PART 13:

Separate federal surveillance. Ava said, “Lucien Vale has been a person of interest to two federal agencies for several years,” Patricia said without inflection. “That’s not news to anyone who knows who he is. What it means for you is that anything you obtain through your connection to him becomes potentially tainted in a legal argument.

” She looked at her over the sunglasses. “The drive you handed them today? The provenence question I told you not to answer this morning? That question just became the central question. Ava thought about Lucian’s face when she’d asked him about the documents. She thought about what he’d said. I’ve been watching your family for 7 months.

She’d understood in the abstract what that meant. People, surveillance, the particular resources of a man whose life operated in spaces where those things were available. She’d understood it and put it aside because she needed the information and she needed to move. She hadn’t thought about what it cost her legally to use it.

“What happens if the provenence question goes badly?” She said, “The documents get suppressed.” Patricia said, “Your cooperation still stands. Your testimony is clean regardless, but the evidentiary value of what you brought in today collapses.” And without independent corroboration, the case against the trust becomes harder to prosecute, which means your father’s legal team achieves what they want.

a long enough delay for the political connections to do their work. She paused. It’s a strong move. I’ll give them that. Ava stood on the sidewalk in borrowed clothes with her bruised face and her damaged ribs and looked at the middle distance where the city continued its indifferent forward motion. Her father had always been four moves ahead.

She’d spent her entire life being one of his pieces. She looked at Patricia. Is there another way to corroborate the documents? something that doesn’t involve the providence question. Patricia thought about it. If the information on that drive leads investigators to records they can obtain independently through their own subpoenas, their own sources, then the taint question becomes moot.

The documents are just a road map. The destination is what matters. She paused, which means the question is whether what’s on that drive points to something the federal investigation can find on its own fast enough. And if it does, Ava said, what do they find? Based on what I saw in that room today, Patricia said, they find Daniel Ferris.

They find Voss Meridian. They find the Ashworth connection. She was quiet for a moment. And they find that the timing of the Ashworth marriage coinciding with the trust’s restructuring is not coincidental. Seline Ava thought about her sister’s voice this morning. I didn’t know about your account specifically. the specifically doing a great deal of work, the three years of knowing and saying nothing.

She thought about 342 sugar flowers. She thought about her sister standing at the altar in white while Ava stood in silver at the back and felt grateful for the invitation. Her phone buzzed. She looked at it. A text from a number she didn’t recognize, which she was beginning to understand was how her father operated when he didn’t want the communication on any record that could be clearly attributed.

It said, “Come home. We can fix this together. Whatever you’ve been told, there are things you don’t understand.” “Come home and let me explain before you make a mistake. You can’t walk back.” She showed it to Patricia without a word. Patricia read it. “Don’t respond,” she said. “I know,” Ava said. Her phone buzzed again.

Same number, a second text. This one said, “Ava, I’m your father. Whatever else is true, I’m still your father. Please. She looked at it for a long time. She thought about the word please and what it cost a man like Robert Moretti to type it. Whether it cost him anything, whether it was another move or whether somewhere inside the architecture of calculation, there was a person who had looked up and realized at approximately 11:45 on a Tuesday morning that things were not going to go the way he’d planned them. She put the phone in her

pocket. I need to make a call, she said. Not to no, she said. Not to my father. She walked 10 ft down the sidewalk and dialed Lucienne. He picked up on the first ring. The documents, she said. The providence question. My father’s lawyers are going to use your surveillance activity to taint everything I gave Delaney this morning. A pause.

I know, he said. I heard. She didn’t ask how. Is there another way in? Something the federal investigators can find on their own without the drive if they know where to look. Silence. But not the silence of someone thinking. The silence of someone who had already thought about this and was deciding how to say what they decided.

There’s a person, he said. Who? Someone inside the Voss meridian structure. a junior partner who’s been uncomfortable with the arrangement for approximately two years and who has on two occasions asked people in my orbit whether there were options. He paused. I’ve never approached him directly because approaching him directly would have created exactly this kind of provenence problem.

But if someone else approached him, she said, if federal investigators approached him with the right questions, questions that were specific enough that he understood they already knew the shape of the thing, he might decide that his discomfort had reached its threshold. What questions? Ask Delaney about the meridian account in the Cayman structure.

👉 [Tap here for the Next Part ] 👈