Chapter 11 - A MOTHER’S NOTEBOOK
Paige's aunt kept the past in a cardboard box behind winter blankets. There were photographs, old union newsletters, a payroll notebook, and a letter Paige's mother had written but never mailed. Paige read the letter twice before she could speak. Her mother had discovered that workers' benefit contributions were being routed through an outside administrator controlled by Mercer. She had tried to warn Roman's father. A week later she was dismissed for alleged misconduct. The letter ended with a sentence Paige could hardly bear: I don't know whether he was involved or simply chose not to look.
Roman asked permission to have the records copied by an independent attorney. Paige agreed only after the originals were placed in her own lawyer's custody. She had found that lawyer through Elena's clinic, and Roman paid none of the fees. The distinction mattered. Paige would not trade one powerful man's control for another's protection.
The forensic accountant matched entries in the notebook to the suspicious shipping account. Money had moved from employee benefits into shell companies for years. Mercer's signature appeared repeatedly. Roman's father's signature appeared on some documents too, although the accountant warned that copies alone could not establish whether the signatures were genuine. Roman listened without defending a dead man simply because he loved him.
That night he took Paige to the fishing dock in the photograph. The place was empty except for gulls and the creak of ropes against wooden posts. He told her about his oldest brother, who taught him to swim, and the middle brother, who cheated at cards and always confessed afterward. Then he admitted that after their deaths he had mistaken fear for loyalty. People obeyed him because they were afraid, and he had allowed that to feel like respect.
Paige looked across the dark water. “You can't undo what happened to your family. You can decide what happens to everyone else's.”
Roman nodded. He had already instructed his attorney to begin separating legitimate port operations from businesses that could not withstand an audit. It would cost him money, allies, and possibly his freedom. Paige told him she would judge the process by what he did, not by what he promised her on a beautiful dock.
On their way back, Luca called. Donovan had been arrested after trying to cross the state line. He was asking for a deal. He claimed Mercer had ordered the bombing—and that Roman's father had planned to expose him the very next morning.
The old payroll notebook was written in her mother's precise handwriting, with totals checked twice and questionable entries circled in red. Paige remembered seeing that handwriting on lunch notes and birthday cards. Here it documented something far larger than their family. She traced a finger along the edge of a page, careful not to touch the ink. Her mother had known she was taking a risk. She had kept working anyway.
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Roman told Paige he wished he could apologize to her mother. Paige answered that the people still living would have to be his audience now. If the port company had benefited from silence, then workers deserved more than an emotional confession. They deserved records, money, and a system that would not require another exhausted payroll clerk to risk everything before anyone listened.
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