Chapter Fourteen #2
The question was what he had done after finding it.
Serrano opened another directory.
Transfer logs.
The date matched the night Corwin disappeared.
Taddeo knew what he expected to find and still felt some part of himself waiting for a different explanation, perhaps because the alternative meant walking into the library later and removing the last plausible version of Corwin’s innocence from Isolde.
The logs were detailed enough to eliminate doubt.
Corwin’s own notes tracked the $8.4 million movement across several accounts. Authentication records matched his assigned hardware. Manual verification had been entered from the device registered to him, and destination accounts aligned with the sequence he recorded himself.
A short note sat near the top of the final transfer file.
Enough to force response. Keep separate from archive. Move before they realize I know.
Taddeo read it once.
Then again.
Orsino looked at him. “He took it.”
“Yes.”
“Not credentials someone stole.”
“No.”
“Not a copied device.”
“No.”
The room seemed quieter after the words.
Taddeo had spent days telling Isolde the evidence pointed toward Corwin while allowing for the possibility that someone had framed him.
She had resisted certainty without pretending the evidence meant nothing, which was one of the things he respected most about her.
She had not demanded her brother be innocent simply because she loved him.
Now the distinction she insisted on had been resolved.
Access had become action.
Corwin Dacre stole the money.
The reason remained unclear.
Orsino leaned back. “She has to know.”
Taddeo looked toward the secure-room door.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Taddeo’s attention shifted back to him.
Orsino folded his arms. “There’s an easy version of this where you start with the twenty-five million.
You tell her Corwin uncovered a theft inside the Bellandis, explain that somebody may have been trying to silence him, and wait until we understand why he took the eight-four before you give her the part that hurts. ”
Taddeo disliked the suggestion because he had already considered it.
There were sensible arguments for waiting.
Isolde had been shot at less than a day earlier.
She had slept badly. She had only begun giving Taddeo pieces of trust that had nothing to do with the restrictions around her.
Telling her now would not change what Corwin had done, and a motive might transform the theft from greed into something more complicated.
Every justification sounded reasonable.
Every justification also left Taddeo deciding which truth she was permitted to receive.
“She hears all of it.”
Orsino held his gaze for a moment before nodding. “Good.”
Serrano, who had developed an admirable ability to behave as if he were not listening to personal conversations between armed criminals, opened the next group of annotations.
Two hours later, the archive produced its first name.
Not proof.
Not even a complete accusation.
Corwin had saved an image of handwritten shorthand beside a development-approval variance, then typed a cleaner transcription beneath it:
Review approval variance — L. Ardizzi? Access window inconsistent. Possible intermediary, not source. Check M.C. freight overlap before conclusion.
Orsino leaned toward the screen. “Lelio.”
“Maybe.”
“How many Ardizzis with an L do you need before ‘maybe’ becomes unnecessarily cautious?”
“At least one without a question mark.”
“M.C. could be Mauro.”
“It could.”
Neither possibility pleased him.
Lelio Ardizzi had been with the Bellandis long enough to understand nearly every internal pathway Corwin had been investigating.
Mauro Corsi controlled freight, property, construction companies, and enough loosely supervised subcontractors to hide money without personally knowing where every invoice originated.
Both men had access. Both had opportunity.
Corwin himself had written before conclusion.
That mattered.
Taddeo would not turn a dead or missing consultant’s suspicion into permission to execute a capo simply because the initials fit.
“Copy the relevant folders to two offline drives,” he told Serrano. “Original goes back into the secure case. Nothing gets uploaded to Bellandi servers and nothing leaves through email.”
Orsino looked at him. “Cesare.”
“I’ll call him.”
“You plan to tell him about Lelio?”
“Not yet.”
Orsino’s expression sharpened.
Taddeo continued before he could object. “Someone had our museum route. Until I know how that moved through the Family, the number of people who know Corwin named anyone stays small.”
“That includes Cesare.”
“It includes everyone.”
Orsino studied him for several seconds, then gave a slow nod. “For a few hours.”
“Yes.”
Cesare was less accommodating.
“We’ve confirmed the archive is substantial,” Taddeo told him from the adjoining office while Serrano continued working behind the glass.
