Chapter 3 - The Slow Decay
The walls began to close in on the Wallaces over the next month. It wasn't a landslide; it was a persistent, wearing erosion. One by one, their partners began to pull away. The municipal contracts were reviewed, then suspended, then rescinded. The city, smelling blood in the water, began its own inquiry.
Greta’s father, a man who had once looked at me with the indulgent amusement one gives a stray dog, now refused to take my calls. He was busy, I assumed, trying to liquidate his private art collection to plug the holes in his corporate ship.
I spent my evenings with my mother. She had never been to my apartment before. She walked through the rooms with a sense of awe, touching the minimalist furniture, the expansive windows.
“You’ve done well, Tristan,” she said, sitting on the terrace. “But you’re still so angry.”
“I’m not angry, Ma,” I said, looking out at the city. “I’m just finishing a job.”
“The job was to provide for yourself,” she said. “Not to settle scores. When you look into the abyss, Tristan, you have to be careful that you don’t start wearing its mask.”
“They hurt you,” I said, my voice hardening. “They looked at you, and they saw trash. I made sure they saw that they were the ones who were dirty.”
“And does that make me cleaner?” she asked gently. “Does that make the past go away?”
I didn't answer. She was right, of course. The humiliation of the fountain was a symptom of a deeper rot, but the rot had been there long before Greta Wallace ever stepped into my life. The Wallaces were just the current manifestation of the people who had told me I would never be enough.
I received a call from the DA’s office. The inquiry into the urban renewal projects was going public. They needed my testimony regarding the initial meetings where the bribes were first hinted at. It was the keystone I had been waiting to pull.
I arrived at the DA’s office on a Tuesday. The media was already outside, the cameras flashing as I entered. Greta was there, standing with her father, her eyes red-rimmed. She didn't look like a socialite anymore. She looked like a woman who was finally realizing that the world was not a stage for her personal benefit.
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She caught my eye as I walked past. She didn't scream. She didn't threaten. She just watched me. I saw in her eyes a flicker of something new: understanding. She realized that I had been playing a game she didn't even know existed.
The interrogation lasted three hours. I laid it out with the clinical precision of a surgeon. I provided the ledgers, the transcripts, the dates, and the locations. I watched as the prosecutors’ faces shifted from skeptical to grim. By the time I walked out, the Wallace legacy was dead. It was a matter of time before the handcuffs were placed, and the city turned its attention to the next scandal.
