Dominic gave Arthur until midnight.
He didn't tell him that.
He simply let the estate stay locked, let the council members sit in their separate rooms with Vincent's people outside each door, and let Arthur Voss sit alone in the conference room with his water glass and his patience and the growing understanding that something had shifted in a direction he had not planned for.
At eleven forty-seven, Arthur asked to use the restroom.
The guard outside the conference room escorted him.
Standard procedure.
Arthur didn't protest.
He was gone four minutes.
When he came back, he sat down and folded his hands on the table and looked at the door with the expression of a man who had just made a phone call he felt good about.
Vincent appeared in the doorway of the study two minutes later.
"He had a second phone.
Taped inside his jacket lining.
We missed it on the first check."
"Who did he call?"
"We're pulling it now." Vincent paused.
"But the call lasted ninety seconds.
Long enough."
"Long enough for what?"
"Long enough to tell someone to move."
Dominic set down the USB drive.
"Angela and Clare."
"Already moved.
Both of them are in the east guest suite with two of my people outside the door." Vincent's voice stayed level.
"Ellie's asleep.
She doesn't know anything happened."
"What about Derry?"
"Gone.
Cleared out of the building sometime in the last two hours.
We're tracking his car."
Dominic stood.
"Arthur made a mistake."
"Which one?"
"He called someone to clean up.
Which means there's someone to find." He picked up his jacket.
"Bring Arthur to the study."
Arthur came in without the guard.
He sat down across from Dominic with his hands in his lap and his face composed and said nothing, because he had decided that silence was now his strongest position.
Dominic placed the USB drive on the desk.
Arthur looked at it.
"Gerald gave me this an hour ago," Dominic said.
"Shell companies.
Asset transfers.
Your wife's name on two of the registrations." He paused.
"It's not a contingency plan, Arthur.
It's a theft."
Arthur's eyes moved from the drive to Dominic's face.
"Gerald is a frightened man trying to redirect blame."
"Gerald has the original encrypted file with your send timestamp on it."
"Files can be altered."
"Angela Pierce has twelve photographs documenting four weeks of deliberate interference with my medical equipment."
"A technician with a grudge."
"Paul Derry's face is on the estate's internal security camera entering the rehabilitation unit on a false authorization."
"I don't know anyone named Paul Derry."
Dominic looked at him steadily.
"You suggested his name to Gerald by name.
Eight weeks ago.
Gerald will testify to that."
Something moved behind Arthur's eyes.
Not fear — not yet.
But the first real acknowledgment that the walls had come in closer than he had calculated.
"You have a physician's signature on a transfer document," Arthur said.
"You have a note in an old man's handwriting.
You have a photograph of a man in a uniform." He leaned forward slightly.
"What you don't have is anything that puts my hand on that brace."
"Not yet."
"You won't find it.
Because it isn't there."
"The phone call you made twenty minutes ago," Dominic said.
"Who did you call?"
Arthur said nothing.
"Whoever you called, my people are already looking for them.
And when we find them —" Dominic paused — "they're going to have a very clear choice between protecting you and protecting themselves."
Arthur was quiet for a moment.
Then he smiled — the same patient, silver smile he had used in boardrooms and council chambers for fifteen years.
"Dominic.
We've known each other a long time.
Whatever you think happened here, I want you to consider something." He spread his hands.
"You have a bad knee, a frightened technician, and a document that any competent attorney will dismantle in forty minutes.
If you take this outside these walls, you will spend the next two years in litigation that costs you more than the organization is worth." He paused.
"Or you let me walk out of here tonight, and this ends quietly."
"And the shell companies?"
"Dissolved by morning."
"And Mercer?"
"Retires.
Effective immediately."
"And the people you used to get here?"
Arthur's smile didn't waver.
"Reassigned.
Compensated.
Taken care of."
Dominic looked at him for a long time.
"You're offering to clean it up yourself."
"I'm offering to make it disappear."
"Because if it disappears," Dominic said, "so does everything that points back to you."
Arthur said nothing.
The smile held.
Dominic picked up his phone and pressed play.
Arthur's own voice came out of the speaker — recorded forty minutes earlier in the study, when Gerald had been in the room and the door had been closed and Arthur had believed he was speaking only to Dominic.
*"He wasn't planning temporary authority.
He was planning permanent transfer.
The vote tonight was never going to be reversed."*
Gerald's voice.
Steady.
Clear.
Arthur's face went very still.
"That's Gerald's account," Arthur said.
"Not mine."
Dominic pressed play on a second file.
This one was a phone call.
Ninety seconds.
Arthur's voice, low and precise, speaking to someone on the other end.
*"It's moving faster than expected.
Get the Pierce woman out of the building and make sure Derry doesn't surface before morning.
If Vale has the drive, the drive needs to not exist by six a.m."*
The room was completely silent.
Arthur's hands were flat on the desk.
He didn't pick up the water glass.
"The phone you used in the restroom," Dominic said.
"The taped one.
Vincent pulled the call the moment you sat back down." He set his own phone on the desk.
"You just told me, in your own voice, to destroy evidence and remove a witness."
Arthur looked at the phone.
For the first time in fifteen years, Dominic watched the patience leave Arthur Voss's face.
What replaced it was not rage.
It was something colder and more honest — the expression of a man who has played a long game and just seen the board flipped.
"You'll regret this," Arthur said quietly.
"Probably," Dominic said.
"Vincent."
The door opened.