Chapter 10 - The Chicago Winter Deal
The Rossi lake house sat ninety miles north of Chicago on a strip of shoreline Dominic had not visited since his father died.
In summer it was the kind of place families pretended they would use every weekend: cedar siding, a stone fireplace, a dock, and tall windows facing gray-blue water. In winter it became something else. Empty. Wind-beaten. Surrounded by bare trees and roads that narrowed beneath snow.
Dominic remembered being twelve there.
His father taught him to skip stones from the dock.
Victor taught him poker at the kitchen table and then lied about the rules until Dominic caught him.
Salvatore Moretti had visited once that Dominic could remember. He arrived in a dark Cadillac and brought a bottle of wine Dominic’s mother refused to open.
At the time, none of it meant anything.
Now every memory felt contaminated by context.
“We don’t know the recording is there,” Bee said.
They stood in Dominic’s office at 11:20 p.m., hours after the warehouse trap. Rain had become sleet against the windows. Adrian was with attorneys in a secured conference room, voluntarily answering questions in exchange for Dominic not publicly accusing him before counsel could be present.
“Adrian said Victor had it,” Dominic replied.
“Adrian said Victor knew where it was.”
“Same difference.”
“No. Not even close.”
Nico looked from one to the other.
“Welcome back, Bee.”
She gave him a look.
Dominic said, “She’s not back.”
Bee turned to him.
“I’m standing in your office.”
“That doesn’t mean you work here.”
“You gave me three assignments in the elevator.”
“Temporary consulting.”
“You haven’t discussed compensation.”
Nico raised both hands.
“I’m going to check the cameras before this becomes foreplay.”
Bee’s eyes widened.
Dominic’s stare could have frozen the lake by itself.
Nico left smiling.
For one fragile second, the room felt normal.
Then Bee looked at the empty spot on the desk where her badge had been.
Normal disappeared.
Dominic noticed.
He opened a drawer and placed the badge between them.
The scratched L was still visible.
“I kept it.”
Bee looked at him.
“I assumed security would destroy it.”
“I told them not to.”
“Why?”
Dominic leaned against the desk.
“Because by the time I understood what you did, it was the only thing in the room that made sense.”
Bee looked down.
She wanted to tell him that his apology mattered.
She wanted to tell him that hearing him say her name on the phone had nearly undone her.
Instead she said, “We need to decide whether to go north tonight.”
Dominic understood the retreat and allowed it.
“Yes.”
Bee opened a map on the table.
“If Lorenzo knows about the lake house, he may already be there.”
“He knows.”
“How?”
“His father visited.”
Bee looked up.
“You remember?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“I was twelve. Adults argued in the study. My mother sent me outside.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.”
Bee studied him.
“You never asked?”
“My father was not a man who answered questions because a child asked them.”
“And later?”
Dominic’s expression became distant.
“Later I was busy becoming him.”
Bee did not say anything.
That was more confession than Dominic usually gave in a week.
At midnight, Mara joined them by secure video from Tomas’s apartment.
Celia was safe with her sister in a location known only to Mara. The church attorney had the original charity records and had copied them to outside counsel.
Mara held up another document.
“I found the current beneficiary disclosure for Meridian Family Relief.”
Dominic leaned toward the screen.
“And?”
“Victor resigned from the advisory board three years ago.”
Bee frowned.
“But his signature is on Celia’s letter from six months ago.”
“Exactly.”
“So either the charity reused an old signature—”
“Or someone used Victor’s name after he left.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“Adrian.”
“Possible,” Mara said. “But there’s more. Victor’s resignation happened two weeks after Dominic shut down the old Lake Seventeen side agreements.”
Bee looked at Dominic.
“When exactly did you end them?”
“Three years ago.”
“What happened?”
Dominic sat.
He remembered it clearly now.
An audit had found freight invoices containing vague “facilitation charges.” Nothing enormous. Nothing dramatic. Just money leaking through old channels no one could properly explain.
Dominic ordered every informal agreement terminated.
Victor objected.
His father was already dead.
Salvatore Moretti died the following year.
Lorenzo inherited Moretti interests soon after.
Bee slowly said, “That was the trigger.”
“For Project Meridian?”
“For everything.”
Mara nodded from the screen.
“Victor resigns from the charity right after you terminate the old network. Two years later, Adrian begins building a takeover model. Lorenzo starts buying shell assets around you.”
Dominic looked toward the city.
“What happened during the missing year?”
Nobody knew.
Until Nico returned holding a flash drive.
“Maybe this.”
He plugged it into an isolated laptop.
The drive came from Adrian’s office safe. His attorney had authorized access as part of the internal investigation after Adrian began negotiating for leniency.
A folder contained photographs of handwritten notes from a meeting held twenty-two months earlier.
Attendees were identified only by initials.
AC.
LM.
VR.
Adrian Cole.
Lorenzo Moretti.
Victor Rossi.
Bee read the notes aloud.
“Asset pressure. Reputation damage. Client migration. Calumet acquisition.”
Dominic’s face hardened.
Then Bee reached the last line.
“Recover original winter agreement before sale.”
She stopped.
Nico leaned closer.
“Winter agreement?”
Dominic looked toward the dark windows.
His father had called the lake house the winter place.
Not because they used it in winter.
