Nell looked toward Dante. “That Vittorio Valerio had kept one copy of the real distribution schedule. Dmitri had better not confuse justice with revenge if he valued his family.”
Dante stood and walked to the window. From the street rose the sound of a bus braking and a man calling to somebody across the road. The ordinary noises of a city that had continued living through a catastrophe it rarely remembered.
“My father could have stopped this,” he said.
Nell answered gently, “Your father did one good thing. He kept a copy. He also let the problem continue. People can be both.”
On the way back to the car, Selene saw a child on a porch holding a plastic baseball bat. His grandmother reminded him to wear gloves. The small concern opened a hollow space inside her. She imagined nineteen houses receiving the news that someone would not come home.
Dante waited until they had crossed the street before speaking.
“You were right. The paper doesn't point to gold.”
“Not yet, at least.”
“He wrote it to keep evidence safe.”
“Or to make you choose whether to read it.”
He watched her. “You make that sound like an examination.”
“Maybe it is. Your father knew people would come hunting for money. Perhaps he hoped his son would notice the people attached to it.”
“He didn't know me very well.”
“Then he might have been wrong.”
Dante looked at her sharply. She didn't soften it. After a moment, he nodded.
Back at Mara's office, the authorized ledger copies yielded another discovery. A bank transfer made three years ago carried a consulting payment to an English academic research foundation. Its address corresponded to an organization that had funded a portion of Selene's Cambridge work.
Mara traced the foundation's publicly reported directors. One of them was Professor Adrian Kessler.
Selene sat with both hands flat on the desk. Her old life and Dante's papers had touched at last, not by coincidence of symbols but through an actual payment trail.
“How much?” she asked.
“Two hundred and forty thousand dollars in two installments,” Mara said. “The purpose is listed as manuscript verification. We don't know yet what work was delivered.”
Dante moved to her side, careful to leave space. “I'll have someone investigate him.”
“No,” Selene said. “Mara and I will. Through the proper channels. I can't survive another investigation where nobody can tell who handled the evidence.”
He seemed about to insist. Instead he asked, “What can I do?”
“Find out how your company authorized that payment. And don't destroy anything.”
“Even if it makes me look guilty?”
“Especially then.”
He took a breath. “All right.”
That evening, Selene phoned her mother and told her what Nell had said about Dmitri. Vera cried quietly, not with surprise but with the release of someone who had held an old fear for too long. They talked about his terrible jokes and his habit of buying pencils by the dozen. For the first time since his death, Selene felt she was remembering a person instead of defending a reputation.
Just before midnight, Dante called.
“I found who signed the foundation transfer,” he said.
“My chief financial officer approved the first installment. I approved the second under a bundle of forty-seven invoices.”
Selene shut her eyes. “You didn't read those either.”
He let the word remain between them. Then he said something she had not expected.
“I've been powerful enough to make people too frightened to tell me when I was wrong. That's not a defense. It may be the worst thing about me.”
She sat with that for a while. He had not asked for absolution, and she would not give it.
“Start by reading tomorrow's documents,” she said.