The Mafia Boss brought another woman to his wife's birthday, but he stopped smiling the moment Adriana removed her wedding ring.

The federal building on Dearborn Street smelled of recycled air and institutional carpet.

Diane Marsh met us in the lobby at two-fifteen, a small woman in her sixties with silver hair and the unhurried manner of someone who had long ago stopped being impressed by urgency.

She looked at Lena first.

*You're the witness?*

*Yes,* Lena said.

*Have you ever given a formal statement before?*

*No.*

*It's slower than you expect and less frightening than you imagine.* She turned to me.

*They're ready for us.

There are two agents and an assistant U.S.

attorney.

They've seen the photographs.

They want the originals and they want both of your accounts on record today.*

*Marco Ferretti,* I said.

*Lena's brother.

He's in Pilsen.

He needs—*

*Already requested,* Diane said.

*He'll have a contact within the hour.* She looked at me steadily.

*Your father would have liked this part.*

*Which part?*

*The part where the preparation was sufficient.* She turned toward the elevator.

*Come.*

The next three hours were exactly as Diane had described.

Slow.

Less frightening than expected.

The assistant U.S.

attorney was a woman named Carver, mid-forties, with the focused attention of someone who had been waiting for a specific piece of a puzzle and was now holding it carefully with both hands.

She read the documents twice.

She asked me to walk through the timeline from the beginning.

She asked Lena to describe the phone call she had overheard, word for word, twice.

Then she set her pen down and looked at me.

*Mrs.

Romano.

The account in Zurich — you haven't transferred any funds.*

*No.*

*We're going to ask you to leave it in place for now.

The account, in its current state, is evidence of the original concealment.

If it moves, the paper trail changes.* She paused.

*Can you manage without it for the time being?*

*Yes,* I said.

*We'll move quickly.

The communication between Romano and the bank clerk, combined with the marriage contract clause and the timeline, gives us enough to execute on the fraud charge.

The broader crjme case has been building for four years — this is the thread that connects Ruggero directly to a financial instrument rather than through intermediaries.* She looked at the documents again.

*He made a mistake using a civilian asset.

He thought it was clean.

It wasn't.*

*My father made sure it wasn't,* I said.

Carver looked up.

*Your father — did he have prior contact with this office?*

*I don't know,* I said honestly.

*But I wouldn't be surprised.*

She nodded slowly.

*We'll look into that.*

It was nearly six o'clock when we came back out into the lobby.

The light through the building's front windows had gone the color of old amber.

Lena sat down on a bench near the door and put her face in her hands — not crying, just still, the way a person goes still when the thing they've been braced for finally passes.

I sat beside her.

*Is it over?* she asked, into her palms.

*The part where we were alone in it,* I said.

*Yes.*

She lowered her hands.

Her eyes were dry.

*What happens to Alessandro?*

I thought about that.

About the locked room with something breathing behind the door.

About the way he had said my name at the birthday table — low, final, as if he'd expected tears and found something worse.

*He'll have to make choices,* I said.

*I can't make them for him.*

*Do you think he knew?

From the beginning?*

*I think he knew what Ruggero wanted,* I said.

*I don't know what else he knew.

Or what he told himself about it.*

My phone buzzed.

A text from an unknown number.

*Ruggero went to the shop.

Found it empty.

He knows you've moved.

He's asking questions.

Be careful tonight.

— M*

Maso.

I showed the screen to Diane, who had reappeared at my elbow with her coat on.

*It doesn't matter,* she said.

*The warrant application is already drafted.

They'll execute tomorrow morning.* She looked at the text.

*Tonight, you don't go back to the shop and you don't go back to the Romano house.

I have a guest room.*

*Diane—*

*It's not a request,* she said, in the tone of a woman who had been making non-requests for forty years.

*Come.*

We followed her out into the amber evening.

Somewhere across the city, Ruggero Romano was standing in an empty jewelry shop, looking at a workbench with nothing on it, understanding for the first time that the thing he had spent four years engineering had already moved past him.