Again.
A cold ripple runs through me. If Dimitri is out there moving pieces, hunting shadows…someone else could die before morning.
No. I’m done being passive. I’m done waiting for answers while other people decide my fate.
I enter the code and unlock the study. The room smells like him: clean, sharp, steady. Lamplight casts a warm circle over the desk. I close the door behind me and step inside, my heartbeat loud in the silence.
I go straight to the drawer where he keeps the files.
Koval Operations – Active Leads.
I pull the folder out and spread everything across the desk. I’ve seen it before, but not entirely. Maybe I missed something. Pages, photos, transcripts, financial trails. My hands are shaking, but I force myself to focus. I trace my finger down the columns of names…transactions…dates…
And then it hits me again.
Dubois.
My mother’s maiden name.
Right there.
Over and over.
Buried in transfers Dimitri still hasn’t explained to me.
My breath quickens.
I reread every line, every timestamp, every signature—searching for something that proves what my heart already insists: She’s innocent. She has to be.
But the paper doesn’t care about how I feel.
And the deeper I look, the more afraid I am of what I’m going to find. For hours, I piece the pattern together, line by line, until my eyes burn.
The accounts were opened eighteen months ago.
Eighteen months ago….
After my mother’s first stroke.
When she could barely speak.
When she was under full-time medical care in France.
My throat tightens.
I pull her medical timeline closer, laying it beside the banking documents. The dates clash violently. She wasn’t even moving around then, much less orchestrating covert transfers.
I check her passport logs next.
Not a single stamp.
Not one entry.
Not one exit.
She hasn’t used that passport since months before the accounts were created.
My heart pounds faster.
