Chapter 21 The Frame #3
“And the thirty-five people in that container? The ones who got away?”
“Gone. Volkov’s people moved them. They’re probably already out of the country.”
Victor turned from the window. “No.”
“No?”
“They’re not gone. They can’t be. It’s only been forty-eight hours. You don’t move thirty-five people across a border in forty-eight hours. Not without help. Not without resources.”
“Volkov has resources.”
“Not that many. Not that fast. There’s a window. They’re still here. They’re still in the city.”
Luca looked at him. “You want to find them.”
“I want to find them and I want to take down Kessler and I want to expose Volkov. I want all of it.”
“How?”
“Isabella.”
Luca raised an eyebrow. “The Marchetti co-ruler.”
“She has access. She has clearance. She can pull records that we can’t. She can investigate Kessler without raising suspicion.”
“She’s your wife, Victor. She’s already compromised.”
“She’s the only one who can do this.”
“She’s the only one you trust to do this.”
Victor looked at him. “Is there a difference?”
Luca smiled. It was a real smile, warm and a little sad. “No. I suppose there isn’t.”
— -
Isabella was at the safe house when Victor called. She was on her third cup of coffee and her fifth hour of reviewing shipping manifests, and she was starting to see patterns in the noise.
“Volkov,” she said, before Victor could finish his sentence. “I know.”
A pause. “How?”
“I’ve been doing my job. The shipping manifests for the cargo container were filed through a shell company registered in Delaware.
The registered agent is a law firm that also represents three other companies — two in Baltimore, one in Moscow.
One of those Baltimore companies is tied to a man named Dmitri Volkov. ”
“You found that in six hours?”
“I found that in four. The other two hours I spent confirming it.”
Another pause. She could hear him breathing. She could hear the street noise behind him — sirens, music, the distant rumble of a train.
“Isabella. Kessler called. The FBI is building a case against me.”
“I know that too.”
“Do you know what that means?”
“It means they’re going to indict you for trafficking. They’re going to use doctored evidence, fabricated witnesses, and falsified manifests. And they’re going to make it look airtight.”
“And?”
“And I’m going to stop them.”
“How?”
She took a breath. She’d been thinking about this for hours. She’d been running scenarios, modeling outcomes, calculating risks. She was a lawyer. She thought in cases. She thought in evidence. She thought in the architecture of truth and how to construct it into something unbreakable.
“I’m going to go to DOJ leadership. I’m going to present what I know — the evidence against you is fabricated, Kessler is compromised, the real buyer is Volkov. I’m going to request an investigation.”
“They won’t listen.”
“They will if I present it right.”
“Isabella, the DOJ is a bureaucracy. They don’t move fast. They don’t move on instinct. They move on paper and precedent and — ”
“I know how the DOJ works, Victor. I’ve worked there for six years. I know who to talk to, how to present it, what language to use. I know which doors to open and which ones to leave closed.”
“And if they don’t listen?”
“Then I’ll make them listen.”
“You can’t make the DOJ do anything.”
“Watch me.”
He was quiet for a moment. She heard Luca in the background, muffled, saying something she couldn’t catch.
“Victor. Let me do this. Let me use what I have. You have your world, and I have mine. In my world, I have authority. I have access. I have the ability to walk into a room and make people listen. Let me use it.”
“And if they come for you?”
“Then you’ll protect me. Like I’m protecting you.”
“That’s not — ”
“It’s exactly how it works. You protect me from your world. I protect you from mine. That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal.”
There was a pause. She could hear the street noise behind him — sirens, music, the distant rumble of a train. And then, in the silence between his words, something else. The shift in his voice that meant he was about to say something he wasn’t sure he should say.
“You know,” he said, “when I married you, I thought the hardest part would be the danger.”
“And?”
“The hardest part is you.”
She paused. The email draft was still on her screen — the memo she’d been composing, the bullet points, the evidence chain. All of it suddenly seemed very far away.
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s a statement of fact.” His voice was low, measured, the way it got when he was choosing his words carefully. “You are the hardest thing I’ve ever had to handle.”
“I’m not a thing.”
“No. You’re a force of nature. And I’m just trying not to get swept away.”
She leaned back in her chair. The safe house was quiet around her — just the hum of the laptop, the drip of the faucet in the kitchen, the distant sound of traffic on the highway.
She thought about what it had cost him to say that.
Victor Marchetti didn’t admit vulnerability.
He didn’t admit weakness. He didn’t admit that anything was hard, because admitting something was hard meant admitting it could beat him.
“You’re not getting swept away,” she said. “You’re holding your ground. You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Am I? Because from where I’m standing, I’m hiding in a basement while my wife prepares to walk into the lion’s den.”
“First of all, it’s not a lion’s den. It’s a conference room with bad coffee and worse lighting. Second of all, you’re not hiding. You’re strategizing. There’s a difference.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it keeps being true.”
He exhaled. She could hear the tension in it, the fear, the reluctant respect.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said.
“I’m going to get you acquitted. There’s a difference.”
“You always have a comeback.”
“It’s one of my best qualities. That and my ability to file briefs in under three hours.”
He laughed. It was short, surprised, like he hadn’t expected to laugh. “Isabella.”
“Victor.”
“Be careful.”
“Always.”
She hung up. Looked at her laptop. The shipping manifests. The shell companies. The paper trail that led from a Delaware LLC to a Moscow-based buyer to a corrupt FBI agent on the Baltimore docks.
This is it. This is the case. This is the truth. And I’m going to make sure the truth sees the light of day.
She closed the laptop. Opened it again. Started composing the memo.
— -