Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Isolde pulled another page closer, remembering Cesare’s dinner more clearly now than she wanted.
Lelio had seemed almost casually interested when he asked whether Corwin ever gave her old maps or books, the kind of question that could have passed as harmless curiosity if it had not been asked by a man who apparently knew exactly which historical materials her brother had started searching.
“That dinner wasn’t casual,” she said. “Lelio knew Corwin had been digging through historical harbor records before he disappeared, then after you took me he asked whether Corwin had ever given me old books, maps, or documents.”
Orsino’s face hardened. “He was checking whether something Corwin accessed had been transferred to you.”
Isolde’s gaze went automatically toward the conservation photographs of the Crownport Harbor Pilot and Tide Register, 1912. “And Corwin had given me exactly that.”
The museum attack entered her thoughts before anyone said the words.
She pulled Marco’s file from beneath the corporate chart and opened it beside the access timeline.
Federico Lanza, one of Lelio’s soldiers, had moved an Ardizzi vehicle away from Lelio’s social club before the museum power failure; that vehicle later appeared inside the museum district during the attack window.
Elias Torri, the dead attacker, had received thirty-two thousand dollars over six months through a security subcontractor connected to Lanza’s brother-in-law, with the final payment landing three days before men entered Isolde’s lab.
They had looked at every fact before.
They had never put them together in the right order.
Isolde reached for the fraudulent preservation records next, dragging the copied Ansel signature and Keystone material beside the museum file. “Put these together.”
Taddeo’s eyes sharpened.
Orsino stopped moving entirely.
Isolde spread the evidence into a single rough chronology instead of separate investigative categories. “We’ve been treating Corwin’s permissions, Mauro, and the museum attack like separate branches because we discovered them separately. They aren’t.”
Taddeo moved the Verri timeline closer to the museum report.
“Lelio’s administrator manipulates Corwin’s access months before the big theft, which makes Corwin’s credentials appear around the older financial diversion and gives Lelio a way to see what Corwin is learning.
” Isolde pointed toward the preservation documents next.
“Then the false historical records route through companies Mauro actually controls, because Mauro really is stealing enough money to make a much larger accusation believable.”
Orsino nodded slowly. “Use an existing criminal as camouflage for a larger crime.”
“Yes.” Isolde looked toward Taddeo. “Mauro isn’t convincing because he’s innocent. He’s convincing because he’s guilty of the wrong thing.”
Taddeo picked up the museum file. “And once Corwin steals the eight point four and disappears, everyone has a suspect who already looks connected to the older theft.”
“Except Corwin has an archive.” Isolde felt the sequence tightening now, each piece pulling the next into place.
“Lelio knows that because he knows what Corwin searched. He knows about me before you ever put me in a car because someone accessed Corwin’s family information and looked at the museum.
At Cesare’s dinner he tests whether Corwin gave me historical material, and then I announce, essentially, that my brother gave me an old book. ”
“You did not tell him about the Harbor Pilot specifically,” Taddeo said.
“No, but he didn’t need the title. He only needed to know Corwin had left something physical with the conservator sister who works at a maritime museum.”
The words made the room colder.
Isolde could see the conservation lab again: the black device wrapped inside the false spine, Corwin’s handwriting on the film, the lights going out before they had time to understand what they had found. A man beyond the glass had called her name and told her she was supposed to go with them.
“They weren’t trying to take me because I was Corwin’s sister,” she said.
Taddeo’s expression became completely still. “No.”
“They wanted the archive.”
“Yes.” His voice remained low. “And the museum trip gave Lelio a closing window. Once we found whatever Corwin left with you and brought it back under Bellandi protection, retrieving it became much harder.”
Orsino tapped Lanza’s vehicle report. “So somebody inside Bellandi channels gives the operation timing, while Lelio already understands why the museum matters.”
Isolde remembered the dead attacker’s false identification. “The badge fits too.”
Taddeo looked toward her. “How?”
“It was researched from outside. Current museum template, wrong department color. Whoever prepared them knew what Crownport staff identification looked like but didn’t understand the internal system well enough to get every detail right.
” She moved the photograph into the chronology.
“So they had external preparation for the building and internal Bellandi information about our movement. Lelio could provide both sides.”
