Chapter 6 - FATHERS AND FALSE FUNERALS
Thomas Gallagher arrived at the lawyer's office with two attorneys and none of the swagger that usually preceded him. The man who'd built half of Dominic's empire through coercion and carefully negotiated favors looked small beneath a fluorescent ceiling. He asked for water. Nobody rushed to provide it.
Dominic sat across the table with his own counsel, the investigator leading the inquiry and Mara, who represented Victoria. Victoria chose not to attend the first interview. She would not allow her father-in-law-to-be to turn her grief into a debate about his intentions.
"You were photographed with Arthur Callahan three months ago," the investigator said. "Why did you tell your son he was dead?"
Thomas rubbed his forehead. "Because Arthur had documents on me. When he told me he'd arranged his own death, he said he'd release records that would destroy my family unless I met him."
"What records?"
"Payments. Contracts. Some legitimate, some not. He'd spent years moving money through the trust while telling me it was temporary. When I realized what he'd done, he threatened to claim I designed the whole scheme."
Dominic watched his father. Thomas had admitted just enough to avoid denying the undeniable. The question remained how far his involvement went.
"Did you know Victoria was being held?" Mara asked.
"I knew she was supposed to be hidden for a few weeks. I believed Arthur would release her when the financial dispute was settled."
"You knew she hadn't agreed?"
Thomas looked at the table. "I suspected."
"Suspecting that your son's fiancée was imprisoned did not lead you to call the police?"
"I thought I could resolve it privately."
Dominic closed his eyes. He'd heard the phrase all his life. Privately meant without oversight. Privately meant protect the family name. Privately meant let a powerful man determine what happened to everyone who couldn't stop him.
"You arranged the funeral," Dominic said.
"Arthur gave me a medical identification. He told me the car burned before she could be released. I thought the men guarding her had killed her to prevent her from talking."
"And you never challenged the identification."
"I was ashamed," Thomas said. "I knew I'd helped put her in danger. I couldn't tell you without admitting my part."
The investigator asked about Elena Ruiz. Thomas flinched. He'd heard the name, he admitted, but claimed he had not known she was the victim in the car. He'd signed insurance documents and accepted the closed-casket explanation because the paperwork appeared complete.
Mara made sure his words were recorded exactly. None of them meant he had acted innocently. There were degrees of wrongdoing, and the investigation would have to establish them one action at a time.
"What happened three months ago?" Dominic asked.
"Arthur told me he'd regained control of Meridian. He wanted the remaining correction ledger destroyed. He said a woman working inside your house was searching for it. I thought he meant a lawyer's agent. I didn't know it was Victoria until you mentioned Abigail."
"You approved the security controller replacement."
Thomas looked startled. "I signed a facilities approval for network upgrades. The work order came from my office. Gideon supplied the contractor."
"Did you know that contractor gave intruders access?"
"No."
"Then why didn't you question a security change in my house?"
"Because I was used to giving an order and having people carry it out."
Dominic felt the answer settle. It was almost his own voice spoken through older lungs.
Thomas leaned toward him. "I am not asking you to forgive me. I'm asking you to understand that Arthur has been making the last decisions for years."
"You let him," Dominic said.
"Yes."
It was the first uncomplicated admission he'd heard from his father.
The interview continued for two hours. Thomas agreed, on advice of counsel, to provide files and make himself available for further questioning. Investigators did not promise leniency. Dominic left without embracing him. There would be time to decide what relationship remained after the facts were known. Today he could offer only the boundary his father should have set years earlier.
Outside the office, Victoria waited in Mara's car. She'd requested a summary, not a reunion. Dominic approached the passenger window. "He admitted helping hide you. He denies ordering the attack. He also approved the security replacement."
"Do you believe him?"
"I believe he told part of the truth."
"That's more than I expected you to say."
"It's less than you deserve."
She looked out at the traffic. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life waiting for older men to decide how much of their guilt they can bear to confess."
"Then don't."
"I have a meeting with Elena Ruiz's son tomorrow. His name is Mateo. He asked to meet me, not you."
