PART 16:

She thought about 7 months of a man building something she couldn’t see to protect someone who hadn’t asked. She thought about what it meant to choose, not to survive the choice, to make it. Patricia, she said, yes. I’m not withdrawing. A pause. Even if I’m not withdrawing, she said again, but I need you to find out right now exactly what federal agency has been watching Lucy unveil and who the senior officer is on that investigation because I think my father just made the most expensive trade of his life and I want to be in the room when it decides to

collect on that trade. Patricia was quiet for three full seconds. Give me 20 minutes, she said. The car reached the Riverside Drive exit and Ava told the driver to keep going north. She didn’t know where she was going yet. She just needed to be moving. Needed the city sliding past the windows.

Needed the particular momentum of a vehicle in motion while she waited for her phone to tell her something she could act on. 15 minutes later, Patricia called back. “The agency watching Veil is a joint task force,” she said. “FBI financial crimes crossdated with organized crime. The senior officer is a man named Frank Caruso.

He’s been building a case on Veil for 3 years. A pause. He’s also the officer who received a call from the Moretti family legal team at 9:47 this morning, an hour after Ava had walked into the federal building, an hour after the trust accounts had started to move toward freezing. “What did they offer him?” Ava said.

I don’t know exactly, but Caruso’s task force filed an expedited material request at 10:15 this morning referencing Vale by name. And at approximately 12:30, Vale’s primary associate, a man named Brennan, who runs his security operations, was detained for questioning at Vale’s office building. Brennan, she didn’t know the name, but she understood its weight.

If Lucienne’s primary security operator had been pulled, whoever remained in that office was operating blind. “Where is Lucien?” she said. “I don’t know. His attorneys are presumably mobilizing. The detention of the associate is probably a pressure move. Caruso trying to shake the structure loose before Vale’s legal team gets fully organized.

” Patricia paused. “Ava, I want to be clear about something. What happens to Lucin Slucen Veil in the context of Caruso’s investigation is not I know it’s not your case. Ava said it’s not your case either. Your cooperation with Delaney is what protects you whether veil I know. She said I know what it is and what it isn’t.

She looked out the window at the gray sky above the treeine of Riverside Park. My father offered Caruso something specific, something that was worth making a move today when everything else was already in motion. What would be worth that? Patricia was quiet. Documentation, Ava said slowly. My father has documentation on Vale’s operations, something he’s been holding, something he got access to because Vale’s been watching his family and my father found out and she stopped.

He’s been watching Lucien, too. That would be consistent with how Robert Moretti operates, Patricia said. Which means there’s a file somewhere in the Moretti legal structure passed to Caruso’s team this morning as the trade. She pressed her fingers against the cold window glass. If that file reaches the task force before Veil’s attorneys can respond, “The expedited material request could be executed today.

” Patricia said, “Yes. How do I stop it?” Ava, Patricia, how do I stop it? The pause this time was long and had a different texture. Not reluctance exactly, more the pause of a woman re-calibrating the shape of the conversation she’d thought she was having. You’d need to speak to Caruso directly, Patricia said finally. Not Delaney, Caruso.

And you’d need to offer him something that makes the Moretti trade less attractive than whatever he’s been offered. What do I have that Caruso wants more than what my father gave him? I don’t know, Patricia said, but I’d suggest you figure that out before you walk into a room with him. Because Caruso has been building this case for 3 years, and he’s not going to set it aside for sentiment.

I don’t have sentiment, Ava said. I have a complete picture of every financial transaction my father has made through the trust for 8 years, corroborated by a source inside Voss Meridian, who is almost certainly already on the phone with Delaney. And I have the specific structure of how the Ashworth family’s political connections were used to insulate those transactions from federal scrutiny. A pause.

The Ashworth angle, Patricia said carefully, connects the trust case to a political protection network that Caruso’s task force almost certainly cares about as much as they care about Vale, possibly more. Set up the meeting, Ava said. He won’t agree to tell him I have documentation showing that the political network protecting the Moretti Trust also provided cover for three other organized crime adjacent financial operations in the last 4 years.

Tell him I have that from the same source inside Voss Meridian. She paused. Tell him that if he executes the material request from my father’s legal team before he talks to me, he’s going to walk into a congressional oversight hearing in 18 months explaining why he took a trade from a compromised source instead of waiting 60 minutes. Silence.

You don’t know if that’s true. Patricia said, I know enough of it is true that the risk calculation works. Ava said the Ashworth connection is real. The political network is real. Whether the Voss meridian source has specifically documented the other three operations, I don’t know. But Caruso doesn’t know that I don’t know. Another pause longer.

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