“How substantial?”
“Evidence of older leakage.”
“How much?”
Taddeo looked toward the monitor.
He knew the amount.
“We’re still calculating.”
The silence from the other end told him Cesare heard the evasion.
“Corwin?”
“Connected.”
“Guilty?”
“We’ve confirmed he moved the eight point four. We have not confirmed why.”
Cesare’s voice changed. “And the older theft?”
“He was investigating it.”
“How much, Taddeo?”
Taddeo hesitated.
That was enough.
“Don’t make me pull information out of you.”
“I’m trying to establish who knew enough to compromise the museum operation before I widen distribution.”
“You think the leak reaches leadership.”
“I don’t know where it reaches.”
Cesare exhaled slowly. “You have until tonight. After that I get everything.”
“Understood.”
The call ended.
Taddeo remained still with the phone in his hand.
He had withheld material from Cesare before. Operational compartmentalization was not betrayal. But withholding the scale of the theft and the names Corwin had flagged after Cesare asked directly sat differently.
The decision still felt correct.
That did not make it comfortable.
Isolde was in the library when he found her shortly after one.
Several photocopies of western-harbor maps covered the table, along with a portable magnifier, notes in her handwriting, and a sandwich with one bite missing.
Her hair was twisted up with a pencil shoved through it, and the sight was so ordinary that Taddeo stopped in the doorway longer than he intended.
She looked up.
Whatever she saw in his face made her set the magnifier down.
“You opened it.”
“Yes.”
She straightened in the chair. “And?”
Taddeo came farther into the room but did not sit.
“Corwin built an archive of financial diversions through Bellandi-controlled businesses. The suspected total is twenty-four point eight million dollars before the eight point four he took.”
Isolde stared at him. “Before.”
“Yes.”
“So he found it.”
“He appears to have been tracing it for weeks. Some of his notes specifically identify payment chains that predate his access.”
Hope entered her expression carefully.
Taddeo hated what he had to do next.
“He also moved the eight point four himself.”
The hope disappeared.
Isolde became very still.
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“No credential theft.”
“No.”
“No copied authentication.”
“We found his own transfer notes, verification records, and manual confirmation from his assigned device.”
She looked down at the maps.
Taddeo stayed where he was.
After several seconds she asked, “Did he say why?”
“Not clearly.” He crossed to the table and placed a printed page near her without pushing it into her hands. “He wrote that the amount was enough to force a response, that he needed it kept separate from the archive, and that he had to move before whoever he was investigating realized he knew.”
Isolde read the lines.
Her expression tightened.
“That sounds like he stole eight million dollars to make someone react.”
“It could mean that.”
“Or it could be him justifying stealing eight million dollars after the fact.”
“Yes.”
She looked up sharply, perhaps expecting him to defend Corwin now that the larger conspiracy made a sympathetic interpretation possible.
Taddeo did not.
Her laugh was quiet and bitter. “Do you know what’s awful? I can hear him saying it. He finds something dangerous, decides nobody else is competent enough to handle it, and creates some insane private plan because he thinks if he explains it afterward everyone will understand why he had no choice.”
Taddeo felt the accusation inside the description even before her eyes reached him.
Isolde did too.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then she shook her head. “Apparently I have a type.”
Under other circumstances he might have responded.
Not now.
“He used me,” she said.
Taddeo’s jaw tightened.
“He gave me the Harbor Pilot knowing I’d eventually open it. He didn’t tell me what was inside. He didn’t tell me someone might be watching him or that handing me evidence could make me a target. He just decided I was the safest place to put it.”
“He may have believed you were.”
“That doesn’t make it his decision.”
“No.”
Her gaze moved back to him.
The answer seemed to hurt almost as much as agreement would have.
“You did the same thing.”
“Yes.”
There was no point pretending otherwise.
Taddeo had taken Isolde because her relationship with Corwin made her useful. Corwin had hidden evidence with Isolde because her profession made her useful. Their motives differed. The violation did not disappear because both men believed their reasons were good enough.
Isolde stood and crossed toward the windows, folding her arms tightly across herself.
Taddeo remained beside the table.
“There’s more,” he said.
Her shoulders moved with a slow breath. “Of course there is.”