Chapter 4 - Roman’s Sister
Leah Warren refused to meet at a Vale property.
She refused to meet at a police station.
She refused the Foundation, the bank, and three neutral law offices.
Finally she chose a public botanical garden at noon.
Emma approved.
Roman hated it.
“Too many entrances.”
“That’s why she chose it.”
“Too many civilians.”
“That is also why.”
Roman looked at her.
“You’re enjoying disagreeing with me.”
“A little.”
Leah arrived alone.
Forty years old.
Dark blond hair.
Gray-green eyes.
The resemblance to Roman was not obvious until she turned her head.
Then Emma saw Dominic Vale’s profile from old photographs.
Roman saw it too.
His expression changed.
Leah stopped six feet away.
“Roman?”
“Yes.”
She looked at Vivian.
“And you’re Vivian.”
Vivian’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Leah gave a small, sad smile.
“You look nicer than Thomas described.”
Vivian laughed through tears.
“That is an extremely low standard.”
The tension broke.
They sat beneath a glass roof surrounded by winter orchids.
Leah told them what happened.
Her mother Catherine confessed the truth shortly before dying of cancer.
Thomas moved Leah to Colorado under the name Leah Warren.
He told her Dominic Vale was a violent criminal who had threatened Catherine.
For years, she believed him.
Then Catherine’s sister mailed Leah letters Thomas had hidden.
The letters showed Dominic had tried to contact his daughter.
Leah began investigating.
“Why not contact Roman?” Emma asked.
Leah looked at him.
“You were twenty-six and already in every newspaper.”
“Fair.”
“I thought you might be like Dominic.”
Roman almost asked which version.
He didn’t.
Leah continued.
Two years ago, she found Samuel Reed’s name in one of Catherine’s letters.
She searched public records and found Emma.
She never contacted her.
“Why?”
“Because someone else was already watching you.”
Grant.
Emma felt cold.
Leah had seen him outside Emma’s workplace six months earlier.
She traced him to Northbridge.
Then she discovered Northbridge’s connection to Vivian.
“I assumed the Vales were watching you because Samuel left you something.”
Vivian said, “I was watching her because I feared Wren was.”
Leah nodded.
“We were all protecting each other so badly that we became impossible to distinguish from the threat.”
Emma looked at Roman.
That sentence hit both of them.
Leah had another revelation.
Grant was not merely a contractor.
His father, Peter Keller, had been one of the two employees killed in the warehouse fire twenty-two years earlier.
Grant grew up believing Dominic Vale caused the fire.
Thomas Wren personally helped his mother secure a settlement.
Roman understood.
“Wren raised him on a lie.”
Leah nodded.
“And now uses him.”
Emma felt unexpectedly sad.
It did not excuse Grant.
But it explained the obsession.
Grant had dated Emma because of Samuel Reed.
Not coincidence.
Not romance.
An assignment.
The realization made her nauseous.
Roman noticed.
“You okay?”
“No.”
He waited.
“I thought I was stupid for staying with him.”
“You weren’t.”
“I missed everything.”
“You trusted someone.”
“That sounds stupid.”
“It isn’t.”
Emma looked at him.
“You say that like you know.”
Roman smiled without humor.
“I do.”
Leah interrupted gently.
“Grant may still think he’s avenging his father.”
Emma said, “He threatened Claire.”
“I didn’t say he’s innocent.”
They retrieved Deposit Box B-91 that afternoon.
Inside was the paternity report.
Lily Catherine Wren.
Probability of paternity: 99.97%.
Dominic Vale.
Roman held the paper for a long time.
Then came the financial records.
Twenty-two years of shell companies.
Thomas Wren.
City officials.
Charities.
Private developers.
Northbridge.
And one current company:
Keller Strategic Services.
Grant’s business.
Emma stared.
“He’s being paid directly.”
Roman nodded.
“Recently.”
The newest transfer was three days old.
Amount: $250,000.
