Chương 12
Victor remained seated.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
Her voice cracked on the last word, and anger appeared immediately to cover it.
“I want one person to tell me how long this takes. I want to know whether I can rent an apartment, whether the government thinks I owe taxes on money I never saw, whether Tommy’s application gets reviewed again, whether forty-two other people have their names on companies, whether one of those companies did something that sends us to prison.”
“You’re not going to prison,” Victor said.
Anna laughed without humor. “Because you say so?”
“Because there’s evidence.”
“You had evidence Caroline stole silver.”
Victor became still.
Mrs. Bell had told Anna the story.
“That was different.”
“How?”
He had no answer that did not excuse himself.
Anna gathered the copies of the false records. “I want everything connected to my name. Not what your lawyer thinks I should see. Everything.”
Nina said, “You’ll receive it through David.”
“And I want to speak to investigators.”
Victor’s head lifted.
Nina replied before he could. “That is your right.”
Anna looked at him. “Is it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Even if they ask about you?”
Victor’s face revealed nothing.
“Yes.”
She left with Thomas and David.
Nina closed the conference-room door.
“You handled that better than expected,” she said.
Victor stared at the empty chair across from him. “She’s going to help them prosecute me.”
“Possibly.”
“I paid her brother’s bill.”
Nina’s expression hardened. “Do not finish that sentence.”
Victor looked at her.
“You did not buy silence. You said you didn’t. This is the moment you find out whether you meant it.”
He leaned back and rubbed his face.
Nina gathered the documents. “Dominic counted on your instinct to treat loyalty as ownership. He assumed anyone you helped belonged to you. Prove him wrong or stop pretending you’re different.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve become brave.”
“I bill hourly.”
Anna met federal investigators the following week. She answered questions for four hours, corrected them when they called Victor her employer, and admitted when she did not know something. She provided pay stubs, screenshots, texts from Mrs. Bell, and the call logs showing her repeated attempts to resolve the insurance problem.
When they asked about the night in Victor’s bedroom, she hesitated.
David reminded her to answer truthfully.
“He pointed a gun at me,” she said.
“Did he threaten to fire it?”
“He asked why I was in his bed.”
“Did you feel threatened?”
“There was a gun near my face.”
The agent nodded and wrote something down.
Anna looked at David. “Does this help Dominic?”
“The truth does not belong to Dominic,” David said.
She continued.
The interview left her exhausted and strangely ashamed, though she had done nothing wrong. On the train back to the hotel, she watched strangers scroll through their phones, argue quietly, carry groceries, and complain about delays. Nobody knew that her name existed on companies she had never heard of. Nobody knew Victor Russo had sat beside her hospital bed or that she had begun recognizing the difference between his silences.
Thomas was waiting in the hotel lobby with a paper bag of takeout.
“You look sick,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You say that before you fall over.”
“I’m changing the phrase.”
“To what?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Less confusing.”
They ate noodles in the room. Thomas described a nurse who sang off-key during dialysis. Anna listened while pretending to read an email from the credit bureau.
Near midnight, someone knocked.
The security officer called first to say the visitor was Victor.
Anna opened the door but did not move aside.
He wore a dark overcoat over his white shirt, the collar open, black tie missing. The expensive watch remained on his wrist. He held a cardboard box.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Everything connected to your name.”
“Nina said it would come through David.”
“It did.”
“Then why are you holding it?”
“David asked me to bring it.”
Anna stared at him.
“No,” Victor admitted. “He asked Leo.”
Thomas called from inside, “Let him in. The hallway makes this feel like a drug deal.”
Anna stepped aside.
Victor placed the box on the desk. Inside were copies of corporate filings, tax forms, account records, and a written explanation prepared by forensic accountants. Each document had been indexed. Sticky notes marked places where Anna’s identity appeared.
She looked at the thickness of the stack.
“How many?”
“Eight companies used some part of your information. Three reported income. Two opened bank accounts. One received a city subcontract.”
“A city contract?”
“It never performed the work.”
“Who got the money?”
“Dominic’s network.”
“How much?”
“Across the companies using employee identities, several million.”
Thomas stopped eating.
Anna sat down. “Why would he risk this?”
“He thought the people whose names he used had no money to fight, no access to records, and too much fear of losing work.”
“He was right.”
“For a while.”
She opened the first folder. “Are you cooperating with the investigators?”
Victor removed his coat but remained standing. “Nina is negotiating.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes.”
Thomas looked up. “Are you going to prison?”
“Possibly.”
Anna’s hand stopped on the page.
Victor continued, “There are things in the records unrelated to payroll.”
“Your things,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re giving them everything?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Nina says cooperation is not the same as walking into an office and confessing to every crime committed in Cook County.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She used stronger language.”
Thomas closed the takeout carton. “Are you scared?”
Victor looked at him.
Thomas shrugged. “You’re allowed.”
Victor sat in the desk chair. “Yes.”
The answer changed the room.
Anna watched him. “Of Dominic?”
“Of what happens if I expose him. Of what happens if I don’t.”
“Which is worse?”
“I don’t know.”
May you like
She turned another page. A false signature curved across the bottom. “I used to think rich people knew what happened next.”
“Rich people pay others to act like they know.”
