The Price of Silence
Chapter 10 - The Price of Silence
Elias was denied immediate bail because prosecutors claimed he possessed confidential components worth millions.
The company released a statement describing the arrest as proof of a decades-long campaign of revenge.
Employees who had supported Elias were suspended. Luis Ortega was fired for violating media policy. The two mechanics who stood between Dominic and the documents received legal threats.
Sofia’s social accounts filled with accusations that she had abandoned her wedding for money.
Cross Automotive’s stock fell twelve percent.
Victor called an emergency board meeting and blamed the decline on “an unstable beneficiary and an embittered thief.”
Maya challenged the evidence against Elias. Security cameras near his apartment had stopped recording for exactly forty-three minutes. A company van entered the street during that gap, but the license plate was unreadable.
They needed an insider.
Dominic requested a private meeting with Sofia at the empty cathedral.
She almost refused.
Maya advised her to go while wearing a recording device.
Dominic waited near the altar, no longer dressed in red. He wore a dark suit and looked smaller without the performance of the wedding around him.
“I did not know my father would kill Daniel,” he said.
“You knew he threatened him.”
“I thought it was business pressure.”
“You helped him lie to me.”
Dominic looked at the rows of unused flowers.
“My entire life, he taught me that Cross Automotive had enemies because people wanted what we built. Every question became betrayal. Every doubt became weakness.”
“That does not explain what you did to Elias.”
“No.” He swallowed. “That was me.”
It was the first honest sentence Sofia had heard from him.
Dominic admitted Victor ordered the prototype parts planted in Elias’s workshop. Roland Pike arranged the break-in. The company had prepared the evidence months before the wedding in case Elias opened the car.
“Then testify.”
Dominic looked toward the cathedral doors.
“If I testify, my father will destroy me.”
Sofia removed the small recorder from beneath her sleeve and placed it on the pew.
“You already destroyed yourself when you chose his approval over another man’s dignity.”
She walked away.
Dominic remained alone at the altar where he had expected to receive everything.
By evening, he sent Maya one encrypted message.
May you like
I can prove the parts were planted.
But the proof is inside my father’s office.
