His Contract, My Revenge

Chapter 26: Patricia's Source

Patricia called at nine that evening.

Not Adrian.

Me.

My phone. My number. Which meant she had either obtained it from Adrian or had found it herself, and either way she had chosen to make this call directly.

I answered on the second ring.

"Lyra," she said.

"Patricia."

"Adrian told me what you found in the probate record."

"Yes."

A pause. Shorter than I expected.

"I was not surprised," she said.

I held the phone tighter. "You knew about Soane."

"I suspected," she said. "The photograph was not accidental. I asked my source specifically for anything connecting the original network to a legal figure who predated Isabelle."

"And they sent you Soane."

"They sent me a photograph that included him," she said. "Which confirmed what I suspected without naming it directly."

I sat down on the edge of the bed in the west suite.

Outside, the garden lamp was burning again.

Steady.

"Patricia," I said. "I need the source's name."

A pause.

Longer this time.

"I know you do," she said.

"Tonight if possible."

"I understand the urgency," she said. "But there is something you need to understand before I give it to you."

I waited.

"My source," she said carefully, "is someone who has been inside the structure. Not as an architect. Not as a client. But as someone who was used by it without full understanding of what they were being used for."

I was very still.

"They came to me," she continued, "two years ago. Not with information. With questions. They did not understand what they had been involved in. They were trying to make sense of their own history."

"And you helped them make sense of it," I said.

"I listened," she said. "And I kept what they told me in the portfolio alongside everything else."

"Are they willing to speak?" I said.

"That depends," she said, "on who is asking."

I understood.

"Not lawyers," I said. "Not yet."

"Not yet," she agreed. "They are not ready for formal proceedings. But they are ready to speak to someone who understands what it means to have been removed from a situation you did not fully understand."

I sat with that for a moment.

"Someone like me," I said.

"Yes," Patricia said. "Someone exactly like you."

The garden lamp burned in the dark below the window.

"Give me the name," I said.

A pause.

Then Patricia said, "Her name is Mara Soane."

I closed my eyes briefly.

"His daughter," I said.

"His daughter," Patricia confirmed. "Thirty-two years old. She worked as a junior associate at her father's firm for two years before his retirement. She processed documents without understanding their significance. And two years ago, she began to understand."

I thought about that.

A young woman processing documents in her father's office. Handling files whose full weight she did not grasp until later. Until something shifted. Until the architecture she had been part of became visible in a way it had not been before.

"What shifted?" I said. "Two years ago. What made her start asking questions?"

Patricia was quiet for a moment.

"Your father," she said. "She read an interview he gave after the collapse. A small publication. He was not naming names. He was simply describing what it felt like to have your life's work removed from underneath you without understanding why." She paused. "She recognized something in it. A pattern she had seen in documents she had handled. She did not know exactly what she had been part of. But she knew she had been part of something."

I pressed my fingers against my temple.

My father.

In a small publication.

Not naming names.

Just describing.

And a young woman in the north of the country had read it and recognized something and carried the recognition to Patricia Helene.

Two years ago.

Before the east gate.

Before the contract.

Before any of this.

"She has been waiting," I said.

"She has been preparing herself," Patricia said. "There is a difference."

I almost smiled at that.

Preparing herself.

Like someone who understood that the cost of speaking was real and needed to be ready for it before the moment arrived.

"Where is she?" I said.

"Currently in the city," Patricia said. "She arrived three days ago. I did not arrange it. She came on her own."

Three days ago.

The day after the gala.

"She saw something," I said.

"She saw your name in a social column connected to the Carrington event," Patricia said. "She called me the next morning."

I stood up.

Walked to the window.

"Patricia," I said. "Does she know about the probate record? Her father's name on my mother's estate?"

A pause.

"No," Patricia said. "She knows her father had access to certain families' legal records. She does not know the specific application of that access."

"If I tell her—"

"It may accelerate her readiness," Patricia said. "Or it may overwhelm it."

I thought about that.

About the difference between information that clarified and information that collapsed.

About a thirty-two year old woman who had carried something for two years and had come to the city three days ago because she saw a name in a social column.

"I want to meet her," I said. "Without lawyers. Without Adrian if she prefers. Just the two of us."

Patricia was quiet for a moment.

"I'll ask her," she said.

"Tonight," I said.

"Lyra," she said. "She is not a document. She cannot be filed."

"I know," I said. "I am not approaching her as a document. I am approaching her as someone who has been waiting to speak to a person who understands what she has been carrying."

A silence.

Then Patricia said, "I'll call her now."

She called back eleven minutes later.

"Tomorrow morning," she said. "Ten o'clock. My home. Just the two of you."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't thank me yet," she said. For the second time. "Thank me in October."

She hung up.

I stood at the window for a long moment.

Then I went to find Adrian.

He was in the study.

He looked up when I came in.

I told him everything.

He listened without interrupting.

When I finished, he was quiet for a long moment.

"His daughter," he said.

"Yes."

"Who processed documents in his office."

"Yes."

"And has been carrying it for two years."

"Yes."

He leaned back in his chair.

The lamp on the desk cast its usual single pool of light across the mahogany surface.

"She is a direct witness to Soane's document handling," he said.

"Potentially," I said. "We don't know the full scope yet."

"But if she can speak to the specific files she processed—"

"It establishes Soane's direct involvement in the Vale estate documentation," I said. "Which connects him to the probate record. Which connects him to the land claim. Which connects him to Aldric."

He was quiet.

"A chain from the original commission to the execution," he said.

"Yes," I said. "Built not through correspondence we had to find but through a person who was inside it."

He looked at the desk.

"She is more valuable than any document we have," he said.

"She is a person," I said. "Not a document. I need you to remember that tomorrow."

He looked at me.

"I will not be there tomorrow," he said.

"I know," I said. "I need you to remember it anyway. Because after tomorrow, when this moves forward, she will know she is being used and she will need to feel that the people using her understand the cost of it."

He held my gaze.

"Understood," he said.

I nodded.

Moved toward the door.

"Lyra," he said.

I stopped.

"Your father gave an interview," he said. "To a small publication. After the collapse."

"Yes."

"I read it," he said.

I turned.

He was looking at the desk.

"Three years ago," he said. "Before I had Nora's documents. Before the east gate idea. I read it because I was looking for any public statement connected to the families affected by what Isabelle and Aldric had done."

I held very still.

"What did you think?" I said.

He looked up.

"I thought," he said quietly, "that if his daughter had half his clarity, she would be someone worth finding."

The room was very quiet.

I looked at him across the lamp-lit space between the door and the desk.

"That is why you chose me," I said.

"That is one reason," he said.

"What are the others?" I said.

He held my gaze.

"We are still building toward October," he said. "There will be time for the others after."

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I turned and walked out.

But I felt it.

Quiet.

Certain.

Like a lamp that had been burning steadily in the dark all along and I had only just understood it was there for me.