Chapter Sixteen #2
Mauro stood and collected his coat from the chair back. “You're an asshole.”
“Yes.”
“I liked you better when you were twenty-three and only looked like you wanted to kill everybody.”
Taddeo's mouth shifted faintly. “At twenty-three I probably did.”
For the first time that afternoon, Mauro looked almost amused.
It vanished before he reached the door, leaving him serious again as he glanced at the forged certificate on the table.
“I didn't build this, Taddeo. I may be lying to you about ten other things before dinner, but I'm not lying about that.”
“That isn't evidence.”
“No.” Mauro opened the door. “But you'll have the books.”
After he left, Orsino crossed to the table and looked at the closed door for a moment. “Well.”
Taddeo began stacking the documents. “Don't.”
“I was going to say he's guilty.”
“Of which crime?”
Orsino's mouth curved. “Exactly.”
They had barely started comparing Mauro's available financial records with Corwin's archive when Lelio Ardizzi arrived without being invited.
Taddeo heard his voice in the corridor before the door opened, warm enough to suggest he had come for drinks rather than inserted himself into an investigation involving one of his fellow capos.
Lelio entered in a dark suit with rain still visible along one shoulder and stopped when he saw the papers spread over the table.
“Mauro already leave?”
Taddeo did not answer the question. “Why are you here?”
Lelio's gaze shifted from the table to Orsino, then back again. “Because someone sent armed men into a civilian museum, Paolo took a bullet, and half the Family has spent two days pretending not to ask why. Then I hear Mauro is being brought in privately.”
“You hear a great deal.”
“That's generally useful in my position.” Lelio pulled a folded page from inside his jacket and placed it on the table without sitting.
“One of Mauro's waterfront reviewers has a family connection to a Serevin bookmaking operation. I thought you might want that before Corsi convinces everyone his companies accidentally wander into every dirty transaction in Crownport.”
Taddeo glanced at Orsino.
Ansel.
Mauro had just supplied essentially the same information.
Lelio noticed the exchange. “You already have it.”
“Part of it.”
“Then here's another piece. Two of the freight companies running through Corsi structures have used Volkov warehouse capacity in the last three years. One reviewer also approved an East Vey deal.”
The information was useful.
That was precisely what bothered Taddeo.
“Who is the reviewer?”
“I'm confirming the name before I give you something wrong.”
“How considerate.”
“You don't have to like me for the information to be true.”
“That is fortunate.”
Lelio smiled faintly but did not push. “I'll send it when I have it.”
He turned toward the door.
“Who told you Mauro was here?”
Lelio glanced back. “Rico.”
Taddeo's irritation sharpened. Rico Ferretti should no longer have been anywhere close to sensitive Northglass or Bellandi security information after the way he'd spoken about Isolde.
“How did Rico know?”
“He saw Mauro's car downstairs when he stopped in. This isn't exactly a secret bunker.”
Possible.
Not satisfying.
Taddeo nodded once. “Send the name directly to me.”
Lelio left.
Orsino waited until the footsteps disappeared down the stairs before speaking. “He was very helpful.”
“Yes.”
“You say that as though he insulted you.”
“Helpful men usually expect something in return.”
“Sometimes the price is gratitude.”
Taddeo looked at him.
Orsino smiled. “Not often in our profession, admittedly.”
Silas Venn joined them by secure video shortly before six.
Taddeo would have preferred keeping him outside the new evidence completely, but Cesare had already used Venn Meridian to trace pieces of the original missing-money network.
Cutting Silas out abruptly would reveal that something significant had changed, and Taddeo would rather control what the man saw while observing how he reacted to it.
Silas appeared on screen from an office that looked as though nobody had ever eaten, argued, slept, or spilled anything inside it. Pale walls, dark shelves, immaculate charcoal suit, carefully neutral art. Even his environment seemed professionally noncommittal.
“You look busy,” Silas said.
“I am.” Taddeo gave him three names without context. “Calder Maritime Holdings. Blue March Logistics. East Vey Development.”
Silas made a note. “What are you looking for?”
“Connections.”
“That narrows it beautifully.” Silas turned toward another screen and worked in silence for several minutes before returning his attention to the camera.
“Calder is layered through Delaware and Cayman entities, but the corporate administrator overlaps two companies from the original Dacre inquiry. Blue March is a small freight intermediary. It has leased warehouse space through Volkov Industrial Transit.”
“Serevin.”
