PART 12:

And she thought about everything that lived between them. The 3 years, the seven months, the croissant because they’d run out of pain. Oo choka. And none of it seemed reducible to anything she could say in the 60 seconds she had before Patricia Cho needed her to move. The documents, she said, I need them on something I can carry.

He produced a drive from somewhere small black. She took it and their hands overlapped for a moment and she held the contact for a second longer than was necessary and then she took the drive and stepped back. When this is over, she said, “Yes,” he said. She walked out of the apartment without looking back because looking back was a thing she was going to stop doing, starting now.

The federal building on Lower Broadway was the kind of architecture that was designed to communicate permanence and authority, which it did. Though by 11 in the morning, Ava had stopped registering it as anything other than a door she was walking through. Her ribs had stiffened further during the cab ride to Mara’s apartment.

And the subsequent effort of showering and changing into borrowed clothes, jeans, a dark sweater, flat shoes, and she’d taken three ibuprofen and was managing, which was not the same as not hurting, but was sufficient. Patricia walked her through security with the ease of someone who’d done this particular walk many times, signed them in, exchanged a professional nod with the agent at the desk.

They were put in a conference room on the fourth floor. White walls, a long table, water, and a plastic pitcher. The specific institutional quality of a space designed for conversations no one was comfortable having. Agent Curtis Delaney was 45, lean with a handshake that was firm without being performative. His partner, Agent Solace, was younger and quieter and had a tablet she kept face down on the table until the conversation started.

“Miss Moretti,” Delaney said, “Thank you for coming in on short notice. My client is here voluntarily and in a cooperative capacity.” Patricia said, “I’d appreciate if we could keep the framing consistent with the material witness designation you communicated this morning.” Absolutely. Delaney opened a folder. Miss Moretti, how familiar are you with the Moretti Civic Trust’s operational accounts? Not very, Ava said.

Until approximately 12 hours ago. She put the drive on the table. Delaney looked at it, looked at her. I’d like to walk you through what’s on that, she said. And then I’d like to tell you about an account that was opened in my name when I was 19 years old, which I did not authorize for any use beyond my own business purposes, and which I believe was used without my knowledge as a transit vehicle for the trust financial operations for approximately 14 months.

Delaney’s expression didn’t change, but he reached for the drive. Let’s start, he said from the beginning. They were in the room for 2 hours and 40 minutes. Ava talked for most of it. Patricia intervened seven times, twice to redirect questions she flagged as outside the material witness scope five times to clarify the framing of Ava’s account in ways that consistently emphasize the without my knowledge architecture that the defense would need. Delaney was good.

He circled back to the same points from different angles, looking for inconsistencies, testing the edges of her account with the patient persistence of someone who’d learned that the second telling of something often looked different from the first. Ava told it the same way both times. Solless pulled up the drive’s contents partway through, and the room’s temperature changed slightly.

a shift in attention, a quickening of the notetaking, and Ava understood that what Lucien’s people had assembled was either confirming something they’d suspected or opening something they hadn’t found yet. When it was over, Delaney closed his folder and looked at her for a moment. “I want to be clear about where we are,” he said.

“The material witness designation stands. What you’ve provided today is significant.” He paused. I also want to be clear that what you’ve provided creates some complexity for other parties in this investigation and those parties may respond in ways that are uncomfortable. My father, Ava said. Delaney said nothing.

How soon? She said, I’d encourage you, he said carefully, to have counsel available and to be thoughtful about your communications over the next 24 hours. She understood. She stood up and Patricia stood with her and they walked out of the room and down the corridor and through the lobby and out onto Broadway where the city was doing its ordinary Tuesday afternoon thing.

People and cabs and the particular noise of a street that had never once stopped for any individual crisis. Patricia stopped on the sidewalk and looked at her. You did well, she said. Clean, consistent, detailed. They believed you. Did it help? Yes. Patricia put on sunglasses. Whether it helped enough depends on how fast your father moves and whether Voss Meridian’s principles decide to cooperate or fight.

She paused. There’s something else you should know. Before we went in, I got a call from a colleague who tracks federal filings. A protective motion was filed this morning by the Moretti family’s legal team attempting to limit the scope of the trust subpoena. It names you. Ava looked at her.

It argues, Patricia said, that any documentation you might provide has been obtained through improper means due to your alleged relationship with a figure under separate federal surveillance. She let that land. They’re not just discrediting you publicly. They’re trying to poison your evidence in court. The sunlight on Broadway, the noise.

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