he had been a child, because his mother had been grieving, and because the adults around him had insisted there were no questions worth asking.
Now the ledger suggested that his father had been connected to the same corruption that had destroyed Norah's family.
Roman turned to her.
“I will find out what happened.”
Norah's eyes burned.
“And if the truth implicates your family?”
“Then I'll face it.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No,” he said. “I expect to prove it.”
For the first time, Norah saw the man beneath the reputation.
Not a savior.
Not an untouchable boss.
A man who had inherited a kingdom without knowing what had been buried beneath its foundations.
That evening, Roman found Norah in the library.
She was sitting beside the window with her father's letter in her lap.
“May I sit?”
She nodded.
He took the chair across from her.
“I owe you an apology.”
Norah looked up.
“For what?”
“For allowing you to believe you owed a debt that had already been paid. For not investigating the people who worked for me. For treating your laughter like an offense.”
She studied him.
“You were jealous.”
Roman's expression tightened.
“Yes.”
“Of Finn?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“Because you smiled at him in a way you never smiled at me.”
Norah's heart gave an uncomfortable little twist.
“That wasn't his fault.”
“I know.”
“And you punished me for it.”
“I know.”
She looked down.
“Then don't ask me to forgive you because you finally understand what you did.”
Roman nodded.
“I won't.”
He stood to leave.
At the door, Norah spoke.
“Roman?”
He turned.
“If you're serious about changing, start by giving me the freedom to choose what happens next.”
Roman met her gaze.
“You have it.”
For the first time, he meant it.
But as he left the library, Marcus approached him with a new report.
“The security company from the ledger has been identified.”
Roman opened the file.
The name on the first page belonged to a man he had trusted for years.
May you like
His family's former attorney.
And the final page contained a photograph of the attorney meeting with Victor Costa the night before Roman's father died.
