The Marriage I Don’t Remember

Chapter 6

He knocks thirty seconds after I hang up.

I open the door, and he's standing in the hallway still in his tuxedo shirt, bow tie gone, top button undone. His hair is disheveled—from the night, from the hours, from the weight of everything we learned. He looks like a man who wasn't sleeping anyway. Like he was sitting in the dark waiting for something to happen.

I step back and let him in.

He sees the corkboard immediately.

His eyes move across it—the red string, the photographs, the documents, six years of my life pinned to a wall—and his expression does something complicated. Something I don't have words for.

"You've been building this since you were twenty," he says.

"Twenty-one. My mother was arrested on my twentieth birthday."

He looks at me. Just for a second. Something passes between us—not warmth, not yet, but recognition. Then he turns back to the board.

"Show me."

I walk him through it.

The original theft. The shell companies. The way the evidence was constructed to point at Elena Lancia and nowhere else. The signature in the numbers—the specific way the transfers were structured, a pattern so subtle it took me four years to recognize it.

I show him where the same pattern appears in his father's records.

Same structure. Same hidden account. Same signature.

Six years apart.

He studies the board for a long time without speaking. His hands are in his pockets. His jaw is tight. He's reading the threads I've spent half my life weaving, and I can see him connecting them to the eighteen months of his own investigation.

But I'm still missing something. I can feel it. The signature is there, the pattern is there, but the name isn't. I've been staring at these numbers for six years and I've never been able to attach a face to them.

Then I think about what the witness said in the lobby.

One person. The same hand behind everything.

And I think about the letter in his father's files—the one Dimitri just showed me tonight. The one addressed to my mother.

I pull it from the pile. The signature at the bottom. Edward Leandro's handwriting. But it's the date that catches my eye. The date he wrote it. Four days before his death.

And next to that date, a reference number. A file code.

I've seen that code before.

I go to the corkboard. Pull down a transaction record from six years ago—my mother's case. There, buried in the footer, is the same reference number. Not the same account. The same internal file code. The code Walter Chen's office used to track privileged documents.

My heart slams against my ribs.

"Your father didn't just write to my mother," I say. "He used Chen's file code. The code Chen created to hide documents from discovery. Your father was tracking Chen's work. He was building a case against him."

I pull down another document. Then another. The code appears in three separate transactions across six years. Always in the footer. Always buried. Always missed because I was looking at the numbers, not the metadata.

"The code is Chen's," I say. "His office created it. His office used it. And your father was collecting it before he died."

I point to the name I've written on the board. The one I've been too afraid to write until now.

Walter Chen.

Dimitri goes still.

Not the controlled stillness I've come to recognize. Something different. Something that starts in his chest and moves outward through his shoulders, his hands, the breath he doesn't seem to be taking.

"That's not possible," he says.

"The code doesn't lie. It's his office's signature. I've seen it a hundred times and I never recognized it because I was looking at the money, not the paperwork." I hold up the letter. "Your father was tracking him. He knew. That's why they killed him."

Dimitri stares at the board. At the name. At the code I've circled in red.

"He was the one who told me to let your mother's case go," he says quietly. "He said it was a dead end. That the evidence was clean. That I was wasting resources chasing a ghost when I should be focused on the company."

He was protecting himself.

"He's been inside your investigation the whole time," I say. "Every lead you followed, every person you questioned—he knew. Because he was the one steering you away from the truth."

Dimitri doesn't answer.

He walks to the window. Stands with his back to me, looking out at the city, and I watch his shoulders carry the weight of a realization that is rewriting eighteen months of his life.

I don't go to him. I don't speak.

I give him sixty seconds of silence because some things need sixty seconds.

He turns around.

His face is back under control. But his eyes are different. Something has burned away in them. Something that was still soft is gone now.

"What do we do," he says.

"We can't move yet. The woman from the lobby said twenty-four hours. She has evidence we don't have. If we move before she delivers it, he'll know we're coming and everything disappears."

"Twenty-four hours."

"Yes."

He looks at the board. At the name. At six years of my work finally finding its target.

"You should have been an investigator," he says.

"I am an investigator."

Something moves through his expression. Respect.

"Yes," he says. "You are."