Because the Moretti deal was made there during a January storm.
A memory surfaced.
Dominic was twelve, lying awake upstairs while male voices carried through heating vents.
His father said, “One route. Not the company.”
Another man—Salvatore Moretti—answered, “Then say it for the camera.”
Dominic’s pulse climbed.
“I heard them.”
Bee turned.
“What?”
“The night Salvatore visited. They were recording something.”
Nico swore softly.
Dominic continued.
“My father said, ‘One route. Not the company.’”
Bee’s eyes widened.
That was it.
If the recording survived, it could destroy Lorenzo’s narrative that his family had inherited a broad claim over Rossi’s lake assets.
More importantly, it could prove Victor knew the limits of the old agreement and still helped Lorenzo expand it.
Mara said, “Do not go there tonight.”
Dominic looked at the screen.
“Why?”
“Because Lorenzo knows exactly what the recording means. He has spent years trying to find it.”
“That’s why we go before he does.”
“You assume he hasn’t.”
Bee agreed with Mara.
“Wait until daylight.”
Dominic shook his head.
“He’ll know Adrian is cooperating by morning.”
“And you’ll know whether roads are clear.”
“He could burn the house tonight.”
Bee flinched because she knew he was right.
The problem was no longer merely evidence.
It was preservation.
Nico said, “We can send a team.”
Dominic shook his head.
“No company team. Victor still has relationships inside security.”
“Then me and two people I trust.”
“I’m going.”
Bee said, “So am I.”
“No.”
She stared at him.
Dominic held up a hand.
“Not because I’m ordering you. Because if Lorenzo follows us, someone needs to stay in Chicago and keep the evidence chain moving.”
Bee paused.
It was a good argument.
She hated that.
“Fine.”
Dominic almost looked surprised.
“But you call me every thirty minutes.”
“Bee—”
“Temporary consulting condition.”
Nico laughed from across the room.
Dominic sighed.
“Fine.”
At 1:06 a.m., Dominic and Nico left Chicago in an unmarked SUV with one trusted security officer named Luis Ortega.
Bee remained in the office with Mara on a secure line and three boxes of archived company records.
The building felt too quiet.
At 1:34, Dominic called.
“Roads are clear.”
At 2:04, he called again.
“Passing Waukegan.”
At 2:33, no call came.
Bee waited two minutes.
Then called him.
No answer.
At 2:37, Nico’s phone went straight to voicemail.
Bee stood.
Mara saw her expression through the video feed.
“What?”
“They missed check-in.”
“Could be signal.”
“Dominic’s satellite phone doesn’t lose signal there.”
Bee grabbed her coat.
Mara’s voice sharpened.
“Where are you going?”
“North.”
“No.”
“Mara.”
“You staying in Chicago was the correct strategic decision thirty seconds ago.”
“It was correct while they were answering.”
Bee reached the elevator.
The doors opened.
Victor Rossi stood inside.
Bee froze.
He wore a dark overcoat dusted with sleet. No visible weapon. No guards.
He looked tired.
Older than she had ever seen him.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
Bee did not enter the elevator.
“Where’s Dominic?”
Victor’s face changed.
“You sent him to the lake house.”
“We both know he doesn’t take orders from me.”
Victor stepped out.
“Then Lorenzo beat him there.”
Bee’s stomach dropped.
“You knew?”
“I knew Lorenzo would go once Adrian cracked.”
“Why didn’t you warn Dominic?”
Victor gave a bitter laugh.
“Would he listen to me?”
“Try.”
Victor looked toward the windows.
“You think I wanted this.”
“You helped build it.”
“I helped preserve what my brother promised.”
“You helped sabotage his son.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
“I never agreed to that.”
“Celia Ruiz.”
“I didn’t authorize her payment.”
“Your signature did.”
“Adrian copied it from old charity forms.”
Bee studied him.
It matched Mara’s finding.
That did not make Victor innocent.
But it changed the shape of his guilt.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
Victor reached into his coat slowly.
Bee tensed.
He removed a brass key.
Old. Heavy. Tarnished at the teeth.
“The lake house study has a false panel behind the fireplace.”
Bee stared at the key.
“My brother kept a locked steel box there.”
“The recording?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe you never opened it?”
Victor’s face tightened with something close to shame.
“I tried.”
“The key?”
“My brother left it to Dominic in a sealed envelope. Dominic thought it was for a desk that no longer existed.”
Bee looked at the key.
“How do you have it?”
Victor swallowed.
“I stole it from his father’s estate box three years ago.”
“Why?”
“To get the recording before Dominic found it.”
“Did you?”
“No. I couldn’t find the panel.”
Bee stared at him.
Victor extended the key.
“Lorenzo can.”
She took it.
“Why help now?”
Victor looked at her for a long time.
“Because I thought I was protecting my brother’s legacy.”
His voice broke slightly.
“And now I think I helped Lorenzo bury it.”
Bee closed her fist around the key.
“Come with me.”
Victor shook his head.
“Dominic will kill me.”
“No, he won’t.”
“You sound certain.”
Bee thought of the office in the rain.
Lorenzo ordering her death.
Dominic refusing.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
May you like
They left Chicago together.
And somewhere on a dark road near the lake house, Dominic Rossi woke to the smell of gasoline and snow.
