The devil's private bride

THE RESTITUTION FUND

The deeper she dug, the more complicated the story got than either the flattering press or her uncle's flat skepticism had prepared her for.

Genuine inefficiencies — claims processed slower than they should be, inconsistencies in how amounts were calculated across similar cases. Nothing resembling the deliberate obfuscation she'd braced for. No shell accounts. No quietly diverted funds. Nothing suggesting Adrian's public reckoning eighteen months ago had been anything but what it claimed.

"Three weeks," Marcus said, finding her at her desk well past closing, the binders now joined by several boxes of records she'd requested. "Most auditors finish a preliminary assessment faster than this."

"Most auditors aren't being thorough." She didn't look up. "I don't do preliminary. I do complete."

"I respect that." He set down two coffees, one in front of her without asking, and settled into the chair across from her with an ease that three weeks had built without either of them quite noticing. "Any findings you're willing to share? Even informally?"

She weighed caution against a growing, complicated urge toward honesty.

"The fund appears legitimate," she said finally. "Slower than it should be in places — I'll recommend process improvements in the final report. But legitimate. No diverted funds, no falsified disbursements. None of the patterns I'd expect from a fund built for PR."

Something in his shoulders eased, visible relief. "Thank you for telling me. Even informally."

"Don't thank me yet. The Kane claim is still open — the largest unresolved item on your books. Any progress?"

"None. I've exhausted every formal channel." His frustration looked real, and it kept eroding the certainty she'd walked in with. "I don't suppose your network includes anyone better at finding people who've made themselves hard to find."

Her grip on the coffee cup tightened. "I could look into it," she said, the lie sitting badly next to the respect she kept extending him against her better judgment. "It's within scope, technically, to verify outstanding claims."

"I'd be grateful." Nothing calculated in his face, none of the Blackwood she'd braced to find. "I know how this looks, Ms. Reyes — the man whose father caused the harm, performing diligence about a family he can't even locate. It isn't performance. I think about that claim more than almost anything else on these books."

"Why?"

"Because it's the one piece of this whole reckoning I haven't finished," he said quietly. "And lately, finishing things properly matters to me more than it used to."

She sat with her own deception, watching a man she'd arrived determined to dismantle instead earn something she had no authorization to give him — real, unguarded trust, building despite every reason she had to withhold it.

"I'll see what I can find," she said again, and told herself, without much conviction, that she meant the audit and nothing more.