Tonight he was no longer telling himself that.
During dessert, the evening’s MC, a smooth and polished man named Rez, stepped to the front podium and announced that after the formal remarks, the floor would be open for any guest who wished to say a few words. This was a Rexton tradition. Two or three people usually spoke—a board member, a longtime partner, a client who wanted to say something warm. In seven years, the tradition had never once produced anything remembered by anyone the following week.
Baron had always considered it a useful and safe ritual.
At table seven, Sera leaned toward Dio and asked quietly what he had done before he ended up on the street. The question came out more directly than she intended, and she immediately started to apologize.
Dio raised one hand gently and told her not to be sorry.
He was quiet for a moment, looking at the tablecloth.
Then he said that he had once run a company.
Not a small one.
He said it in the same tone he had used to describe the candlesticks—simple, unhurried.
Will look at him more carefully.
He told her the company’s name.
Her face changed instantly.
Anyone who had followed West African financial news fifteen years earlier would have recognized that name.
It was tied to a collapse. A devastating collapse. The largest private investment fraud the region had ever seen. It had destroyed the savings of more than thirty thousand families across four countries. The man at the center of it had disappeared before formal charges could be filed and had never resurfaced publicly.
Until now.
At this table.
Sera looked at Dio. He was eating dessert with steady hands. She asked him very quietly whether he was that man.
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