Chapter 4
"Inside that folder," he said, "is a full audit of your father's campaign finance filings for the last three election cycles, cross-referenced against four shell companies your husband has quietly used to launder contributions from clients I happen to own controlling interest in. I have been sitting on this for eleven months as a professional courtesy to your father, Senator Caldwell, because he and I have done business that benefits us both. That courtesy just expired." He let that sentence hang in the fog. "You have twenty-four hours to resign from every charitable board bearing your family name, issue a written apology to Nora that I will personally review before it's sent, and ensure that she is paid, immediately, for four years of unpaid overtime that your household has quietly ignored, with interest. If any of that doesn't happen, this folder goes to the Boston Globe, and your father's next campaign will be the shortest of his career."
Vanessa's hands were shaking now, the diamonds on her fingers catching the gray light without any of their earlier confidence. "You can't do this over a maid."
"I'm not doing this over a maid," Damon said. "I'm doing this over the woman carrying my son, who you struck hard enough to leave a mark, in a cemetery, over grief she didn't even get the decency of an hour to sit with in peace." He stepped closer to her, and for the first time his voice dropped into something genuinely cold. "You will never come near her again. Not at your house, not in this city, not in any room I am ever informed you have entered. Is that clear?"
Vanessa looked at me then, really looked, maybe for the first time in four years of walking past me in her own kitchen without learning my last name. Something like shame flickered behind her eyes, quickly buried under practiced composure. "This isn't over," she said, but her voice had lost every ounce of the certainty it carried when she'd raised her hand against me.
May you like
"It is for you," Damon said. "What happens to your family's name after today depends entirely on how fast you follow every instruction in that folder."
She turned and walked back toward her car without another word, heels sinking slightly into the wet grass she'd avoided on the way in, and didn't look back once.
