The Luna Who Walked Back In

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Title: What a Year Can Build

POV: Evelyn

Solomon stops her outside her office just before seven in the evening, when most of the floor has already gone quiet.

"The Goldmane wire transfer," he says, holding out a one-page summary. "Finance flagged the routing. Thought you should see it before it goes to compliance."

She takes the page. She reads the first routing number. Then the second and the third.

“What the f**k is this? Oh my God!” Evelyn exclaimed.

Her coffee cup stops halfway to her mouth.

She knows these numbers. She has had them written on a private spreadsheet on her personal laptop for three months, flagged in red, labeled as suspected Hollow Fang shell corporations. She did not expect to see them on a client transfer sheet inside her own firm. She did not expect them to belong to Raphael.

"Tell compliance I will handle the review myself," she says.

Solomon nods and looks at her for a moment. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah, it's fine… It is just thorough work."

He nods and leaves. She carries the page into her office, closes the door and opens her private laptop.

The spreadsheet is exactly as she left it. Forty-seven flagged companies. Nineteen confirmed shell registrations. Four routing chains. She lines up the transfer document beside the screen.

Three of the routing companies match her flagged list exactly.

She sits back.

Raphael did not find her by accident. She spent a year following a paper trail that she thought would lead her to the people who staged his death. It led him directly to her instead.

The thought sits in her chest like something warm she does not trust.

She closes the laptop. She picks up her bag. She takes the elevator down to the parking structure. Her car is the last one on the third level, a plain gray sedan that nobody looks at twice, which is exactly why she chose it.

She sits in the driver's seat and does not start the engine for four full minutes.

Then she takes her phone out and opens a contact saved under the name "BC Filing." It is not a filing service. It is Mirabel, her closest friend and the only person who knows the full scope of what she has been building this past year.

"He came in today," she says when Mirabel picks up.

The pause on the other end of the line is exactly two seconds.

"Raphael."

"Yes."

"And?"

"And he is my client now."

Another pause. Then Mirabel says, very carefully, "Evelyn."

"I know."

"Do you actually know, or are you doing the thing where you say you know and then proceed to hold everything together with strategy and silence?"

Evelyn starts the car. "I have the routing numbers from his retainer transfer. Three of them are on my flag list."

"So he knows about the network."

"He knows more than we do. And I have the legal architecture he needs to go after it."

"So you are going to work with him."

"I am going to take his case, complete the legal work and get the network prosecuted."

Mirabel is quiet again. Then, gently, "And the rest of it?"

Evelyn pulls out of the parking structure and into the night street, the city lights running smooth and gold across the windshield.

"One thing at a time.. this is gonna be a long thing" she says.

She hangs up. She drives around. The city does not care about her problems and she has always found that clarifying.

Back in her office, on the desk she left behind, the Goldmane file sits open on the page she was too occupied to read when Solomon handed it to her.

At the bottom of the intake form, in the section labeled "Reason for requesting this attorney specifically," someone has written, in a familiar, precise handwriting: "She is the only one who would have already found what I need her to find."

She does not see it tonight. But she will tomorrow morning, and it will be the first time in twelve months that she allows herself to sit down and cry for exactly four minutes before standing up and going back to work.