I flip through the pages again, this time checking transfer locations. Not Paris. Not New York. Not anywhere she’s ever been for treatment.
Zurich.
Every single transaction originates from Zurich.
I check the listed intermediaries, tracing them through Dimitri’s contact list, then through the cross-referenced notes in the red-marked section of the folder.
My stomach drops.
These intermediaries—every one of them—passed through companies owned or previously owned by Charles Deveraux.
The truth hits me all at once.
My mother has been framed.
The same man who ruined Dimitri’s company.
The same man who stole from the Laurents.
The same man who orchestrated the Kovals’ resurgence.
The same man whose name coils like poison through every disaster Dimitri has ever mentioned.
Deveraux.
My breath stutters, my pulse loud in my ears. I grip the edge of the table because the room tilts for a second, like the air itself can’t believe what I’m seeing.
My mother wasn’t the mole.
She wasn’t selling information.
She wasn’t capable of any of this—physically or otherwise.
He used her maiden name because it was convenient.
Because it was believable.
Because Dimitri would suspect her.
Because I would doubt myself.
A clean, elegant trap.
A trap that almost worked.
Rage unfurls tight and hot under my ribs—not the loud kind, but the silent, surgical kind that sharpens every thought. The rain pounds harder outside, like the world is echoing the storm rising inside me.
I swipe the documents together, spreading them out in a new pattern. This time, I’m not searching.
I’m confirming.
Every line.
Every date.
Every signature.
Every movement.