I wake up at 7am still in my clothes, face-down on the research spread across my bed.

I don't remember falling asleep. I don't remember closing my eyes. One moment I was staring at Walter Chen's name on the corkboard, and the next the morning light was gray through the windows.

I change into jeans, a sweater. The diamond is still on my finger. I haven't taken it off. I don't know why.

The kitchen smells like coffee when I walk in.

Dimitri is already there. Two cups on the counter. Newspaper open beside them. He's wearing a dark sweater, sleeves pushed up, and he's reading like it's any other morning.

I stop in the doorway.

He looks up. "There's an article about the gala. They're calling the blackout a power surge."

"Is that what we're calling it."

"That's what someone wants us to call it."

I pour coffee. Sit across from him. The steam rises between us, and for a moment, it feels almost normal.

He puts the newspaper down.

"I called my legal team this morning. I've frozen the account."

I look up sharply. "You can't do that. If he notices—"

"It's a calculated risk. I had them bury it in a routine quarterly audit flag. He might notice. He might not. But if we wait for perfect safety, we'll be waiting forever."

I stare at him. "That's exactly how he hides his own transfers."

"I know. I learned from him." He meets my eyes. "I also know he's not the only one who can use these systems. He taught me how they work. Now I'm using what he taught me to catch him."

The weight of that lands in the room.

"You said he might notice."

"Yes."

"And if he does?"

"Then he knows we're coming. Which means we move faster."

It's not reassuring. But it's honest. And somehow that matters more.

Mid-morning. I'm in the library, working through the files Dimitri gave me—his father's private records, the ones he kept from his investigators—when my phone rings.

Unknown number. Different from the texter.

I answer.

A man's voice. Smooth. Familiar in a way I can't place immediately.

"Ms. Lancia. Or is it Mrs. Leandro now? I'm never sure with arrangements like yours."

My blood runs cold.

"Who is this?"

"Someone who knows what you found last night. Someone who's wondering how much it would cost to make you forget it."

I keep my voice steady. "I don't forget things."

"Everyone forgets things when the right pressure is applied." A pause. "Your father is at St. Catherine's Hospital. Room 412. The treatment he's receiving is quite experimental. It would be a shame if the authorization were reviewed and found to be irregular."

The line goes dead.

I sit there, my heart slamming, the phone in my hand.

He knows.

I run back through the last twelve hours. Dimitri and I found the connection last night. We told no one. Dimitri froze the account, buried in an audit flag. There were no bugs in the penthouse—Dimitri scanned for them in Chapter 3.

So how does Chen know?

I'm on my feet, moving toward Dimitri's office. I don't knock.

"He called me. He knows we found something."

Dimitri looks up. His expression sharpens. "What did he say?"

I tell him. Word for word. And then: "How does he know? You scanned for bugs. We told no one. The only people who know are in this penthouse."

Dimitri's jaw tightens. He doesn't answer immediately. Then: "I don't know. But we need to find out."

He picks up his phone. "I need a security detail at St. Catherine's Hospital. Room 412. Immediately. Yes. Now."

He hangs up. Looks at me.

"Your father will not be touched."

"That's not what I asked. How does he know?"

Dimitri is silent for a long moment. "Either someone in my office tipped him off, or the penthouse is compromised in ways my scanner didn't catch. Both are problems. Both need to be handled. But right now, the priority is your father."

He's right. I hate that he's right.

"Fine," I say. "But after that, we figure out how he knew. Because if he has eyes in this penthouse, we're not safe here."

He meets my eyes. "We were never safe here. We just didn't know it."

He comes to find me two hours later.

I'm back at the corkboard, trying to focus, trying to see what I missed. But my hands keep shaking when I think about the phone call, and I keep looking at the door like someone's going to walk through it.

He sets a file on the desk beside me.

His father's personal records. The ones from the private safe. The ones he told no one existed.

"Everything," he says. "Like I promised."

I look at the file. Then at him. "You kept these from your investigators."

"I didn't trust them. I didn't know who was compromised." He pulls the chair across from me, sits. "I trust you."

Three words. Simple.

I look down at the file so he doesn't see what his face just did to mine.

We work together for two hours.