Memo: RECOVERY.
Recovery of what?
They searched the box again.
A false bottom contained one final envelope.
Samuel Reed had written:
THE PROOF THAT MATTERS IS NOT HERE.
Inside was a handwritten map of the old Vale warehouse.
One room was circled.
BOILER 3.
Roman stared.
“The warehouse burned.”
Vivian said, “Part of it.”
A section had survived and later been sealed.
The property now belonged to Vale Development.
They went that night.
Emma insisted on coming.
Roman said no.
Emma said, “You keep forgetting the entire trail belongs to my father.”
Roman gave in.
The old warehouse smelled of rust and wet concrete.
Boiler 3 was enormous.
Marco found a welded access plate.
They cut it.
Inside was a waterproof tube.
Emma pulled it free.
Inside were original ledgers.
And a mini-cassette.
Roman found a portable player.
Thomas Wren’s voice crackled through the speaker.
“If Dominic won’t cooperate, burn the warehouse.”
Another man asked, “What about Keller and Mason?”
Thomas answered.
“They chose their side.”
Grant’s father had not been killed by Dominic.
Thomas had ordered the fire.
Emma closed her eyes.
Grant’s whole life had been built around the wrong enemy.
Then a gun clicked behind them.
Grant stood in the doorway.
His face was shattered by disbelief.
He had heard the tape.
Roman stepped in front of Emma.
Grant whispered, “Play it again.”
After the botanical-garden meeting, Leah and Vivian stayed behind together.
Roman wanted to leave.
Emma stopped him.
“Give them ten minutes.”
“My mother doesn’t do ten-minute conversations.”
“Then twenty.”
Roman looked through the glass toward Vivian and Leah.
They sat far apart.
Two women connected by one dead man and decades of bad decisions.
“What would you say?” Emma asked.
“To who?”
“If you were Leah.”
Roman considered.
“I’d ask why nobody came looking.”
Emma looked at him.
“And if you were Vivian?”
He said nothing.
Emma answered for him.
“I’d say I didn’t know where to look.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“That doesn’t fix anything.”
“No.”
She looked toward the women.
“But explanations and repairs aren’t the same thing.”
Roman glanced at her.
“You always talk like your father left you footnotes.”
“He basically did.”
Later, Leah told them Catherine had kept one more secret.
A box of letters hidden with her sister in Oregon.
Some were from Dominic.
Others were from Samuel.
Leah had only photographed a few before Thomas discovered what she was doing.
One letter from Samuel read:
Dominic thinks Thomas’s greatest weakness is greed. He is wrong. It is humiliation.
Emma reread the line.
“What does that mean?”
Leah said, “Thomas could lose money and recover. What he could never tolerate was being exposed as a man someone fooled.”
Roman understood.
“That’s why the paternity evidence mattered so much.”
Leah nodded.
“To him, Lily wasn’t only family. She was proof Dominic had entered his life and left something behind.”
Emma hated that formulation.
A child as evidence.
A daughter as humiliation.
She looked at Leah.
“You deserved better than being turned into a symbol.”
Leah blinked.
No one had said that to her before.
“Thank you.”
That evening, Roman arranged for Catherine’s surviving letters to be collected legally.
No break-ins.
No threats.
Emma teased him.
“You’re becoming alarmingly respectable.”
“Temporary condition.”
But his smile gave him away.
When the letters arrived two days later, they contained one more piece of the puzzle.
Catherine had written that Thomas knew about the warehouse fraud before the fire.
Not after.
Before.
That made his public story impossible.
He had always claimed the corruption was something he discovered while prosecuting Vale-linked companies.
The letters proved he had been inside the scheme from the beginning.
Leah stared at the page.
“My whole childhood was built around him being the man who saved me from criminals.”
Roman said quietly, “People can build identities around lies and still feel real inside them.”
Leah looked at him.
“You would know?”
May you like
“Yes.”
That was the first moment they sounded like siblings.
