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“Where did Salvatore enter this?” My voice tightened around his name. “I need to know what my husband was investigating before he died.”

Reagan became as still as someone reaching for a blade she had promised to hand over.

“He came to me with three names that should never have appeared in the same record—Irish, Russian, and Italian. Salvatore believed someone had preserved secrets between criminal organizations for decades. Donatella had told him about our project. He asked whether the system could prove what he suspected.”

“You helped him.”

“I gave him a way into an archive I thought Sylvia had abandoned.”

Rurik’s voice became dangerous. “You gave him access to Poseidon without protecting the breach?”

The five men along the wall became attentive in a different way. Reagan merely turned her head toward him.

“I protected it well enough to fool the United States government and three private intelligence services,” she replied. “Sylvia built the original architecture. She knew where its bones were buried.”

“And she found him.”

“Not immediately. Salvatore copied fragments—names, dates, incomplete genealogies, and children placed outside the families that created them. He kept everything on paper and separated the evidence so no one person possessed enough to destroy every life recorded in it.”

I had resented both men for giving me pieces, but Salvatore had built walls between the secrets because a single open door could expose everyone.

“He told me nothing,” I said.

The accusation was meant for a dead man. Reagan accepted it anyway.

“He told almost no one. The first night, he recognized a child’s family and understood what the truth would do to them. After that, he treated every name as if speaking it aloud could put a gun against someone’s head.”

My fingers curled against my knees. “He had a wife and a son.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t he stop?”

“Because the Society wasn’t merely storing old sins. It was using them to govern the present. A threat changed a vote. Proof ended an alliance. A hidden heir forced an organization into a war it didn’t want. Salvatore believed he could sever the structure without exposing the innocent people inside it.”

My throat closed. That had been Salvatore’s cruelty and his goodness: once he understood someone innocent would pay, he could no longer pretend the debt belonged to another man.

“Did Sylvia order his death?” I asked.

The restaurant went silent enough that I heard rain ticking against the front window.

Reagan reached inside her jacket. Rurik’s weapon cleared its holster before her hand emerged, and all five men along the wall raised theirs in answer.

“Stop,” I snapped.

Reagan held still while Rurik stared at the men sighting upon him.

“It’s paper,” Reagan said.

“Show me slowly,” Rurik ordered.

She withdrew a folded sheet. The five weapons lowered, though Rurik kept his drawn until I opened it.

Most of the language meant nothing to me. Strings of numbers ran beside abbreviated commands and time stamps, but one line had been marked in red.

EXTERNAL BREACH: CONTAINMENT AUTHORIZED.

Below it waited a date.