Chapter 12 - SIX MEN
Roman came to the foundation twenty-two minutes after I called.
I did not tell him to hurry.
I did not need to.
He walked into my office, saw Leah, and stopped.
Not recognition.
Calculation.
“Moretti?”
Leah nodded.
“Luca’s sister.”
Roman looked at me.
“You knew?”
“For approximately twenty minutes.”
His eyes moved to the photograph.
Then he went completely still.
I knew my husband well enough to understand silence.
He recognized the building.
“Roman?”
“Halsted Freight.”
Leah laughed without humor.
“So you remember.”
He ignored her.
“My father owned forty percent.”
“Fifty-one,” Leah corrected.
Roman frowned.
“No.”
“My father kept copies of the incorporation records.”
Roman picked up the photograph.
“I was seventeen.”
“What happened?”
He stared at it.
“There was a fire.”
Leah’s jaw tightened.
“Six men died.”
“I know.”
“Do you know their names?”
Roman looked at her.
“Angelo Moretti. Tomas Ruiz. Peter Novak. Samuel Greene. Hector Alvarez. David Kim.”
Leah’s expression changed.
She had expected ignorance.
Roman remembered every name.
“I went to all six funerals,” he said.
“You went with your father.”
“Yes.”
“Your father paid the families.”
“Yes.”
“To keep them quiet.”
Roman’s eyes hardened.
“No.”
Leah leaned forward.
“Then why did every family sign nondisclosure agreements?”
Roman looked genuinely confused.
“What agreements?”
That was when I knew we had reached something different.
Not another Roman confession.
Something Roman himself did not know.
Leah opened her bag.
She pulled out six photocopies.
Each settlement agreement bore the signature of Roman’s father.
And another.
MARTIN DEVEREUX.
I knew that name.
Everyone in Chicago did.
Martin Devereux was seventy-one.
Attorney.
Philanthropist.
Former chairman of three hospital boards.
The man who had handled Roman’s family trusts for decades.
He had also attended our wedding.
Both of them.
Roman read the first document.
Then the second.
His face changed.
“My father told me the fire was electrical.”
“It wasn’t.”
Leah placed an inspection report beside them.
“Fire doors chained shut.”
I felt sick.
“Why?”
“Because employees were stealing inventory.”
Roman whispered something in Italian.
Leah continued.
“The city inspector ordered the doors reopened three weeks before the fire.”
“What happened?”
“The order disappeared.”
Roman looked at the signature approving the final inspection.
His face drained.
“Devereux.”
Leah nodded.
“My father told Luca the Vascaris killed him.”
Roman looked at her.
“And Luca believed him?”
“Our father died before he could tell anyone anything.”
I frowned.
“Then who told Luca?”
Leah looked toward the blue envelope.
“That’s what I want to know.”
Roman sat down.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then he said quietly:
“My father took me there after the fire.”
I looked at him.
“Why?”
“He wanted me to see what responsibility looked like.”
Leah laughed bitterly.
“Six coffins?”
“No.”
Roman’s voice broke slightly.
“The families.”
That silenced her.
“My father told me those men died because he had failed to inspect one of his businesses properly.”
Roman stared at the photograph.
“He told me if I inherited anything from him, I inherited responsibility for the damage too.”
I had never heard Roman speak about his father that way.
Not gently.
Not respectfully.
Then he looked at the forged safety report.
“If this is real, he lied to me.”
Leah shook her head.
“Or someone lied to him.”
Roman’s eyes moved to Devereux’s signature.
And for the first time, I saw fear.
May you like
Not for us.
For the possibility that the man Roman had spent years blaming for everything might not have been the architect of all of it.
