Selene wanted to cross the room. She wanted to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him nobody was responsible for every lie told around them. But that would have been too easy, and too untrue. She stayed where she was.
Mara closed her notebook. “This is why independent review matters. Luca's admission identifies a witness and a potential access route. It doesn't tell us which pages were removed. We still need the original contents.”
“Then let's find the original,” Dante said.
Livia placed a second document on the table. A shipping receipt showed a secure transfer from the archive to a storage company on South Canal Street. The inventory listed several boxes, including an item labeled SEVENTEEN, RED BINDING.
Selene's breath caught. The red ledger she had searched for at the archive had been transferred, copied, and hidden. Orsini had not simply been keeping records away from Dante. He had been sorting the evidence that could expose him.
“Do we have authority to retrieve it?” she asked.
“Not by walking in,” Livia said. “The storage lease is held by one of Orsini's firms. We can demand preservation and seek a court order. The beneficiaries' counsel has grounds to request the records.”
“Do that,” Dante said. “And inform the investigators reviewing the fund.”
Selene watched him sign the request, then ask Livia to read it back. He was learning the habit Frances Bell had demanded: don't ask for relief from shame; do the work.
On Monday, Selene met with Alice Ward through a video call arranged by attorneys on both sides of the Atlantic. Alice had been the junior technician at Cambridge who checked photographs into the imaging lab. She now worked at a school outside Bristol. She looked nervous, older than Selene remembered, and resolute in a way she had never been at the hearing.
“I watched Kessler remove the original hard drive from the cabinet,” Alice said. “He told me the copies needed color correction. Later he brought back a replacement drive with the same label. When I asked why the serial number was different, he said he had made a formal transfer and I should stop questioning senior staff.”
“Did you tell the panel?” Selene asked.
“I tried. I gave the investigator the inventory. The version that appeared in the hearing packet was missing my handwritten note.”
Selene gripped her pen.
“I should have insisted,” Alice said, her voice breaking. “I was twenty-three. My contract was up for renewal. He said I'd ruin my future for a colleague who had already ruined hers.”
“I know what that fear feels like,” Selene told her.
Alice began to cry. “I'm sorry.”
“Thank you for coming now.”
The interview lasted nearly two hours. Alice identified physical records and offered to submit a sworn statement. Mara cautioned everyone that the account would need corroboration. It was the first direct witness willing to challenge the evidence presented against Selene, but it was not itself a reversal of the finding.
After the call, Selene walked alone for twenty minutes through the cold. She passed a school where parents waited with backpacks and paper cups of coffee. She had imagined vindication as a thunderclap. In reality it felt like being told the surgeon might finally be willing to look at the wound.
When Dante called, she almost did not answer.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Can I do anything?”
“Don't offer to buy the university.”
He exhaled. “It crossed my mind.”
Despite everything, she laughed.
“I need to be allowed to be angry,” she said. “With Kessler. With the panel. With Alice, a little, even though I know what she risked. With myself for thinking that being right would protect me.”
“You can be angry.”
“I don't need your permission.”