Chapter 6 - THE WEAKNESS ROMAN REFUSED TO LOSE
Roman wanted Sadi out of Chicago.
Sadi refused.
They argued for forty minutes.
“I can put you in Connecticut.”
“No.”
“California.”
“No.”
“Canada.”
“Do I look Canadian?”
Roman stared.
“That is not a logical objection.”
“Neither is shipping your wife across the continent.”
“Cross will target you.”
“He already did.”
“Exactly.”
“Sending me away proves it works.”
Roman walked toward the window.
“I don’t care what it proves.”
“I do.”
He turned.
“I care whether you are alive.”
Sadi’s anger vanished slightly.
There.
The real argument.
Fear.
Roman did not fear prison as much as losing her.
He did not fear Cross.
He feared returning home to an empty house.
Sadi walked closer.
“I’m scared too.”
Roman’s eyes met hers.
“But I won’t spend our marriage disappearing whenever somebody threatens us.”
“This is not normal danger.”
“No.”
She touched his chest.
“Neither are you.”
Roman almost smiled.
She continued:
“I am not asking you to pretend Cross is harmless.”
“What are you asking?”
“Trust me enough to include me.”
Roman looked exhausted.
Trust.
Again.
That word was rebuilding their marriage brick by brick.
“All right.”
That afternoon, Roman did something nobody expected.
He met federal prosecutors voluntarily.
Not to confess to every rumor attached to the Vale name.
Most were impossible to prove because most were exaggerated.
But Roman did acknowledge business practices inherited from his father that existed outside legal boundaries.
Unreported agreements.
Improper payments.
Legacy intermediaries.
He offered records.
Information.
A path to dismantling the remaining criminal structure around his legitimate companies.
His attorneys nearly died.
Sadi waited at home.
When Roman returned after midnight, his tie was gone.
He looked twenty years older.
“What happened?”
“I have approximately thirty percent fewer friends.”
“Good friends?”
“No.”
“Then efficient.”
He smiled tiredly.
Sadi poured him water.
“What did you agree to?”
“Compliance oversight.”
“Fines?”
“Likely.”
“Charges?”
“Possible.”
She stopped.
“You could go to prison?”
Roman looked at her.
“For inherited conduct I continued after my father died? It is possible.”
Sadi sat.
That was not the outcome she imagined.
“Why agree?”
Roman looked around their kitchen.
At the cheap ceramic bowl Sadi bought because it reminded her of her mother.
At the grocery list stuck to the refrigerator.
At evidence that the most powerful man in the room still lived a domestic life.
“Because Cross’s strategy only works while my past is something he can expose.”
Sadi understood.
Roman was taking away the weapon.
Not by destroying evidence.
By opening the door himself.
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
She reached for his hand.
Roman squeezed it.
The next attack came forty-eight hours later.
Not physical.
Worse in some ways.
Anonymous records appeared online showing every property Roman had secretly placed in Sadi’s name.
Forty million dollars.
Headlines exploded.
WAITRESS TO FORTUNE: HOW SADIRA VALE ACQUIRED $40M AFTER MARRYING MAFIA HEIR
Comments were vicious.
Gold digger.
Escort.
Trash with money.
Bought wife.
Sadi made the mistake of reading them.
Roman found her sitting alone in the dark with her phone.
He took it.
“I was using that.”
“No.”
“Roman.”
“No.”
She almost smiled.
Then cried.
Roman sat beside her.
“Why does it still hurt?”
He understood what she meant.
Trevor’s words shouldn’t matter.
Anonymous strangers shouldn’t matter.
Yet poverty had taught Sadi that rich people could eject her from any room.
Now wealth taught her people could accuse her of entering through the wrong door.
“I don’t know.”
Roman said:
“Because cruelty hurts even when it’s stupid.”
She looked at him.
“That sounded emotionally intelligent.”
“I have been reading.”
She laughed through tears.
“For therapy?”
“Against my will.”
Roman had begun seeing a counselor separately.
Sadi considered this more shocking than organized crime cooperation.
“Who leaked the assets?”
“Cross.”
“How?”
“Julian had access to estate filings.”
Sadi wiped her face.
“Then we stop hiding them.”
Roman frowned.
“What?”
“Publish everything.”
“Sadi.”
“You gave me assets I didn’t ask for.”
“Yes.”
“I’m giving most of them away.”
Roman blinked.
“No.”
She smiled.
“You said they were mine.”
He realized the trap.
“That is manipulative.”
“I learned from expensive people.”
Sadi transferred twenty-five million dollars into an independent housing foundation.
Not Roman’s.
Hers.
Public board.
Audited.
Transparent.
The remaining assets created financial security for herself and whatever family they might build.
At the press conference, a reporter asked:
“Mrs. Vale, is this an attempt to repair your reputation?”
Sadi answered:
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I spent most of my life knowing one missed paycheck could make me homeless.”
She looked into the camera.
“If money is going to change my life, I want it changing more than mine.”
The story shifted.
Not completely.
People still hated.
But East Mercer residents began speaking publicly.
Keisha gave an interview.
“She came before the cameras came.”
That sentence mattered.
Then something happened Roman had not expected.
Hundreds of small donations flowed into Sadi’s housing foundation.
Ten dollars.
Twenty.
Fifty.
Former waitresses.
Single mothers.
Teachers.
Warehouse workers.
People who understood unstable rent better than billionaires ever would.
Sadi cried reading the messages.
Roman watched.
“Why are you crying over twenty-dollar donations after giving twenty-five million?”
“Because twenty dollars means something different when you don’t have millions.”
Roman nodded.
He was learning.
Then Arthur entered.
His face erased the peace.
“What?”
Roman asked.
“Cross made contact.”
“How?”
Arthur placed an envelope on the table.
Inside was a photograph.
Roman’s mother.
Young.
Standing beside Gideon Cross.
Sadi looked at Roman.
He had gone pale.
“Your mother knew him?”
Roman did not answer.
On the back, Cross had written:
ASK ROMAN WHY SHE REALLY DIED.
Sadi looked at her husband.
Roman’s silence told her there was still one secret left.
May you like
And this one had nothing to do with Trevor.
---
