EPILOGUE
NORA
Six months later, Mina discovers a camera in our office and threatens to sue my boyfriend before learning I approved it.
“It points at the exterior door,” I say.
“It has audio.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
She stands on a chair beneath the small black device, one hand braced against the wall and the other holding a screwdriver like a weapon. Her dark hair is shorter now, cut at her chin after a client mistook the pencils in her old braid for an invitation to borrow office supplies.
“It has a microphone opening.”
“It has a weather seal.”
“We are indoors.”
“The hallway is emotionally hostile.”
Mina looks down at me.
Our office is still furnished with mismatched desks, a washable couch, and a conference table Leo’s firm replaced because one corner was damaged.
The terrible carpet remains because removing it would require closing for three days, and we have become surprisingly busy for two women who began with no employees and a borrowed printer.
The frosted glass on the door reads:
QUINN & PARK FORENSIC INVESTIGATIONS
Mina lost the argument about name order after my father registered the website before she could object.
The camera points only toward the public hallway. Its feed belongs to the office system. Rafe cannot access it unless Mina or I create a temporary login.
He designed the plan.
We approved it.
“I checked the specifications,” I say.
“You checked what he sent you.”
“I also called the installer independently.”
Mina climbs down from the chair. “Healthy suspicion is exhausting.”
“It is billable in fifteen-minute increments.”
She places the screwdriver on my desk.
Our newest case file waits beside it: a charitable foundation hiding executive payments inside art-restoration invoices. The amounts are smaller than Aurelia’s stolen millions. The people involved are less likely to carry poison capsules.
We consider both improvements.
My license was fully cleared four months ago. Pryce and Cole dissolved soon afterward. Several partners joined other firms. Edward remains in federal custody awaiting trial, where his attorney continues to describe him as misled by powerful clients.
Some habits survive evidence.
Rafe’s cooperation hearing is scheduled for next month.
Prosecutors have recommended a sentence that includes supervised release, restitution, and restrictions on investigative access rather than prison, largely because his testimony dismantled the closure network and because he turned over evidence before negotiating terms.
I did not ask for leniency.
I also did not ask for the maximum punishment.
My civil agreement with him is separate.
It requires permanent deletion of copied private records after the court-preserved evidence period, independent verification of every deletion, and compensation for the career opportunities he altered.
Half the money funds privacy assistance for people targeted through the closure system.
The other half sits in an account I have not touched.
Consequences do not become cleaner because love exists beside them.
They become more important.
Mina opens the art-restoration file. “Leo is bringing the specialist at two.”
“The one who refused his first three calls?”
“She answered the fourth to tell him not to call again.”
“That seems promising.”
“For the case?”
“Of course.”
Mina looks at me with the expression she uses when I lie without professional effort.
Leo arrives eight minutes late with a woman wearing paint-stained jeans beneath a camel coat. She carries a flat archival case and looks at him as though he is an invoice with suspicious rounding.
“This is Celia Hart,” Leo says. “She restores nineteenth-century paintings.”
“I authenticate damage,” Celia corrects. “Restoration comes after people stop lying about how it happened.”
Leo’s mouth tightens.
Mina glances at me.
The case may become interesting for reasons that have nothing to do with foundation accounting.
We begin the meeting.
Celia identifies three invoices created after the paintings supposedly entered storage. Leo explains the foundation’s ownership structure. They disagree about whether negligence and intent can be separated when the same man benefits from both.
The disagreement lasts forty minutes and ends only when Celia tells Leo his family’s collection has been cleaned with products suitable for kitchen counters.
He looks personally wounded.
After they leave, Mina closes the door.
“I give them four months.”
“For prosecution?”
“For an event requiring formal clothes.”
“You are inventing a romance because a woman insulted his varnish.”
“His expression changed.”
“You spend too much time with me.”
“True.”
At six, Mina leaves for dinner with a software consultant who understands neither organized crime nor forensic accounting and considers that part of his appeal.
I remain long enough to finish a client memo.
When I turn off the office lights, the hallway camera activates its small blue indicator. I open the security app and confirm the exterior feed.
One person waits near the elevator.
Rafe wears a black coat over a dark sweater, hands visible, no attempt to hide from the camera. His hair has been cut recently. The scar on his right arm shows when he checks the time.
The watch works well enough to remain fastened now.
It does not tell time.
He repaired the clasp and cleaned the mechanism, then chose not to replace the damaged movement. The hands remain stopped at 8:17.
For years, he treated the watch as a problem unfinished because he had failed to control the morning it broke.
Now he wears it as something that can remain broken without controlling what happens next.
I open the office door.
“You are early,” I say.
“Four minutes.”
“You used to arrive twenty minutes early.”
“I waited downstairs.”
“That is still arriving early.”
“Yes.”
He looks past me toward the camera.
“Mina approved the installation?”
“She discovered it today.”
“What happened?”
“She threatened litigation.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“You have become irritatingly supportive of consequences.”
“My therapist says repetition helps.”
Rafe has never told me what they discuss in those appointments. I do not ask. Privacy is not proof of danger simply because I once had none.
He holds out one hand.
“May I?”
The question no longer sounds formal.
It sounds like him.
I place my hand in his.
“Yes.”
We leave the building together.
Rafe does not ask which route I want until we reach the car.
“Home?” he says.
We maintain separate apartments. In practice, I sleep at his townhouse four nights most weeks, and he stays at mine only when invited.
He has never entered without me. The first time I left him alone in the living room, he sat on the couch and read the same page of a book for twenty minutes because he was afraid to move anything.
“My place,” I say. “Dad is coming tomorrow, and you promised to help with the shelves.”
“He dislikes my measurements.”
“He dislikes that you own a laser level.”
“It is accurate.”
“That is why he dislikes it.”
Rafe opens the passenger door.
Before I enter, I look at the stopped watch.
“Do you ever want to make it run?”
He follows my gaze.
“Sometimes.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because fixing the time would not fix the day.”
The answer is simple.
He did not practice it.
I touch the cracked crystal.
Rafe watches my fingers but does not turn the contact into meaning before I do.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you.”
“Are you going to ask whether I’m staying tomorrow night?”
“Yes.”
“You already know the answer.”
“I know what you usually choose.”
The distinction is everything.
I lean against the open car door and kiss him. His hand settles at my waist, possessive enough to feel like him and restrained enough to remain mine to accept.
When we separate, he looks toward the street, checking the approach out of habit.
Then he looks back at me first.
“Stay tomorrow?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“And the night after?”
“Ask me then.”
Rafe smiles.
“I will.”