“Serevin-adjacent,” Silas corrected. “Volkov does legitimate business.”
Taddeo ignored the distinction for the moment. “East Vey.”
Silas's expression became slightly more thoughtful. “That one is stranger. Very little visible operating history, ownership hidden through a trust administrator, but it intersects both Corsi-linked companies and Varna Consolidated.”
“Mauro recognized it.”
“That makes sense.”
Taddeo's gaze narrowed. “Why?”
“Because East Vey paid Keystone Heritage Consulting, and Keystone is Corsi-controlled.”
“You remember Keystone from a vendor query you ran a month ago?”
Silas smiled faintly. “You pay me to remember things other people don't.”
“I don't pay you.”
“Cesare does. Functionally close enough.”
Taddeo leaned back. “Your theory.”
Silas folded his hands. “If Mauro built a twenty-million-dollar diversion alone, I would expect more of the structure to resolve directly into entities he controls.
It doesn't. Too many outside administrators, too many unrelated service providers, too much cross-family freight exposure. Either he deliberately made the structure broad enough to obscure himself, or he is one node in something larger.”
It was exactly the kind of answer Taddeo expected from Silas.
Careful.
Reasonable.
Difficult to challenge because he never pushed his conclusion beyond what the evidence could carry.
“You sound like you're defending Corsi.”
“I'm defending the difference between correlation and ownership.” Silas's expression did not change. “You asked me to trace money, not confirm what you already suspect.”
Taddeo held his gaze through the screen.
That answer was reasonable too.
Almost irritatingly so.
“Trace East Vey's trust administrator,” he said. “No contact with anyone connected to the entity. I want passive research only.”
Silas nodded. “I'll send you what I find.”
The screen went dark.
Orsino remained silent for a few seconds. “You still don't like him.”
“No.”
“He was useful.”
“Yes.”
“You dislike useful men more than useless ones.”
“I understand what useless men want.”
Orsino considered that. “Everyone wants something.”
“Exactly.”
By eight-thirty, Taddeo knew more about Mauro Corsi's private crimes than he had ever wanted to know and less about the actual conspiracy than he needed.
Mauro was skimming enough money to infuriate Cesare but probably not enough to explain Corwin's archive.
Mauro-controlled businesses appeared throughout fraudulent paperwork, yet at least some of the records looked constructed to make those connections obvious.
Serevin-adjacent companies appeared repeatedly enough to matter but not cleanly enough to prove Serevin control.
Lelio possessed suspiciously timely information reinforcing both Mauro and Serevin.
Silas could trace every shell company put in front of him without appearing surprised when the route supported the same theory.
None of it was clean enough to act on.
That was usually when investigations became dangerous. Men grew tired of ambiguity and selected the suspect whose guilt was easiest to prove rather than the person responsible for the crime they actually needed to solve.
Taddeo returned to Northglass shortly after ten.
The house had settled into its quieter nighttime rhythm, though security remained heavier than it had been before the museum attack.
Marco had returned ahead of him with the first transfer of Mauro's internal books and gone downstairs to security.
Elettra had apparently gone to bed, and most of the first-floor lamps were dimmed.
The kitchen light was still on.
Isolde sat at the island in loose dark trousers and the gray sweater from her apartment, her hair down around her shoulders and one bare foot tucked beneath the opposite leg.
A document lay open beside her, though she wasn't reading it.
She looked toward the doorway almost immediately when Taddeo entered.
“You're late,” she said, then glanced over him in the same quick assessment he had begun making of her after the museum. “You appear to have managed the interrogation without getting shot, which is reassuring.”
Taddeo stopped beside the island. “You checked whether I was bleeding.”
“I looked at you.” Isolde's expression became mildly defensive as her gaze moved toward the covered plate on the counter. “Those are different things.”
“Not when you do it.”
“You have a statistically unusual relationship with gunfire. I think checking is reasonable.”
Taddeo took off his jacket and laid it over the nearest chair. “Mauro didn't shoot me.”
“Then perhaps we should send him a thank-you note.”
A plate sat beneath an inverted bowl near the stove.
Taddeo looked at it.
Isolde noticed. “Elettra left dinner.”
“For you.”
“For both of us.”
“You already ate.”
“Yes.”
Taddeo touched the edge of the plate.
Still warm.
His attention returned to Isolde. “You reheated it.”
She picked up the document beside her and looked at it with suspicious concentration. “Marco called and said you were on your way back. Putting something in an oven is not a declaration of emotional dependence.”