"I won't come."
"Thank you."
Dominic went back to the office and found Liam reviewing financial notices from Gallagher Properties. Three subsidiary managers had resigned overnight. A lending bank had suspended a credit facility pending the trust investigation. Investors were demanding reassurance. Dominic's first reaction was to defend the company at any cost. His second was to wonder which employees would miss their paychecks if he treated every account as a weapon in a family dispute.
He ordered a transparent payroll reserve and an independent review. Properties purchased with disputed trust funds would be held from sale until ownership could be examined. Shareholders called it weakness. The warehouse supervisor who asked whether her drivers would be paid called it something else.
"It's the first time I've gotten a straight answer from this office," she said.
That evening Mara received an anonymous delivery. Inside was a small recorder and a note: ASK THOMAS ABOUT THE SECOND VEHICLE. Investigators collected it before anyone handled the device. The recording contained a fragment of conversation in a parking structure. A man believed to be Arthur said, "One car has to burn. The other takes the girl south." Another voice replied, "What about the cleaner?" The first man answered, "She won't be identified until we say she is."
The recorder's date could not immediately be verified. But the voices and content matched the pattern the investigators were reconstructing: Victoria moved away, another woman placed at the scene, a funeral built on false identification.
Dominic listened to the fragment under counsel's supervision. When it ended, he left the room without speaking. He walked to the building's stairwell and stood on a landing where nobody could see him. Elena Ruiz had a son. Victoria had spent months trapped. Dominic had spent four years grieving a lie. Thomas had watched all of it, convinced silence would keep the family intact.
He called Victoria but didn't expect her to answer. She did.
"Dom?"
He held the phone without speaking.
"I heard about the recording," she said.
"I don't know how to be sorry for all of it."
"You don't have to be sorry for what Arthur did. You do have to decide what you'll do about what you benefited from."
"I'm trying."
"I know. Keep trying tomorrow."
He leaned against the stairwell wall. "Are you safe?"
"I'm with Celeste and Mara. There are officers outside. I'm not alone."
"Good."
He started to end the call. Victoria stopped him.
"Dominic. I used to think getting home meant finding you. I want you to understand that I have to build a home that doesn't depend on whether you can protect it."
"I do."
"I don't think you do yet," she said gently. "But maybe you will."
The following morning investigators issued warrants related to Meridian's shell transfers. During a search at one warehouse, officers recovered a wall of photographs showing Victoria under several identities. Some were taken while she worked in Philadelphia. Others showed her entering the Gallagher estate as Abigail Reed.
The photographs had dates stretching back thirty months. Arthur had known where she was much longer than she'd realized.
A handwritten note beneath the most recent image read: SHE RETURNS TO THE HOUSE BEFORE THE ANNIVERSARY. MAKE THE ROOM READY.
It was signed with the initials A.C.
And the anniversary was that very weekend.
Before Victoria ended the call, Dominic asked if she had slept. She laughed without humor. "Not much. The day after a man threatens you in a room, silence stops sounding restful."
He almost offered to come over. She anticipated him. "I'm not asking you to sit outside my door."
"I know."
"I'm asking you to understand that sometimes I need to tell the story without being rescued from it."
Dominic took a breath. "I can listen."
Victoria described the Pennsylvania house for the first time without leaving out the ordinary humiliations: having to ask for a fresh towel, being handed clothes that weren't hers, waiting while a guard decided whether she could use the telephone. She remembered watching a bird build a nest in the gutter and wondering whether it would still be there when she escaped. She did not describe violence for effect. She described the systematic shrinking of her choices, because that was the memory that lingered.
"When you see me now, you see the person who survived," she said. "Sometimes I still feel like the person waiting for permission to leave a room."
"I hear you," he answered.
"Don't promise me I'll never feel that again."
May you like
"I won't."
She exhaled, relieved by the answer. After the call she wrote in her journal: Told him about the bird. He did not interrupt. It was not a verdict on Dominic or a guarantee for tomorrow, but it belonged among the small things she was learning to notice.
