Chương 7
Not knowing why her mother left.
Not knowing why her grandmother became distant during the last years of her life.
Not knowing why the woman who raised her had kept boxes full of warnings instead of simply telling her the truth.
Dante stepped closer.
“Did she mention me?”
Mabel looked back at him.
“No.”
That answer seemed to bother him.
“She mentioned someone who wants the truth.”
Dante went still.
“And?”
“She said not to trust him.”
Elena looked toward Dante.
Not dramatically.
Not with surprise.
With concern.
That was worse.
Mabel noticed.
“You know something.”
Elena shook her head.
“No.”
“That was not convincing.”
Elena looked down.
“I know what your grandmother was afraid of.”
Mabel stared at her.
“Then tell me.”
“It is not that simple.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
Her voice rose.
Not loudly.
Just enough.
“I am tired of people acting like the truth is some dangerous object that only certain people are allowed to hold.”
Nobody answered.
Mabel looked at the photograph again.
Her grandmother.
Dante’s mother.
Victor.
Three people who had lived with information while everyone else lived with the consequences.
“What did my grandmother find?”
Dante walked back to the table.
He picked up the letter.
“She found evidence that someone inside my family’s organization was moving money through companies that did not exist.”
“Fraud?”
“More than that.”
“What then?”
He hesitated.
“People were being paid to make problems disappear.”
Mabel felt cold.
“Problems?”
“Witnesses.”
The word changed the room.
She looked at him.
“Are you saying people were killed?”
Dante did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
Mabel stepped back.
She looked at the man in front of her.
The man who had admitted his family was connected to criminal activity.
The man who had promised honesty.
The man whose mother had died while investigating the same people he was now sitting beside.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because suspicion is different from proof.”
“Not when someone dies.”
Dante accepted the anger.
Again.
That made it harder.
Mabel wanted him to become the person she expected.
Cold.
Arrogant.
Easy to hate.
Instead, he looked tired.
“I was nineteen,” he said.
The sentence was quiet.
“My mother was trying to leave.”
“Leave your family?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Because people like my father did not allow people to leave when leaving threatened them.”
Mabel looked at the floor.
The room felt smaller.
“What happened to your father?”
“He died.”
“Convenient.”
Dante looked at her.
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised her again.
She sat down.
She was angry, but anger required energy.
She suddenly felt exhausted.
Elena moved toward the coffee machine in the corner.
She filled a cup and placed it near Mabel.
Mabel looked at it.
“You keep coffee in here?”
Elena shrugged.
“Dante works too much.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you’re getting.”
For a moment, the tension loosened.
Barely.
Mabel almost smiled.
Then she remembered where she was.
A billionaire’s office.
A dead grandmother’s secrets.
A warning from a voice she had lost years ago.
Nothing about the moment was normal.
Dante opened another folder.
“There is something else.”
Mabel looked at him.
“I’m starting to hate that sentence.”
“You should.”
He removed several documents.
“These were found three months after my mother died.”
Mabel looked at the pages.
Old records.
Handwritten notes.
A list of dates.
Then she saw it.
317.
Again.
The number appeared beside a date.
“What is it?”
“We never figured that out.”
“You never figured it out?”
Dante shook his head.
“My mother’s notes were incomplete.”
Mabel reached for the page.
This time, Dante allowed her to take it.
She studied the handwriting.
Something felt familiar.
Not the words.
The pattern.
The way certain letters leaned.
Her grandmother wrote the same way.
“This is not a code,” she said.
Dante looked at her.
“What?”
“It is a reference.”
“To what?”
She looked closer.
“The number was never meant to stand alone.”
“What does it reference?”
Mabel frowned.
“I don’t know.”
She touched the edge of the paper.
“But my grandmother wrote numbers like this.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
She looked up.
“She never wrote names when she was afraid.”
That changed Dante’s expression.
“What did she write?”
“Numbers.”
“Why?”
Mabel remembered something small.
Something she had ignored for years.
Her grandmother standing in the kitchen with a grocery list.
The list had looked normal.
Milk.
Bread.
Eggs.
But underneath it were numbers.
Mabel had asked what they meant.
Eleanor had smiled and said, “Old people have strange habits.”
At the time, Mabel believed her.
Now she wondered if that had been a lie.
“She was hiding information in ordinary places,” Mabel said.
Dante looked at Elena.
“Elena.”
“I know.”
“No.”
His voice sharpened.
“I need everything.”
Elena understood immediately.
“You are sure?”
“Yes.”
Mabel looked between them.
“Everything about what?”
Elena hesitated.
Then she answered.
“The investigation.”
Dante looked at her.
“Not just my mother’s.”
Mabel waited.
Elena looked at the photograph.
“Your grandmother’s.”
The room became quiet again.
Mabel felt something inside her shift.
For years, she had thought Eleanor Quinn had simply become secretive.
Maybe she had not been hiding from Mabel.
Maybe she had been protecting her.
The difference hurt.
Because it meant her grandmother had loved her.
And it meant she had still left her alone.
“When did she start investigating?”
Elena looked at the documents.
“Twenty-two years ago.”
Mabel calculated.
“That was before I was born.”
“Yes.”
“So why was she still doing it?”
Nobody answered.
Mabel stood.
“I want the rest.”
Dante looked at her.
“The rest of what?”
“The truth.”
The words surprised even her.
A week ago, she would have laughed at someone who said those words.
Truth had always sounded like something people with power chased because they could afford the consequences.
Now she understood something different.
Sometimes people chased the truth because living without it was its own kind of punishment.
May you like
Dante nodded slowly.
“Then we start with Victor.”
