“Yes,” I say. The word tastes like iron. “We finish it.”
His hand closes around mine once. A squeeze. Not ownership. Not a claim. Alignment.
The Commission hall is marble and money and the soft lie of legitimacy. Men sit under chandeliers and talk like they’re priests, as if the river outside those windows didn't carry secrets that could rot the foundation. The river moves past glass like a witness that learned to keep quiet for the right price.
Not today.
My father stands at the edge of the table with his dignity on like a suit. Luigi’s uncle sits like boredom is a shield. The red scarfed Commission man smiles as if he's about to bless us all. Rinaldi waits in the back with a legal pad and eyes bright with the kind of joy only revenge brings.
Luigi sets the player on the table with a calm that feels almost insulting in a room full of men trying to regain control. I straighten the ledger and the packet beside it, and I feel the weight of it in my hands, not because it's heavy paper but because it contains the proof my mother never got to hold.
Clara’s numbers. Wire confirmations. Blackout logs. Maintenance entries that don't match crane rotations. And the confession, recorded from two angles, because we don't trust luck and we don't trust men who smile too easily.
Then I lift my gaze and let the room feel the simple fact of me.
Alive. Not removed. Not resolved.
“We are here to close the truce,” the Commission man says, because he wants the narrative back.
“We are here to force the truth into daylight,” Luigi answers.
He nods at me.
I press play.
Orfeo, the fixer’s voice fills the marble, it’s not stripped of gulls and crowd noise, but the intent can be heard.
“Same as the ferry job. Outcome reads resolved.”
The room goes still.
I watch the men who pretend they don't flinch. I watch the men who do. I watch my father’s jaw tighten, and something in me settles into a colder shape. For years I wondered if he was stupid or cruel. Today I realize he's something more boring.
He's a survivor who confuses survival with virtue.
Luigi’s voice stays calm.
“Name the architect,” he says.
I do it because my brother deserves a clean ending, even if his death was never meant to be clean.
“Benedict Carraway,” I say. “He paid to blackout dock cams the night our parents died. He routed money through his River Conservancy fund. He used our families as cover so the port could shift while we bled.”
Murmurs ripple. The room tries to turn it into business, because men like this survive by filing sins.
I refuse to let them file my brother.
“And my brother,” I add, and my voice doesn't shake. “Carraway ordered it. He wanted a dead heir to bend me, and a Moretti name to take the blame.”
Silence opens like a wound.
The Commission man clears his throat. “This is a serious allegation.”
I slide the supporting pieces forward with hands that don't tremble.
“Receipts,” I say. “And an admission.”
Luigi leans in, voice low but carrying.
