“Mara, Carmine Orsini was at the table. He knew my name.”
This time the silence lasted longer.
“Go somewhere public and stay there,” Mara said. “Tell me everything, from the beginning.”
Mara had represented Selene for almost two years, first through a referral from an immigrant legal-aid clinic and then without charging most of the fees. She was a contracts lawyer, not a miracle worker. She had warned Selene that reversing a university's disciplinary finding required documents they did not have, witnesses willing to speak, and the kind of money Selene had once earned without imagining she'd need to count it.
Three years earlier, Selene had been an associate professor of historical linguistics at Cambridge, younger than nearly everyone who sat around the faculty's polished conference table. Her research compared surviving inscriptions from southern Italy with the later practices of private merchants who copied old scripts to hide records in plain sight.
She had a grant, a book contract, and a small office overlooking a courtyard where students rode bicycles through the rain. Her mother called every Sunday to ask if she was eating enough. Selene had thought the work mattered. She still thought so. That was part of what hurt.
Then a paper she coauthored on a maritime archive was accused of using altered photographs.
The accusation came from Professor Adrian Kessler, her senior collaborator. The images he presented to the panel appeared to show that Selene had modified the ink of three inscriptions to support her theory. She insisted the images were not the ones she had supplied. The original drive disappeared from a locked storage cabinet. Her lab access was suspended. A witness who had promised to confirm the handover withdrew his statement.
The panel did not convict her of a crime. It found serious research misconduct on the evidence available and recommended her dismissal. The newspapers compressed those careful words into “fraud professor.” Her university contract ended. Her visa arrangements unraveled. Institutions that had praised her work stopped answering her emails.
She moved to Chicago because an aunt had once lived there, because she could legally work there, and because nobody would care what kind of alphabet she could read while carrying soup.
By the time she finished telling Mara about the parchment, her fingers had gone numb.
“Do you still have the notebook from the original archive?” Mara asked.
“The little red one. Yes.”
“Don't bring it anywhere. Photograph the pages and send them through the secure folder. I want to compare the symbol.”
“Carmine recognized me.”
“Then we need to establish whether that's because he's well informed or because he's involved. Don't decide before we have proof.”
Selene was about to reply when a black car pulled up across the street.
Luca Gallo climbed out wearing an ordinary dark overcoat that failed to make him look ordinary. He waited by the car, his hands visible. He did not cross toward her.
“Mara,” Selene said quietly, “I think my prospective employer has arrived.”
“Put me on speaker.”
Selene walked only as far as the shelter at the bus stop. “Mr. Gallo.”
“Ms. Rostova. Dante asked me to bring you a proposal. I would rather hand it over in a place with witnesses.”
“Wise choice,” Mara's voice said from the phone. “I'm her counsel.”
Luca blinked once. “Then I suppose you want my name and company details.”
“I'd love them.”
He gave both. He also offered the name of Dante's lawyer, Livia Serra. Within an hour the three attorneys were talking instead of men waving threats in restaurants. Selene regarded that as progress.
They met in Mara's narrow office above a dental practice the following afternoon. Dante came alone apart from Luca, who stayed by the stairwell. No bodyguards filled the waiting room. Selene appreciated the gesture without mistaking it for trustworthiness.