Taddeo gathered the most important pages into a single line, reducing a table full of evidence to a chain simple enough that nobody could hide inside complexity.
“Verri manipulates Corwin’s permissions.
Ardizzi-linked contractors sit around the forged historical record.
Mauro’s real corruption gives the frame credibility.
Lelio knows what Corwin is searching and knows about Isolde before we take her.
Lanza’s vehicle is near the museum during the attack, and Torri is paid through a company tied to Lanza just before it happens. ”
Isolde watched him. “You believe Lelio ordered the museum attack.”
“Yes.” He did not hesitate this time. “I cannot yet prove he personally gave the order, but I believe it.”
Orsino folded his arms. “Belief is not enough to move openly against a capo in front of Cesare.”
“No.” Taddeo reached for his phone. “Which is why we stop collecting evidence in separate categories and build one chronology. I want every point where Lelio’s knowledge precedes an event, every Verri administrative change, every contractor overlap, and every movement by Lanza.”
Marco answered almost immediately.
Taddeo’s instructions were concise. Verri’s archived devices and old backups were to be secured before anyone attached to Lelio discovered that the administrator mattered.
Lanza remained isolated somewhere no ordinary Ardizzi contact could reach him.
Three Bellandi men working beneath Lelio but not considered personally loyal to him were to be moved under routine pretexts before the end of the day.
“No freeze on Lelio’s financial access,” Taddeo said after listening to Marco. “If anything changes visibly, he’ll know we’ve moved past suspicion. Put the museum material on the isolated server with the Verri timeline and build one chronology, not three reports.”
Isolde felt a brief, almost professional satisfaction despite the ugliness of what the chronology represented. The scattered pieces had stopped being merely suspicious because sequence had given them intention.
When Taddeo ended the call, Orsino looked toward Mauro’s financial file with the weariness of a man anticipating a difficult conversation. “Mauro is going to become impossible when he learns somebody used his actual theft to frame him for a larger one.”
“He already thinks he has been vindicated,” Taddeo said. “The fact that he stole more than a million dollars will not interfere with that feeling.”
Isolde sat back. “I would pay an unreasonable amount of money to hear someone explain that he has been cleared of the major criminal conspiracy while remaining guilty of all his ordinary crimes.”
Orsino’s expression warmed. “You may not need to pay.”
Taddeo gave him a warning look. “We do not need Mauro involved before we have more.”
“We need him contained,” Orsino corrected. “Those are different things.”
They called him anyway, although the conversation lasted only a fraction of the time Mauro apparently wanted it to.
“What the fuck do you mean Ardizzi framed me?” Mauro demanded through the secure speaker before Orsino finished explaining the permission evidence. “You people have been crawling through every account I own because somebody thought I carried twenty-five million out of Cesare’s pocket.”
“You were stealing from Cesare,” Taddeo said. “We did not manufacture the one point two million.”
“That is separate.”
Isolde looked toward Orsino.
His face remained perfectly neutral, which somehow made the exchange funnier.
Taddeo’s voice stayed dry. “It is considerably less separate than you seem to think.”
Once Mauro understood that Keystone and other Corsi-controlled businesses may have been selected precisely because his undisclosed side activity made them believable, the outrage in his voice lost its theatrical quality. “He used my dirt to bury his.”
“That is one possibility we are now treating seriously,” Orsino said. “It is not yet proof that Lelio personally created every false document.”
“He put my name in front of Cesare for twenty-five million.” Mauro’s tone had gone cold. “I want him.”
“You will do nothing,” Taddeo said.
Mauro’s answer came immediately. “If Ardizzi tried to get me killed, I am not sitting quietly while you reorganize paper.”
“You are going to do exactly that.” Taddeo rested one hand against the library table, his voice never rising.
“You do not call Lelio, send anyone near his properties, change your routine, threaten one of his men, or develop a sudden business interest anywhere his people can see. If you warn him because you cannot control yourself for one day, the million you stole from Cesare becomes the least expensive problem you have.”
The silence at the other end lasted long enough to make Isolde suspect Mauro was having a private philosophical crisis about whether murdering Taddeo was worth the inconvenience.