Chapter 3 - Terms Written in Ink
Sloan returned to Roman's office with a notebook, a list of questions, and a promise to June that she would leave at the first sign of a trap.
Roman had brought three people: Miriam Park, head of security Dante Ruiz, and a woman with silver hair introduced as Evelyn Costa, Roman's aunt. Evelyn took one look at Sloan's cheap coat and asked whether she'd eaten. Sloan replied that she preferred answers to breakfast. Evelyn smiled as if she approved.
“Before anything else,” Sloan said, “I don't work for you. I don't belong to you. And if we continue this public lie, I decide when it ends.”
Roman sat across from her. “Agreed.”
“And I want what Preston did to my father investigated independently. Not by people who would alter evidence to make you look good.”
“Agreed.”
Miriam opened a folder. “We can establish a temporary public arrangement. Thirty days maximum. No false legal filings, no forged marriage certificates, no invented wedding records. We simply don't correct Roman's statement until you're safe from immediate retaliation. We disclose the truth if a legal authority asks.”
Sloan leaned back. “That sounds like a very expensive way to avoid saying he lied.”
“It is,” Roman admitted. “And you're free to refuse it.”
She could have walked away. The thought comforted her more than it should have. Yet a woman pretending to be a Costa might gain access to dinners, meetings, and documents nobody would ever show a server. Preston had believed she'd broken under the weight of his cruelty. He might grow careless if he thought she'd suddenly acquired protection.
“What does he get out of it?” June asked.
Roman's answer came without hesitation. “A chance to stop Preston from selling a dangerous floodgate design to the city.”
“And publicity?”
“Unfortunately.”
Sloan glanced toward Evelyn. “Why are you here?”
“Because this family has used the word protection to excuse too much interference,” Evelyn replied. “Someone should remind my nephew that protecting a person and controlling one are different things.”
For the first time, Sloan smiled.
They made terms. Roman would cover the cost of independent legal counsel and authorize access to public and company records through proper channels. Sloan would be hired as a paid research consultant for the Harbor Point review, a role that used her unfinished architectural training rather than a title conjured for show. Every payment would be documented. Her father's medical decisions would remain hers alone. Roman would never contact Thomas's doctors without permission. Sloan would keep her own apartment, her own phone, and her own right to say no.
Before agreeing, Sloan asked Miriam for a full night to read the terms. At her kitchen table, she underlined phrases that seemed too broad and crossed out a clause allowing Roman's publicist to approve her statements. In the morning, she returned with nine handwritten changes. Miriam accepted seven outright, clarified one, and removed the last entirely. Roman never asked why she was being difficult. He asked whether she wanted a second attorney to review the revisions at his expense.
“Somebody once told me signing without reading was a sign of trust,” Sloan said.
Roman's expression hardened. “Who?”
“Preston.”
“Then he confused trust with convenience.”
The exchange did not make Sloan trust Roman overnight. It did something more useful: it showed her that saying no could change what happened next. She hadn't experienced that simple freedom in a long time.
The only concession Roman requested was that she inform Dante if she received threats.
“I can do that,” she said. “Provided Dante doesn't start following me to the grocery store.”
Dante raised a hand. “I happen to enjoy grocery stores, but the boundary is clear.”
By afternoon, June had gone to the newsroom, and Sloan was at a long table studying the original Harbor Point parcel map. It showed a tide gate beneath the former Mercer contract area and a drainage channel painted blue on an old engineering overlay. The revised map, approved six months before her father's collapse, contained neither.
“Someone erased a flood-control system from the plans,” Sloan murmured.
Miriam leaned over. “Or claimed it was abandoned.”
“An abandoned gate still exists. You can't certify a waterfront site as safe without showing what controls the water.”
Roman joined them. “Can you prove the drawings were changed?”
“Not from these copies. I'd need the earlier signed survey and the revision log.”
Miriam tapped an approval box. “Those records were supposedly destroyed in a storage fire.”
Sloan felt something tighten in her chest. Her father had kept duplicate plans in long cardboard tubes, labels written in neat block lettering. She remembered one tube in particular: NORTH GATE — HOLD FOR REVIEW. The year he lost the company, an unfamiliar man had come to their house demanding the entire archive. Her father refused. Two weeks later, the foreclosure crew removed nearly everything.
“There might be copies,” she said. “In our old storage unit.”
Roman offered to send someone immediately, but Sloan shook her head. “I'll go. You can wait in the car if you want.”
The unit sat behind a chain-link fence near the highway. Its lock was rusted, and the concrete smelled of dust. Sloan carried a flashlight while Roman stayed outside the doorway and Dante stood at the far gate, giving her space. Most of the shelves were empty. A child's bicycle leaned beside a broken office chair. On the back wall hung a faded calendar from the year everything went wrong.
She remembered her father marking important dates with a blue pencil.
“Help me move that cabinet,” she called.
Roman stepped inside. Together they shifted a steel filing cabinet just enough to reveal an old ventilation grille. Behind it was a narrow package wrapped in oilcloth. Sloan pulled it free. Inside lay a small brass key, a photograph of Thomas Mercer standing beside Roman's father, and a note written in Thomas's unmistakable script.
If they come for the plans, tell Adriana the promise still stands.
Sloan looked up. “Who's Adriana?”
Roman stared at the photograph for a long time.
“My mother,” he said quietly. “She's been dead eleven years.”
May you like
Behind them, the storage gate clanged shut.
Dante called from outside, sharp and urgent. “Roman? We have company.”
