Chapter 7 - Who Gave Victor My Name

Olivia requested a meeting with me three days after the document examiner reported his preliminary findings. I almost refused. I had spent five years receiving her apologies only when Damian was displeased, and I didn't want another conversation arranged to make his family comfortable.

Julia advised me not to meet alone while the document investigation continued. We agreed to speak in her office, with lawyers present, about the specific events that involved my name. It was not a reunion. Olivia understood that when she arrived without champagne, without jokes, and without the confidence she'd worn at the birthday party.

She looked older than I remembered. Not dramatically. Just tired.

“I need to tell you what I knew,” she said.

“Then tell me.”

She described Victor's proposal before the winter benefit. He had told her a different supplier could handle a larger event and that Breakwater would arrange coordination. She'd changed the date because she trusted his assurance that he would notify the original caterer. When everything failed, I'd repaired the damage.

I already knew that much.

“What happened after the benefit?” Julia asked.

Olivia looked at her lawyer before answering. “Victor brought me a payment form. He said Emma had agreed to it, but the signed original hadn't come back from the office. He asked me to forward a copy of one of Emma's thank-you cards so the foundation could match the signature on its records.”

The air seemed to leave the room.

“You gave him my signature?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you believe that was normal?”

“I wanted to. He said it was administrative. I knew you'd handled the event and that you were tired. I didn't ask you.”

I stared at her. The woman who had spent four years calling me dramatic had just explained how my name appeared on an authorization I had never seen.

Olivia wasn't finished. When the treasurer raised questions, Victor assured her the payment was legitimate and the form had been properly filed. She had accepted that reassurance. Later, when rumors circulated that the fundraiser had been mishandled, she allowed everyone to blame me because admitting her own decisions would expose the supplier change.

“Was it your idea to forge the authorization?” Julia asked.

“No. I didn't know he was going to use the card that way. But I gave it to him, and afterward I knew the explanation didn't make sense.”

It was not an admission that she had masterminded the fraud. It was an admission that she had ignored warning signs and allowed someone else to carry the risk. I recognized that shape of behavior immediately. It was the same one that had governed the celebration upstairs while I stood alone by the fireplace.

“Why are you telling me now?” I asked.

“Because Damian has the emails. Because the treasurer remembers asking me about it. Because I can't keep telling myself I didn't have a choice.”

I wanted a cruel answer. I wanted to say that she'd never had to live with the consequences. But she'd just agreed, through counsel, to provide her correspondence and a formal statement to the investigators. That would have consequences for her now.

“You should have told me four years ago,” I said.

“I know.”

We finished without embracing. Olivia left first. Her apology did not make us sisters in any meaningful sense. It simply gave the investigation a missing piece.

The accountants and lawyers supplied the rest over the following week. Breakwater Civic Services had billed the foundation for planning work that could not be substantiated. It later billed the harbor project for surveys and coordination services for which no completed reports could be found. The account receiving those payments was tied through corporate filings to an entity controlled by Victor's longtime business partner. Large sums were then moved to accounts the investigators believed required scrutiny by authorities.

The records were complicated, but the pattern wasn't. Victor had used the apparent legitimacy of a charity vendor to establish a relationship, then presented the same company as a reliable outside contractor for a much larger commercial project. Emma Romano's supposed approval had helped answer an early question from the foundation treasurer. Damian Romano's later authorizations had allowed far more money to move through the business.

Neither signature meant what Victor claimed it meant. Mine was copied. Damian's was real, but he had relied on Victor's summaries instead of examining the work. The difference mattered legally; morally, it still left my husband with something he had to face.

The harbor contract had become a point of conflict on March seventeenth because the lender wanted additional verification of the consultant's work. Victor resisted, telling Damian the delay threatened the deal. Damian had argued with him that night, then returned to his meeting without knowing his wife was upstairs enduring another episode of chest pain.

The same evening existed in two separate records: a business disagreement in company emails, and a private sentence in my diary. Neither had been written to explain the other. Together, they showed the distance between the worlds Damian had insisted on keeping apart.

He telephoned me after the outside auditors briefed him. I listened as he explained his own decisions without suggesting Victor alone bore responsibility.

“I signed funding authorizations,” he said. “I trusted reports I should have checked. I'm responsible for that failure.”

“Then put it in writing,” I told him. “For the investigators. Not for me.”

“I intend to.”

I believed him. He had begun cooperating with outside counsel and preserving records even when they reflected badly on his management. That mattered. It did not turn his negligence into innocence, or his neglect of me into a misunderstanding.

When the call ended, I opened the diary to its last page. Tonight he laughed. The line still hurt. But it no longer felt like a private accusation I was obligated to conceal.

I had written to survive a life in which I was rarely believed. Now records outside my diary had confirmed at least one of the truths I'd kept hidden for years.

May you like

[COMPLETED] “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DRESS! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT AN OLD SEAM...

[COMPLETED] At the Mafia Boss's Engagement Party, I Served His Hungry So...

[COMPLETED] The Mafia Boss’s Fiancée Tried to Dismiss His Father’s Loyal...

Julia called an hour later. The independent investigators were ready to make a formal report to the appropriate authorities and financial institutions. Olivia had agreed to preserve her messages. Damian had agreed to provide the company's books. And Victor, having been suspended, had demanded that his lawyers be allowed to challenge every finding.

The next stage would no longer belong to the Romano family alone.