Chapter 8 - THE PRICE OF SILENCE
Dr. Reed did not deny the email.
He sat beneath the library's tall windows, his hands trembling around a glass of water.
“Victor told me Margaret was stealing company information,” he said. “He said she was unstable and that the medication would calm her.”
“Did you believe him?” Chloe asked.
“I wanted to believe him.”
“That isn't an answer.”
Reed looked down. “No. I didn't.”
He explained that the compound had been supplied under a false clinical code. Margaret was given it without being told it was experimental. When she developed severe symptoms, Reed was instructed to document them as complications of her existing condition.
“Why didn't you report it?”
“Victor threatened my license. He said he had records proving I'd accepted payments from the supplier. Some of them were real. I had taken consulting fees.”
Dominic's face was cold. “You helped him hide what happened.”
“Yes.”
“And now you want protection.”
“I want to testify.”
Chloe leaned back. “You want a deal.”
“I want to stop being afraid.”
For the first time, she saw something more complicated than a villain. Reed had made choices. He had also been frightened. Neither fact brought her mother back.
Dominic told his attorney to arrange a formal statement with investigators. No private bargain. No secret immunity. Reed would provide every record and accept whatever consequences followed.
That night, Chloe found Dominic alone in the kitchen.
He was making coffee badly. The machine beeped at him, and he stared at it as if it had insulted him.
“You're doing that wrong,” she said.
“I run several companies. I can manage a coffee machine.”
“You're losing an argument with a coffee machine.”
He stepped aside, allowing her to fix it.
For a few minutes, they stood in comfortable silence.
Then Dominic said, “I used to think control meant nobody could hurt the people around me.”
“And now?”
“Now I think it meant nobody could tell me when I was wrong.”
Chloe poured the coffee.
“My mother believed people could change.”
“Did she?”
“She believed they could choose to do better. She didn't think that erased what they'd done.”
Dominic nodded slowly.
“I don't expect you to forgive me for what happened under my company.”
“I don't forgive what I don't understand yet.”
“That is fair.”
He reached for his cup, then stopped.
“Chloe, when this is over, I want you to have a life that isn't connected to my name. A job you choose. A home where you feel safe. Whatever help you need, without conditions.”
She looked at him. “And what do you want?”
He seemed surprised by the question.
“I want to know what it feels like to do something right without expecting gratitude.”
Chloe smiled faintly. “Start by making decent coffee.”
For the first time, he laughed.
The moment did not last. Matteo entered with news: the clinic's former records manager had been found dead in an apparent accident. Investigators were treating it as suspicious.
A note had been left in his car.
It contained one sentence:
THE ORIGINAL FILES ARE UNDER THE OLD CHAPEL.
Dominic read it and looked at Chloe.
“Do you know what chapel they're talking about?”
She remembered a place from her mother's stories: a small chapel near the Romano family's first warehouse, where employees had gathered after a fire years earlier.
Margaret had once told her that she kept copies of important documents somewhere nobody would think to look.
May you like
Chloe grabbed her coat.
“Then that's where we go.”
