Vivienne Tao knew the shape of it all.
She didn’t have the documents or the names I had spent three years chasing, but she understood the lies holding the family together. She knew Nathaniel had been tied to Lena’s company. She knew Dominic had been burying something for fifteen years. She had lived with the secrets long enough to see the fractures.
We spoke for forty minutes. She gave me pieces, nothing more, and I understood she wasn’t on my side. She had her own reasons, her own calculations. But what she told me was solid.
Nathaniel had been Lena’s lawyer first. He helped set up her company. He knew what Dominic planned to use it for, or figured it out soon enough that staying quiet made him part of it. After Lena died, he closed the company, cleaned what he could, and stepped neatl
