Chapter 1 - The Broken Plate and the Wallet Full of Cash
Preston Cain didn't hesitate before sweeping the old porcelain plate off the counter.
It shattered at seventy-three-year-old Hollis Brennan's feet.
That chipped white plate had survived three generations, countless family dinners, and the journey Hollis's father made to America with almost nothing.
Now it lay in pieces.
And the man responsible was trying to take away the family restaurant, too.
The trouble had begun the previous evening, when Adeline Vance, a homeless woman living in her aging car, found a leather wallet on a rainy Providence sidewalk.
It contained hundreds of dollars.
She desperately needed the money.
Instead, she carried the wallet into Sen, an upscale restaurant on Federal Hill, hoping to return it.
Manager Preston Cain took one look at her worn clothes and ordered her outside.
When waitress Marisol Reyes defended Adeline, Cain threatened her job.
Neither woman knew that Enzo Rinaldi, the wealthy businessman preparing to acquire Sen, had witnessed everything.
Enzo immediately ordered an investigation into Cain's business dealings.
The following morning, Hollis and his younger brother, Dale, received a crushing rent increase and an insulting offer to surrender Brennan's Restaurant.
When they confronted Cain, he insulted their business.
Hollis showed him his father's treasured plate.
Cain destroyed it.
Outside, as Hollis struggled to gather the broken pieces, Adeline approached and recognized the description of the manager.
She removed a rain-soaked receipt from her coat.
It had slipped out of the wallet she'd tried to return.
And she'd kept it because she hadn't been allowed to explain what she'd found.
"The strangest thing," Adeline told the brothers, staring toward Sen, "was that he never even looked at the money."
She unfolded the receipt.
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None of them understood yet that this ordinary piece of paper could threaten a multimillion-dollar deal.
Or that the man who had broken their father's plate was hiding a secret connected to the Brennan family itself.
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