Chapter 7 - The Photograph Dominic Could Not Explain
Dominic looked at the photograph for a long time. Autumn had sent it to his lawyer rather than confront him in an empty room; Claire Han and Serena Vega attended when he agreed to speak. There was no audience to impress, no private deal to close. Just a dated image, a table, and a man who had run out of ways to call himself uninvolved.
“I was there,” he said.
Autumn folded her hands. “Why?”
“Asterion invited potential clients to see Lantern at work. They said MIT had approved a research demonstration.”
“Did you meet me?”
“No. I remember somebody saying a student had reported a privacy problem. Miriam said it was a misunderstanding.”
“And you believed her.”
“I wanted to believe her.”
That was different, and worse. Dominic admitted the demonstration had shown analyses of households under financial stress. He understood that the data was sensitive. When a junior researcher complained about consent, he asked whether the project could survive bad publicity. He did not ask whether the complaint was true. The following day, he authorized the contract to continue.
“Did you know they expelled me?” Autumn asked.
“Not until this week.”
“But you knew somebody had raised the alarm.”
“Yes.”
Autumn stood. She did not want to yell. Yelling would let him believe the conversation was about an emotion he could wait out.
“You kept paying them because the program made you money. Then when your laptop broke, I was useful again. You offered me a job before you ever asked whether your company helped ruin mine.”
Dominic nodded. “That’s fair.”
“No. Fair would have been you asking questions in 2019.”
She walked out with Claire, leaving his attorney to discuss preservation of the remaining documents. On the street she cried for the first time since Giovanni’s. Not because Dominic was the only villain. He was not. She cried because seven years of suffering could trace back partly to a person who had needed only to ask one more question and had decided not to bother.
Claire waited beside her. “You don’t have to decide what to do with him today.”
“I know what to do. I want his cooperation. I don’t want his gratitude, and he doesn’t get mine.”
They went straight to a tenants’ meeting, where Eliza Brooks and other residents were preparing questions for Sterling Gate’s lawyers. Some wanted to stay; some wanted a fair chance to sell. A mother named Tasha Williams worried that redevelopment would force her son to change schools. An older man worried he could not afford moving costs even if he wanted to leave. Autumn helped organize the concerns into a list with addresses, dates, and names. She did not become their spokesperson. Eliza was more than capable of doing that herself.
“People keep asking who owns our building,” Eliza said. “I want to know who gets to decide what happens to the people inside it.”
The meeting ended at dusk. Autumn carried a box of papers toward the public library next door, where Claire had arranged a private room for reviewing records. A man followed her through the entrance. She recognized him from the image Ben had taken in the stairwell: dark jacket, narrow face, a hospital contractor’s badge now removed.
He approached the table as she set down the box. “Miss Rivers. You’ve made this complicated.”
“Then speak to my lawyer.”
He reached for the folder containing the residents’ notices. Autumn pulled it back. The man seized her wrist hard enough to make her gasp. A library employee shouted. Roman, who had been across the street at Dominic’s request but had stayed outside the meeting, entered when the employee called for help.
“Let go,” Roman said.
The stranger swung at him. Roman blocked the blow and struck him once, driving him back against an empty chair. The man fell, scrambled up, and ran toward the exit. Roman did not chase him. He stayed with Autumn while the librarian called police and preserved the security footage.
Autumn held her sore wrist and tried to steady her breathing. Roman looked at the papers scattered on the floor.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No.”
“I should’ve been closer.”
“You weren’t supposed to be here at all.”
“Fair.” He looked genuinely chastened. “The librarian did better than I did.”
“She called the police. That was the right thing.”
They gave statements. Autumn recognized the attacker from Ben’s video but did not claim to know his name. Roman described the single defensive punch. An officer thanked the librarian for keeping the original camera recording rather than uploading a clip to social media.
Claire retrieved the box. One sheet lay beneath an overturned chair. It was a notice that had been slipped between the residents’ papers while Autumn was distracted. Printed at the top were the words LANTERN LEGACY ACCOUNT. Below was a payment schedule for a nonprofit called Hope Harbor Medical Relief, which had received money from Asterion and made disbursements to several patient assistance accounts.
Autumn stared at the name. Hope Harbor was printed on the fake notices Cross had received about Rose’s transplant.
“Why would a patient charity be in the tenants’ files?” Claire asked.
Autumn pointed at the account number. It matched a payment reference in the old Sterling Gate contract. Someone had mixed records on purpose, perhaps to frighten them, perhaps to leave a warning. They could not know which.
Vega arrived to collect the document. She said investigators had identified the attacker as a freelance security contractor with ties to Angelo Rossi. He had been employed on a temporary assignment by Hope Harbor two months earlier.
“He could have stolen that file,” Autumn said.
“Or someone could have sent him with it. We’ll find out.”
When she returned to the temporary apartment, Ben was waiting with a bag of ice for her wrist. He had read the police notification, not the online rumors.
“Did you win?” he asked.
“I got away. That’s enough.”
He handed her the ice. “I’m glad you didn’t have to win a fight to get home.”
May you like
Autumn leaned against him. In the years ahead, she would remember that more clearly than the punch: a library worker raising the alarm, an officer writing down what happened, her brother making room on the couch. Protection was not one powerful man arriving to solve everything. It was people doing their parts.
Across town, Miriam Vale entered Hope Harbor’s offices after dark. A security camera recorded her carrying a cardboard archive box toward a waiting car. She looked directly into the lens before the recording abruptly ended.
