Seventeen seconds later, the response came.

Where?

The coffee shop on Huron. 8:00.

He’ll be there.

Adrien arrived at 7:52.

He had already visited Rosa, and what she had told him sat inside his chest like a stone.

Cassian Voss had not worked for his father.

He had worked with him.

Equal shares. Equal risk. Equal say.

In 2003, Cassian had discovered a file documenting payments made through Senator Banks’s network to federal prosecutors, judges, and public officials. The payments had killed investigations, protected criminal operations, buried evidence, and bought careers.

Some of those investigations had involved the Vico family.

Others had involved Banks himself.

Cassian had become the most dangerous witness in New York.

Adrien’s father had hidden him.

Then lied to everyone, including his own son, and said Cassian Voss was dead.

Maeve entered the coffee shop exactly at eight.

She saw Adrien immediately and crossed to his table.

“You moved fast,” he said.

“I’ve been awake since five.”

“I know. My man on the fire escape saw you leave.”

She did not look surprised.

“The fire escape?”

“You checked the rooftops. Not the adjacent building.”

“I crossed two.”

He studied her. She studied him back.

“You have a photograph,” he said.

Her chin lifted.

“How do you know?”

“My aunt told me your grandfather kept one photograph. New Jersey, August 1987. Two men laughing in the sun.”

Maeve reached into her bag and placed an old envelope on the table.

Adrien opened it.

The photograph showed his father as a young man, smiling in a way Adrien had never seen in life. Beside him stood another man, laughing, one arm thrown around his shoulder.

On the back, in old handwriting:

New Jersey, August 1987. The last good summer.

Adrien stared at it for a long time.

“He looks happy,” he said.

“My grandfather said after that summer everything became complicated.”

“It has become more complicated since.”

Maeve put the photograph away.

“My grandfather is alive,” she said. “He is eighty-one years old. He lives somewhere I will not tell you yet. He memorized all twelve pages of the original file. He can recite it word for word.”

“Does he have physical proof?”

Maeve took out a key.

“A safe deposit box in Yonkers. Inside is a USB drive with scanned copies, plus two original pages from the file. The paper is old enough to authenticate. The ink is old enough to date.”

Adrien looked at the key.

“How long has it been there?”

“Fourteen years.”

“Why didn’t he use it?”

“Because he told me not to go near that box until I had the right Vico standing beside me.”

Adrien said nothing.

Maeve held his gaze.

“Are you the right Vico, Adrien?”

He did not answer quickly.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I am the only Vico available. So we’ll have to find out together.”

His phone buzzed.

Charlotte.

The message had four words.

Dad knows where she is.

Adrien turned the phone face down.

“We need to move,” he said.

Maeve stood immediately.

On the sidewalk, Adrien led her toward a plain car parked half a block away.

“Charlotte warned you,” Maeve said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because her father just made the mistake of letting her understand she was never a daughter in his plan. She was positioning.”

They got in.

Adrien drove.

Charlotte called two minutes later.

He put it on speaker.

“Adrien,” she said, voice wrecked from crying. “He lied to me.”

“Charlotte.”

“My father. He said the marriage was never about us. He said it was positioning. He gave me a phone number and told me to call it. He said the man who answered would explain why the wedding had to happen.”

Maeve went still.

“Did you call it?” Adrien asked.

“No. I almost did. Then I thought of last night.” Charlotte’s voice broke. “Who is she? The waitress. Who is she really?”

Adrien glanced at Maeve.

“She is the reason your father arranged our engagement. She is the reason he needed me pointed in the wrong direction.”

“What did she do?”

“She didn’t do anything. Her grandfather did. A long time ago.”

Charlotte was silent.

“Do not call that number,” Adrien said. “Get your passport. Go to Rosa’s house in Carroll Gardens. Do not call your father. Do not text anyone. Go now.”

“Safe from what?”

“From your father’s next move.”

After the call ended, Maeve looked at him.

“She threw a glass at my face.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re protecting her.”

“I’m removing Banks’s cleanest lever,” Adrien said. “But sometimes the right move and the decent thing happen to be the same.”

Maeve looked out the window.

“My grandfather might like you.”

Part 3

Maeve finally gave Adrien the address.

Cassian Voss was hiding in Yonkers, in a quiet two-story house owned by a retired electrician named George Pappas, who had served with him in Vietnam and had spent eleven years keeping a secret without asking a single question.

The house looked ordinary.

That was what made it perfect.

Cassian sat at the kitchen table when they entered through the back door.

He was eighty-one, white-haired, slightly bent, with age-spotted hands and eyes the same sharp green as Maeve’s. He looked old, but not weak. There was a difference, and Adrien saw it immediately.