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Nikita offered no such choice yet. She offered only questions.

I moved Rowen’s file aside and placed Nikita’s photograph beneath the light. The Cyrillic sign behind her identified a street in Moscow, according to Rurik, but the image had been printed in New York. A date stamped along the bottom placed her there several months before Salvatore died.

The attached pages followed her through three countries and four surnames, each one tied to an employer, a landlord, or someone Salvatore had suspected of sheltering her. None led to parents.

That absence mattered more now.

“Belova is common enough to hide behind,” Rurik said after examining the records again. “It may be her name, or it may be the kind of name chosen because no single family can claim it.”

The distinction disturbed me. Every file contained someone separated from biological truth by a name another person had chosen. If Belova was false, Nikita might not know she belonged to my genealogy any more than I had known Cian was my father. Ignorance might be protecting her. Finding her could destroy that protection.

Salvatore’s investigation had not been organized around criminals. It had been organized around children whose biological histories connected families that believed themselves separate. Nikita belonged among them. I knew it with the same instinct that had recognized Henry’s danger before Nolan ever spoke our son’s name aloud.

Knowing she belonged to my genealogy was different from proving where.

I unfolded the chart Sinclair had given me and traced the line backward from my name. Madigan Kelley became the daughter of Caity O’Malley and Cian McCarthy. Cian’s line continued to Sylvia St. James, whose name occupied the upper portion of the page like a stain no amount of folding could hide. From me, the genealogy moved forward to Henry, joining Salvatore’s blood to mine.

Nikita’s name appeared nowhere.

Yet Salvatore had placed her photograph inside my file rather than with the Russian records. He had underlined two dates that matched entries in Sylvia’s history and circled a hospital location that appeared elsewhere in the genealogy. The clues drew close without touching, sketching the outline of a relationship he had suspected but never confirmed.

Nikita’s age placed her near my generation. She was too young to be another child hidden alongside Dad unless the documents had been altered. She could have descended from Sylvia’s other children, an ignored St. James branch, or someone removed before Sinclair obtained the records. Each possibility multiplied the number of innocent people who could be connected without knowing it.

“She could be another descendant,” I said. “Not through me or Dad. Through someone else Sylvia had.”

Rurik stood opposite me, reading the chart upside down. “There is no record of any children other than Donna and Gideon.”

“There was no honest record of my father either. Therefore, no record of me as her granddaughter.”

The answer silenced him.

I pulled Nikita’s photograph closer and searched her face again. I had spent years studying Henry from a park bench, finding Salvatore in the angle of his smile and myself in expressions no one else would recognize. Blood trained the eye to search for repetition. Nikita’s cheekbones reminded me faintly of Dad, while the shape of her mouth could have belonged to Mom if I wanted the connection badly enough.

That was the danger of knowing a pattern existed. Eventually, everything began to resemble proof.

“Maybe she isn’t descended from Sylvia.” I moved the photograph beside Caity’s branch. “Maybe she connects to the O’Malleys somewhere else. Or to Henry. Salvatore could have put her in my file because her genealogy intersects with his through the Valentinettis.”

“Or because he didn’t know where else to place her,” Rurik countered.

Frustration sharpened through me. “He knew enough to leave her with you.”

“Yes.” Rurik accepted the anger without defending himself. “But he also died before he could finish.”

The words struck the oldest wound in me. Salvatore had run out of time. Every incomplete line, unidentified parent, and question mark in his notes represented a tomorrow he had expected to receive. He had believed there would be another call, another record, another night when Henry was asleep and he could return to protecting people who would never know his name.

Death had not merely taken him from me. It had interrupted him.

I sat and began reading every page again.

For two hours, Rurik and I worked through the file, speaking only when the task required it. He translated addresses, institutional titles, and abbreviated Russian notes. I compared dates against the genealogies, marking each repetition on a separate sheet rather than writing on anything Salvatore had touched. His handwriting had become sacred in the irrational way objects became sacred after death. Ink was only pigment until the hand that had formed it could never move again.

Near the bottom of a photocopied medical registry, I found a crease I hadn’t noticed. The page had been folded twice before Salvatore added it to the file. When I flattened the corner, three handwritten lines appeared in the margin.

REAGAN JESSOP.

A telephone number followed beneath it.

Beside the number, Salvatore had written one word and drawn a line beneath it so heavily the pen had nearly torn the paper.