Chapter 6 - THE MAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
“Then unfold the photograph,” Carmine said.
I looked down.
One corner was bent beneath the back of the picture.
I'd been so focused on Carmine that I hadn't noticed the second man standing beside the red truck.
I opened the photograph completely.
Adrian Vale stood near the driver's door.
He held a thick white envelope.
Samuel Willis stood across from him.
And Samuel appeared to be accepting it.
Faith made a small sound.
“No.”
She took the picture from my hands.
“That's my father.”
“I know,” Carmine said.
“He's taking money.”
“Yes.”
Her face hardened.
“You told Dominic my father was innocent.”
“He was.”
“Then explain why he's taking money from the man who accused him of attempted murder!”
Carmine glanced at me.
For the first time, he looked like a man who wanted permission to tell the truth.
“You don't need my permission,” I said. “You need to start talking.”
He pulled out a chair.
“Two weeks before the accident, Samuel contacted me. He said maintenance records were being changed after trucks left the repair bays.”
“Changed how?” I asked.
“Brake inspections. Fuel logs. Vehicle assignments.”
“Why?”
“Samuel didn't know. He thought somebody was moving vehicles without authorization.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“And Adrian?”
“He offered Samuel money to stop asking questions.”
Faith stared at Carmine.
“My father accepted a bribe?”
“He took the envelope.”
“That's not what I asked.”
Carmine looked ashamed.
“I don't know what he intended to do with it.”
Faith shook her head.
“He wouldn't sell somebody's life for money.”
I could hear the fear beneath her anger.
She wasn't just defending her father.
She was afraid the one good thing she'd believed about him might turn out to be false.
I recognized that feeling.
I'd been living inside it for days.
Mrs. Gable sat beside Faith and placed a hand over hers.
“Samuel came back here after that photograph was taken.”
Everyone looked at her.
“He was angry. He said somebody had tried to buy his silence.”
“Then why keep the money?” Faith asked.
“I don't know, sweetheart. But he wanted to speak to Dominic.”
I felt a stab of guilt.
“Why didn't he?”
“Adrian's assistant told me you were unavailable.”
“What about the next day?”
Mrs. Gable looked down.
“I tried again. Adrian said Samuel had been warned to stay away.”
Faith pulled her hand free.
“So you all knew something was wrong.”
No one answered.
“And none of you helped him.”
Her voice was breaking.
“He was alone, and every single one of you left him alone.”
I wanted to defend Mrs. Gable.
To explain that Carmine had his own fears.
That I'd been occupied with an organization spanning half the city.
But none of those explanations mattered.
Samuel Willis was dead.
And his daughter was standing in my library surrounded by people who might have prevented it.
Faith picked up the coat.
“I need some air.”
She walked out before I could speak.
I found her in the garden.
Rainwater still clung to the white roses.
She sat on a stone bench with her father's coat folded across her lap.
I stopped my wheelchair a few feet away.
“Can I sit here?”
She gave a bitter laugh.
“It's your garden.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
After a moment, she nodded.
For a while, we listened to the wind moving through the trees.
Finally, she said, “You know what's terrible?”
“What?”
“I keep wondering whether he really did take the money.”
“Faith—”
“My father wasn't perfect. He drank too much coffee. He forgot birthdays. He'd promise to fix the kitchen cabinet and leave it crooked for six months.”
She wiped her face.
“But he never lied to me.”
I looked at the blue coat.
“Sometimes good people make bad decisions.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
Her question landed without warning.
I didn't answer immediately.
Then I said, “I've made plenty of bad decisions.”
“You've hurt people.”
“Yes.”
“People who probably had families.”
“Yes.”
She turned toward me.
“Then why should I trust you?”
I stared at the wet stone path.
“Maybe you shouldn't.”
Her expression softened slightly.
“I don't want you to be somebody else just because I'm here, Dominic.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want you to decide what kind of man you're going to be when I'm not.”
Those words stayed with me.
Because for years, I'd measured loyalty by how long someone remained at my side.
Faith was asking me to become worth standing beside.
That afternoon, Dr. Porter arrived.
She examined my legs, reviewed my scans, and asked questions nobody had bothered to ask for weeks.
Then she explained something important.
My spinal cord injury was incomplete.
Some nerve pathways were still functioning.
The painful spasms were not proof of recovery, but they were a reason to reassess my medication, positioning, and therapy.
“You may never regain independent walking,” she said.
I nodded.
“But improving strength, comfort, transfers, and independence is absolutely possible.”
For six months, I'd treated those possibilities like insults.
Now I listened.
Faith stood near the doorway.
When Dr. Porter asked whether I wanted to resume therapy, I glanced at her.
She gave no encouraging speech.
She simply waited.
“Yes,” I said.
The word felt difficult.
And strangely good.
The next morning, Carmine took us to the old South Branch terminal.
Mrs. Gable stayed with Maya.
I'd already arranged for an independent security team to remain at the mansion, answerable directly to me.
The terminal smelled of rust, diesel, and river water.
Workers stopped when they saw my wheelchair.
Some nodded.
Others turned away.
I recognized the difference.
Respect wasn't the same as affection.
We reached a row of old employee lockers near the maintenance office.
Number 417 stood between two damaged cabinets.
Faith held the brass token.
“Grandpa used to keep spare gloves in a locker,” she whispered.
I watched her hands shake as she inserted the token into the old locker mechanism.
It released with a metallic click.
Inside was a small canvas bag.
Faith opened it.
A stack of maintenance records lay beneath a flashlight.
There was also a bank envelope.
She unfolded the first page.
The records showed that the red service truck had entered my private garage three times during the week before the accident.
Each visit had been recorded as emergency brake maintenance.
But there was no matching inspection order.
Carmine pointed to the final entry.
“Two seventeen.”
The exact time on Samuel's watch.
Beside it appeared the driver's authorization.
A. Vale.
For a moment, hope surged through me.
Then Faith opened the bank envelope.
Inside were deposit slips showing that Samuel had placed the money Adrian gave him into a separate account.
The account was registered to the South Branch Workers' Emergency Fund.
“He didn't spend it,” Faith whispered.
She looked at Carmine.
“He put the money somewhere the workers could trace it.”
Carmine nodded slowly.
Samuel had preserved the payment.
He'd turned the attempted bribe into evidence.
Faith began crying.
I reached toward her.
This time, she took my hand.
Then I examined the final maintenance record.
Something about the document bothered me.
The red truck had not been charged to Adrian's private account.
Its service costs had been paid through an account I personally established years earlier.
The Carter Employee Relief Fund.
The fund was supposed to support injured dockworkers and their families.
I turned the page.
A transfer of sixty-five thousand dollars had been approved to purchase the vehicle.
My own signature appeared beneath the transaction.
Unlike the management agreement, this signature was genuine.
I remembered approving that account's operating budget.
I simply hadn't known where its money went afterward.
At the bottom was a much larger transaction.
Eight million four hundred thousand dollars.
Transferred through the same fund.
Faith looked at the figure.
“Dominic, how much money was supposed to be in this account?”
“Nearly nine million.”
She stared at me.
“Then where did it go?”
I looked at Carmine.
He was already reaching for his phone.
But my attention had moved to the final page.
Written beneath the transfer authorization was a note.
Emergency relocation assets — Phase Two.
And beside it was an address.
An old residential complex near the river.
A building scheduled for demolition.
I knew the address.
My mother had funded a home for retired dockworkers there twenty years earlier.
I looked at the date.
Demolition was scheduled for the following morning.
Adrian wasn't just stealing my money.
May you like
He was using it to destroy the last thing my mother had built.
And the people living inside had less than twenty-four hours to get out.
