Chapter 13 - the boardroom without a king)
DeLuca Holdings nearly collapsed anyway.
Scandal does not respect justice.
Customers panicked.
Lenders demanded reassurance.
Two board members resigned.
A European partner threatened to terminate a major shipping agreement.
For the first three weeks after Dominic's arrest, I spent twelve-hour days in a company I had never wanted to join.
Mara became my guide.
She taught me shipping.
I taught her buildings.
The comparison was more useful than either of us expected.
Companies, like old structures, often hide damage behind beautiful surfaces.
You look for cracks.
Uneven weight.
Repairs that do not match original materials.
Places where someone has painted over water damage instead of fixing the leak.
Helix was water damage.
Dominic was the leak.
But Victor had built some of the bad plumbing himself.
At my first full board meeting, I placed Victor's journals on the table.
"We are not going to spend the next year pretending one bad executive created every problem."
Several directors shifted uncomfortably.
One man said, "Dominic was responsible for the fraud."
"Yes."
"But Victor was not."
"Victor created a company where too few people could question a DeLuca without risking their careers."
Silence.
Mara watched me carefully.
I continued.
"That changes now."
We established independent audit authority.
Employee whistleblower protection.
Restrictions on related-party transactions.
Public reporting of executive conflicts.
Most importantly, the employee trust received actual voting representation instead of symbolic seats.
Several longtime directors hated me.
I considered that evidence of progress.
My old career returned at the same time.
Helen Shaw gave me the church restoration project.
I worked early mornings and weekends.
There was something healing about damaged stone.
Stone never lied about what happened to it.
A crack had a cause.
Water had a path.
Weight left evidence.
People were harder.
My mother moved into a small house near the old DeLuca estate.
Our relationship was awkward.
Love survived.
Trust needed rebuilding.
Sometimes we ate dinner and spoke easily.
Sometimes I looked at her and remembered seven birthdays she had missed.
She never asked me to forget.
That helped.
One night, she came to the estate carrying a box.
Inside was my old college portfolio.
"You kept this?"
"Of course."
"I thought it was lost after the funeral."
She looked down.
"Victor saved it from your apartment."
"My apartment?"
"After I disappeared, Dominic wanted everything cleared."
I felt anger rise.
"Victor took it?"
"He took anything he thought you might regret losing."
I opened the portfolio.
Sketches.
Plans.
Photographs.
Pieces of myself from before Dominic.
Inside the back cover was a note in Victor's handwriting.
Elena,
You once told me old buildings deserve renovation because damage is not the same thing as worthlessness.
Remember to apply your own philosophy.
V.
I sat on the floor for a long time.
Victor had done terrible things.
Cowardly things.
Generous things.
Human things.
Death had not made him simple.
That was perhaps the final lesson he left me.
Six months after his death, Dominic's criminal trial began.
His attorneys attacked everyone.
Jessica was called a vindictive mistress.
My mother was called unstable.
Victor was called senile.
I was called manipulative.
Then prosecutors played the recordings.
Dominic ordering the attack on my mother.
Dominic discussing the forged transfers.
Dominic planning Jessica's death.
Dominic laughing with an executive about how easy it would be to make me look "crazy enough for a jury."
The courtroom listened.
So did I.
When my turn came to testify, Dominic stared at me.
His attorney asked whether I hated my husband.
"No."
The answer seemed to surprise everyone.
"You don't hate him?"
"No."
"After everything you claim he did?"
"I don't need to hate him."
"Why not?"
"Because evidence doesn't require emotion."
The prosecutor smiled.
Dominic did not.
The trial lasted seven weeks.
The jury deliberated for eleven hours.
I was in the hallway when the verdict came.
Guilty.
Wire fraud.
Guilty.
Conspiracy.
Guilty.
Identity fraud.
Guilty.
Attempted murder conspiracy.
Guilty.
Witness intimidation.
Again and again.
Dominic's face changed with each word.
By the final count, Victor's fifty-million-dollar trust had already begun transferring to the employee pension fund.
Dominic looked at me as deputies approached.
"You think you won?"
I stared at him.
"No."
I looked toward my mother.
Toward Mara.
May you like
Toward the employees sitting behind us.
"I think you lost."