Side by side at the desk. His shoulder occasionally brushing mine. Neither of us moving away.

He finds something. Pushes a page toward me.

A letter. From his father. Dated four days before his death.

Addressed to Elena Lancia.

I read it. My breath catches.

Dear Elena,

I have what we need. The transfers, the accounts, the names. I'm meeting with the board on Friday. After that, no one will be able to touch you or your family.

Stay quiet until then. Trust no one.

I will not let them bury this.

— Edward Leandro

I stare at the letter. Then at the date. Then at the reference number in the corner—the same code Chen's office used.

"Your father kept this," I say. "He didn't send it."

"He couldn't. If he sent it, they would have found it. They would have known he was building a case. He kept it as insurance. As proof." Dimitri's voice is carefully neutral. "It was in his private safe. The one only he had the combination to."

"Then why isn't my mother free?"

"Because he died before he could use it. And after he died, I didn't know it existed. Chen made sure I didn't look."

I stare at the letter. My mother has been in prison for six years waiting for someone to believe her. And the evidence was sitting in a safe the whole time.

I don't mean to. I promised myself I wouldn't.

But my hand finds his on the desk.

Just for a second. Just my fingers over his.

I pull it back immediately. "Sorry. I—"

"Don't apologize." His voice is quiet. He doesn't look at me. But he doesn't move his hand either. "Don't ever apologize for that."

Silence.

I look at the letter. He looks at the window.

Neither of us speaks for a very long time.

Evening falls.

Twenty hours left on my father's countdown. Twenty-four hours since the witness made her promise. Which means if she needs thirty-six hours now, her total window is sixty hours.

My phone buzzes.

"He knows I'm moving. I need thirty-six hours, not twenty-four. He's watching the location. If I move now, he finds me. I'll message when it's safe. Stay inside. Don't trust anyone who comes to the door."

I show Dimitri.

He reads it. Looks up.

"If Chen knows she's moving, why is he threatening us instead of finding her?" I ask. "She's the one with the evidence."

Dimitri's jaw tightens. "Because he doesn't know where she is. He knows she exists. He knows she's moving. But he doesn't know where she's hidden the evidence. He's threatening us to pressure her into making a mistake."

"Or to pressure us into giving her away."

"Yes."

I look at the message again. Don't trust anyone who comes to the door.

"We're locked in," I say.

"Yes."

"Together."

"Yes."

I look around the penthouse. At the corkboard through my bedroom door. At the file spread across the library desk. At him, standing by the window in the fading light, looking out at a city that contains someone who just threatened my father and killed his.

"Dimitri."

He turns.

"When this is over. When we have the evidence and my mother is free and your father has justice. What happens to us?"

He holds my gaze for a long moment.

"One year," he says. "That was the deal."

"That wasn't what I asked."

The silence stretches.

He doesn't answer. He doesn't deflect. He just stands there, looking at me, and the silence says more than words could.

I nod once. Go back to the corkboard.

11pm.

The penthouse is quiet. I'm sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at the corkboard, trying to see what I missed.

The witness's message echoes in my head. Don't trust anyone who comes to the door.

A knock.

Three times. Light.

Not Dimitri's knock.

I stand. Move to the door. My hand hovers over the handle.

Don't trust anyone who comes to the door.

I open it.

No one there.

But on the floor, a single envelope.

I pick it up. Open it.

Inside is a photograph.

Me and Dimitri. At the gala last night. Standing close, his hand on my back, my face tilted up toward his.

Across the bottom, in red ink: "Stop now. Or he's next."

I stare at the photograph. Then at the empty hallway. Then back at the message on my phone.

Don't trust anyone who comes to the door.

Someone came to the door. Someone got past the doorman, past the fingerprint elevator, past the security Dimitri pays a fortune for. Someone walked through these halls while we were sitting in the library.

And whoever it is knew exactly what the witness told me.

My investigator's mind kicks in, overriding the fear. How did they get in? How did they know about the warning? Are they watching the penthouse? Are they inside it?

He's next.

Not me. Him.

My first thought—before strategy, before investigation, before anything logical—is a single word:

Not him.

I'm across the hall and knocking on his door before I finish the thought.