“It was the letter,” he said.
Henri looked back at Dominic.
“I told myself when I shared the truth of her situation, she would understand mine,” he said. “The letter was genuine. The language was yours, and the recommendation was withdrawn. She had a right to know what had been done to her.”
Dominic’s face did not change, but one of his hands closed once and then opened again against the table.
Henri saw it and continued anyway.
“I knew what the truth would do to her. I understood exactly where it would land.” His voice remained maddeningly calm.
Luca lowered his eyes briefly. He had liked Bridget. Six years of working beside her caused him to construct a specific picture.
Henri kept going. “I chose someone carrying her own injury because it suited my purpose. I told myself the injury had been placed there by Dominic, and all I was doing was uncovering it.” He swallowed. “But that is not how honest people behave.”
No one spoke.
Henri’s hands were still folded. I noticed then that the knuckles on his right hand had gone white with pressure.
“I spent twenty years resenting what I believed Dominic had done,” he said quietly. “And in the end I became a monster, too.”
Dominic shook his head once.
“No,” he said.
Henri looked at him.
“You did something terrible,” Dominic said. “And you failed. But that doesn’t make you the same as the man you spent twenty years resenting.”
Dominic’s voice remained steady and low.
“You don’t become someone else simply because you did something cruel once. And you don’t escape it because you suffered first. Pain doesn’t excuse harm. And understanding what you did afterward doesn’t repair it.”
He held Henri’s gaze.
“You chose to hurt people. I didn’t. That’s the difference.”
It was one of the most severe things I had ever heard him say. Henri absorbed it without answering.
A detective stepped in, carrying a legal pad and a folder. He took the empty chair near the door. He fired off procedural questions. Names. Dates. Clarifications.
Henri answered.
Yes, the letter to Bridget had been delivered by hand.
Yes, he had cultivated her over time.
Yes, he had known Gerald Tureaud could facilitate quiet access to Orpheum administrative spaces without understanding the larger design.
No, he had not intended mass casualties.
The detective asked when he first understood that a weapon would be used. Henri took longer with that one.
“When Micah was introduced into the plan,” he said. “When a man whose usefulness depended on physical proximity and backstage access became necessary.”
The detective wrote that down.
“And you continued?”
