Chapter 6 - Two Brothers at the Same Table
The boardroom doors locked at 10:02 a.m.
Not physically.
Legally.
The company's outside counsel announced that an internal fraud inquiry had been initiated and requested all executives remain available.
Dominic laughed.
“What is this?”
Adrian leaned back.
“You wanted transparency.”
“I wanted you to get treatment.”
“That's touching.”
“Adrian.”
Gabriel entered.
Dominic's face changed.
There it was.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“You.”
Gabriel closed the door.
“Good morning.”
Dominic looked toward Adrian.
“You brought him back?”
“Apparently my judgment is improving.”
Dominic's eyes moved around the room.
Two outside attorneys.
Independent auditor.
Board chairman.
A forensic accountant.
No soldiers.
No threats.
No violence.
Dominic had prepared for Adrian Moretti the crime boss.
He had not prepared for Adrian Moretti the chairman.
Adrian slid a document across the table.
“Marcello Holdings.”
Dominic didn't touch it.
“What about it?”
“Yours.”
“No.”
“Beneficial ownership says otherwise.”
“Then your investigators are incompetent.”
Gabriel placed another document beside it.
“Payments to Marissa Vale.”
Dominic shrugged.
“Consulting work.”
“Falsified medical correspondence.”
“No proof I ordered it.”
“Correct.”
Another page.
“Dr. Lane.”
Dominic stopped moving.
Adrian saw it.
“Consulting payments totaling eight hundred thousand dollars.”
“He advised several businesses.”
“He advised mine.”
“Not illegal.”
“No.”
Adrian leaned forward.
“Then there's the bottle.”
Silence.
Dominic's face emptied.
Gabriel placed a sealed evidence photograph on the table.
Brown glass.
White cap.
The Moretti case visible behind it.
Dominic looked at Gabriel.
“You searched my property.”
“Company property,” the outside attorney corrected. “During an authorized fraud investigation.”
Dominic smiled faintly.
“Cute.”
Adrian had heard that tone before.
It meant Dominic was thinking.
Looking for exits.
“You can't prove I used it.”
“No,” Adrian said.
“Good.”
“But we can prove it contains the same compound found in the tea you brought me.”
Dominic said nothing.
“And remnants consistent with samples preserved from my medical records two years ago.”
Still nothing.
Adrian slid another document.
“Your mistake wasn't the bottle.”
Dominic looked at him.
“It was Dr. Klein.”
Something flickered.
Adrian saw it.
“He saved records.”
Dominic's jaw tightened.
“He documented my symptoms before you canceled the toxicology test.”
“I didn't cancel anything.”
“You used my medical proxy.”
“I was authorized.”
“To stop a test that might have identified what was happening to me?”
Dominic shook his head.
“This is insane.”
“Maybe.”
Adrian leaned back.
“You've spent three years telling everyone I am.”
The room became very quiet.
Dominic looked toward the board.
“You're watching a sick man manufacture a conspiracy because he's terrified of losing control.”
A few people shifted.
Smart.
Dominic was still fighting.
He turned to Adrian.
“Think about what you're accusing me of.”
“I have.”
“Our father would be disgusted.”
That landed.
Adrian's eyes hardened.
“Don't use him.”
“Why? Because only you get to inherit his ghost?”
The words came too fast.
Dominic realized it.
Adrian didn't move.
There.
Finally.
Something real.
“Say that again.”
Dominic laughed bitterly.
“No.”
“You've wanted to say it for years.”
“Don't psychoanalyze me.”
“You think I took everything.”
Dominic stared.
Adrian continued.
“His company. His respect. His seat.”
“You did.”
“I was the oldest.”
“You were the favorite.”
Adrian's expression changed.
Vittorio Moretti had not been a loving father.
But love wasn't what Dominic meant.
Power was.
Dominic stood.
“You know what he told me when I was twenty-two?”
Adrian said nothing.
“He said I was smart.”
Dominic laughed.
“That was the compliment. Smart. Then he told me intelligence was useful as long as I understood I would never lead.”
Adrian remembered nothing about the conversation.
Dominic did.
Every word.
“He said you had what men followed.”
Dominic's voice tightened.
“And I had what men used.”
The room had disappeared for him now.
There were no lawyers.
No board members.
Just brothers.
