The devil's private bride

MARCUS BLACKWOOD

The records arrived a little under an hour later, delivered not by an assistant but by Marcus himself — two thick binders under his arm, braced, it seemed, for exactly the scrutiny she intended to give them.

"Everything since the fund's founding. Every disbursement, every pending claim, every family still waiting on a determination." He set the binders down. "I've included my own team's internal audit from last quarter, though I'd encourage you to ignore our conclusions and draw your own."

"Unusual thing to say to an auditor."

"People who insist you trust their numbers are usually the ones you shouldn't." A wry twist to his mouth, gone as fast as it appeared. "I'd rather you find the flaws yourself than take my word there aren't any."

She opened the first binder. Neat columns, the practiced eye of six years finding exactly the discrepancies people hoped auditors would miss. The organization was better than she'd expected — clear documentation, traceable sources, none of the deliberately obscured shell-company language that usually meant a fund built for appearances.

"You did this yourself." Not quite a question. "It doesn't read outsourced."

"Most of it, yes. I don't trust many people with the family's full financial history anymore — I assume you already know why, from whatever the court gave you." Something guarded entered his voice.

"I know you were convicted of facilitating fraud."

"I was convicted of feeding information to a man determined to expose my father's crimes, using methods considerably less legal than he might have chosen. The court called it negligent loyalty rather than theft. Which is why I'm in this office instead of a cell." His jaw tightened. "I don't say that to minimize it. I say it because you're about to spend weeks going through my work, and I'd rather you know the actual shape of it than the version that made the papers."

She filed the admission away, her sense of the file she'd read on the flight already flattening under the weight of a more complicated man than the paragraph had suggested.

"Tell me about the families still waiting," she said instead. "What's the holdup?"

"Some of it's simple — documentation gaps, old records that take time to verify. Some of it's harder." He hesitated. "There's one family I haven't been able to properly locate. The Kanes. Victor Kane's own restitution was handled through his legal settlement, but there's an older claim tied to his brother's estate that predates all of that. I don't know who inherited it."

She kept her face professionally still, though her pulse had picked up. "His brother."

"Died four years ago. A wife, I believe, maybe children, but the family's kept a low profile since Victor's case went public. I've reached out through his legal team twice. Nothing." His frustration looked real, which made the deception sitting in her chest considerably heavier than it had an hour ago. "It's the one open item on my books that actually bothers me. Everyone else, we found. Not them. I don't know if that's because they don't want to be found, or because whatever my father took from them cut deeper than it did for anyone else."

"Why does it bother you specifically?"

"Because my father's crimes cost that family a father, the same way they cost the Vales one." Something raw in his voice now. "I can't undo what happened to Elena's family. Adrian's spent eighteen months trying, and it's cost him nearly everything he built. But I can make sure every dollar owed to the Kanes actually reaches them — if I can find who's left to receive it."

She sat with the confession, something unwelcome shifting in her chest. Not trust. Not yet. But the first c***k in the flat, simple story she'd carried for years — a family that stole everything and apologized for nothing.

"I'll look into locating them," she said finally, steadier than she felt. "As part of the audit."

"I'd appreciate that." He studied her, something curious behind the tired eyes. "You seem more invested in this than the assignment strictly requires, Ms. Reyes."

"I take my work seriously."

"Clearly." Almost a real smile. "More reassuring than I expected, given the circumstances."

He left her to the binders. She spent the rest of the afternoon buried in disbursement records, concentrating harder than the work strictly demanded, mostly to avoid the increasingly complicated feelings rearranging themselves in her chest.