Chapter 11 - The Spy Inside My Company
Henry Sloane had worked for DuPont Atlantic for seventeen years.
My father trusted him.
My mother trusted him.
I remembered him bringing Christmas gifts when Chloe and I were children.
He knew our birthdays.
Our employees.
Our bank accounts.
Our weaknesses.
And apparently, he had spent at least five years feeding information to the Kensingtons.
The betrayal hurt Dad more than mine.
“I hired him.”
“You hired hundreds of people.”
“He sat in this house.”
“So did Preston.”
Dad closed his eyes.
Fair point.
Investigators traced Henry to Montreal.
He crossed the border using a second passport.
But before leaving, he deleted entire sections of DuPont’s accounting system.
Fortunately, our servers had backups.
Unfortunately, the recovered records created another disaster.
Money had been moving through DuPont Atlantic.
Illegal money.
Not Preston’s.
Moretti money.
Historical accounts.
Some as recent as six years earlier.
I confronted Roman.
He read the documents silently.
Then called Matteo.
The answer came quickly.
Vincent Moretti had continued using certain DuPont routes years after Evelyn’s death.
Dad knew nothing.
Henry did.
Roman looked sick.
“My father used your company.”
“And you inherited those accounts.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
I believed him again.
Trust was becoming terrifying.
Roman handed the records back.
“Give them to federal investigators.”
I stared.
“Those records could damage you.”
“Yes.”
“Moretti Maritime.”
“Yes.”
“Your family.”
“Yes.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You’re agreeing suspiciously easily.”
He looked at me.
“Your mother asked me to be better than my father.”
Silence.
“I’m trying.”
That was the moment I understood Roman had changed.
Not for me.
Because of me, perhaps.
But change that depended entirely on another person was fragile.
Roman was choosing something himself.
We turned over everything.
Moretti Maritime paid substantial penalties for historical violations.
Roman removed two executives tied to old operations.
Then he made a public statement.
“My father built parts of this company using methods I will not defend. I benefited from what he created. Therefore I also inherit responsibility for correcting it.”
No excuses.
No attack on prosecutors.
No “misunderstanding.”
The statement went viral.
Some people called it calculated.
Maybe part of it was.
Leadership often was.
But I knew what it cost him.
Preston’s defense weakened.
He had planned to present Roman as the true criminal.
Roman had already presented the ugliest facts himself.
Nothing is harder to blackmail than a truth already admitted.
Henry Sloane was arrested three weeks later in Canada.
He agreed to cooperate.
His testimony revealed the full conspiracy.
Charles Kensington began targeting Northstar after Evelyn refused to sell.
After her death, he monitored my trust for years.
When Preston turned twenty-five, Charles told him about me.
Preston was instructed to meet me.
Court records later showed the timing.
He “accidentally” met me at a charity auction seven weeks after receiving the file.
Every romantic coincidence of our relationship collapsed.
The restaurant where we met twice.
Planned.
The vacation where he proposed.
Planned.
The lender who suddenly gave Dad favorable terms afterward.
Controlled by Kensington.
I sat alone in my office after reading the evidence.
Roman found me there.
He did not ask if I was okay.
He knew better.
“I feel stupid.”
“You weren’t.”
“I loved someone who researched me like an acquisition.”
“Yes.”
“That should make me feel stupid.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he lied well.”
“That feels worse.”
Roman sat across from me.
“Eleanor, intelligence doesn’t make someone immune to deception.”
I looked at him.
“Experience talking?”
“Yes.”
“Matteo?”
“My father.”
That surprised me.
Roman had spent his life believing Vincent Moretti was untouchable.
Later he discovered his father had lied about money, violence, alliances.
“The hardest part wasn’t learning he had done terrible things,” Roman said. “I already knew that.”
“What was?”
“Realizing many of the stories he told about why he did them were lies.”
I understood.
Sometimes betrayal was not learning someone was bad.
It was discovering your memories had been edited by them.
I reached across the desk.
Roman took my hand.
“We’re terrible at normal dating.”
He considered.
“I bought your family’s debt before our first dinner.”
“Exactly.”
“I could take you somewhere.”
“Without gunfire?”
“I’ll try.”
Our first actual date happened that Friday.
A small Italian restaurant in the North End.
No security visible.
No private room.
Roman ordered badly because he was nervous.
I teased him.
He claimed mafia bosses were allowed to be nervous.
After dinner we walked through narrow streets beneath warm lights.
“You’re staring,” I said.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because the first time I watched you walk through a room, your mother was alive.”
My chest tightened.
“And now?”
“Now I know why she worried.”
“Because I’m reckless?”
“Because you make people want to protect you.”
I stopped.
Roman immediately corrected himself.
“That sounded wrong.”
“It did.”
“What I mean is…”
He struggled.
I smiled.
“I know.”
Then I kissed him.
This time there was no hospital.
No fear.
Just choice.
Weeks later, Preston’s trial date was set.
My thirtieth birthday would happen three days before jury selection.
Northstar would finally become mine.
And Preston, despite sitting under house arrest awaiting trial, filed a civil claim the morning before my birthday.
He claimed our unfinished wedding represented a binding marital contract.
Absurd.
Except Massachusetts law gave his lawyers just enough procedural room to request an emergency hearing.
His goal wasn’t winning.
Delay.
Freeze Northstar.
Keep control contested.
On the evening before I turned thirty, I stood at my mother’s grave.
“I’m tired,” I whispered.
Roman stood several feet away.
I appreciated the space.
“I think you knew this would be hard.”
Wind moved through the trees.
“I wish you’d told me more.”
Nothing answered.
Then I smiled.
“But I understand why you didn’t.”
My phone buzzed.
Chloe.
She had found something in Mom’s old files.
A wedding document.
Not mine.
My mother’s.
And attached to it was a legal declaration signed twenty years earlier.
A declaration specifically barring any spouse of mine from controlling Northstar without my independent written consent after marriage.
My mother had anticipated everything.
I laughed beside her grave.
Roman raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
I looked at him.
“My mother just won an argument twelve years after dying.”
Roman smiled.
May you like
“That sounds like Evelyn.”
And the next morning, on my thirtieth birthday, Northstar Terminal became legally, irrevocably mine.