“You think I hated you because you protected me?” Dominic asked. “I hated that everyone knew you protected me.”
Adrian felt something heavy settle inside him.
Dominic pointed at him.
“You walked into rooms and people stood. I walked in and they asked where you were.”
“So you poisoned me.”
The word hung between them.
Dominic froze.
Adrian hadn't intended to say it.
Now there was no taking it back.
Dominic slowly sat.
“I didn't want you dead.”
Nobody moved.
Gabriel didn't even breathe loudly.
Adrian's voice dropped.
“What did you want?”
Dominic looked down at the table.
“You wouldn't stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Everything.”
“Running my company?”
“Running everybody.”
Adrian's jaw flexed.
“You were becoming reckless.”
“Because you were making me sick.”
“Before that.”
Dominic looked at him.
“Our father died and you became him.”
That hurt.
Adrian didn't show it.
“You trusted nobody. You slept four hours. You worked twenty. You treated family like employees and employees like suspects.”
“So your solution was drugging my tea.”
“I wanted you to slow down.”
“For three years?”
“It wasn't supposed to become three years.”
Dominic's voice broke slightly.
The first crack.
“The first months, I thought you'd step away. You didn't. You fought harder. Then your doctors blamed stress and you believed them.”
“And you continued.”
Dominic looked ashamed.
Then angry because he looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because for the first time people came to me.”
There it was.
Small.
Ugly.
Human.
Dominic's eyes were wet now, though his voice remained controlled.
“They called me first. They asked what I thought. They waited for me to enter the room.”
Adrian stared at his little brother.
The boy behind the warehouse.
The teenager with a broken wrist.
The man who had spent a lifetime walking one step behind him.
“You could have built your own life.”
“I tried.”
“No. You tried to take mine.”
Dominic's mouth twisted.
“Maybe because you never left space for anyone else.”
Adrian could have shouted.
Could have crossed the table.
Twenty years earlier, that was exactly what Vittorio would have done.
Five years earlier, Adrian might have done it too.
Instead he remained seated.
“Did Marissa know?”
Dominic looked away.
“Yes.”
“Lane?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else?”
Silence.
“Dominic.”
“Two security supervisors. One accountant.”
Gabriel wrote names.
Adrian asked the question he feared most.
“Did you ever intend to kill me?”
Dominic looked at him.
“No.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I am.”
A long silence.
“I wanted you weak,” Dominic said. “Not dead.”
Adrian believed him.
That almost made it worse.
Because murder could be rage.
This had required patience.
Tea by tea.
Night by night.
A brother watching another brother fall apart slowly enough to call it illness.
The board chairman whispered, “Jesus.”
Dominic looked around as though remembering other people were present.
Then he looked at Adrian.
“So what now?”
Everyone in the room knew what that question meant.
Not legally.
Personally.
What did Adrian Moretti do to betrayal?
His reputation had already answered for him.
Dominic knew it too.
For the first time that morning, fear appeared.
Real fear.
Adrian looked at Gabriel.
Then at the sealed photograph.
Then at his brother.
He remembered Lily's lion.
You can't protect anybody if you're too tired to stand.
For three years Adrian had believed strength meant never allowing anyone to make him vulnerable.
Dominic had believed strength meant taking control from the man who possessed it.
Both had learned from the same father.
Perhaps that was the problem.
Adrian stood.
Dominic flinched.
Small movement.
Almost invisible.
Adrian saw it.
And stopped.
He realized his younger brother expected to be hit.
Maybe worse.
Adrian suddenly saw the entire Moretti inheritance sitting between them.
Fear handed from father to son.
Then brother to brother.
He pushed the evidence toward the attorneys.
“All of it goes to law enforcement.”
Dominic stared.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Adrian—”
“You wanted my chair.”
Adrian looked around the boardroom.
“You can explain how you tried to get it to people who don't work for our family.”
Dominic's face went pale.
“You'd do that?”
“Yes.”
“To your own brother?”
Adrian's expression was tired now.
Not weak.
Tired.
“You already answered that question for both of us.”
He turned toward the door.
Dominic called after him.
“Adrian.”
He stopped.
“What?”
Dominic's voice had lost all polish.
“What would Dad say?”
Adrian looked back.
For years that question could control both of them.
Not anymore.
“I don't care.”
May you like
And for the first time in his life, he meant it.
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