Chapter 58 Final card

Chapter 58 Final card
Anthony sat at his desk for a very long time after the call ended.

His lawyer knocked and came in. "The ball preparation brief is ready," he said. "I left it on the desk yesterday."

"I saw it."

"We need to go through it today. There are decisions that require your…"

"Leave it for this afternoon." Anthony set his phone down. "I will call you at three."

The lawyer paused in the doorway. He had worked with Anthony long enough to know when to ask follow-up questions and when not to. He chose not to. He left.

Anthony opened the drawer.

The file was there. Everything on her mother — the location, the routine, the name she was currently using, the photograph, the full address. He had been holding it back for months. His final card. The one you kept until everything else was spent.

He looked at it.

He closed the drawer.

He thought about the call, about the specific quality of Nia's voice when she said no. 

He had spent his entire professional life in negotiations. He knew what a strategic no sounded like the kind that had yes underneath it if you pushed in the right place. 

This had not been that, this had been a person who had already decided before the call started and was simply delivering the decision.

I am done with this version of dealing with you.

He opened the drawer again. He picked up the photograph. The careful stillness of a person who had spent a very long time being careful.

He put it back. He closed the drawer.

He picked up the ball brief and started reading it from the beginning. His lawyer had been meticulous with the language — procedural framing, technical context, lots of careful positioning. 

Underneath all of it the message was straightforward. Xavier's case was solid. The documentation was clean, there was no clean counter-move available.

He read to the end of the brief. He set it down and called his lawyer.

"Three o'clock," he said when the lawyer answered.

"Of course. Should I prepare anything specific?"

Anthony looked at the closed drawer. "No," he said. "Just be here."



On the third floor Xavier was finishing a call when Gia appeared at his door.

"Do you have a few minutes?" Gia said.

"Yes. Come in and close the door."

Gia sat down and placed a printed sheet on the desk. Xavier looked at it.

"Anthony's communication pattern," Gia said. "The past three months. The frequency increased when Nia started the search and again this morning."

Xavier picked the sheet up. "Who is he calling."

"One of the numbers connects to a private investigator. He has done work for DeLuca Holdings before." Gia pointed at a section of the page. "My assessment is that Anthony has someone watching the woman. Has had, for at least two months."

Xavier set the sheet down. He thought about two months. He thought about Nia going through her grandmother's documents at Sophia's kitchen table in the evenings. 

He thought about her asking him for help without being able to say why. Two months of Anthony sitting on an address while she searched.

"I want the mother search above everything else," Xavier said. "Above the ball. Above the case documents. Everything we have behind it."

"Already moved."

"And I want to know the moment Anthony gives his investigator a new instruction." Xavier looked at him directly. "If he decides to move on what he has I want to be ahead of it."

"I have a contact in the investigator's building," Gia said. "I will know by end of day if anything changes."

"Good." Xavier paused. "What about the Rahman family records cross-reference you were running?"

"Still running. I have one thread I am following, a property record from forty-two years ago that lists a secondary contact name. It is not Hamma Rahman but the connection is there. I need another day."

"Take the day."

"There is also the matter of the investigator's identity." Gia held up a second sheet. 

"He has operated under three different registered business names in the past six years. He is good at making himself difficult to pin down formally."

"But not impossible."

"No. Not impossible." Gia set the sheet on the desk. "I have what I need. It will just take a little more time."

"How much time."

"Forty-eight hours at most."

"Then take forty-eight hours." Xavier looked at him. "But not more."

Gia nodded. "Understood." He left.

"One more thing," Xavier said.

"Yes."

"Whatever Anthony is planning to do with that file, we find her first. That is the only outcome I am interested in."

Gia held his gaze. "Understood." He left.

Xavier sat back. Outside the window the city was moving at its usual pace — indifferent, constant, entirely unconcerned with what was happening on this floor. Four weeks and four days to the ball, the case was solid. The documentation was in place.

He thought about Nia saying no to a photograph of her own mother this morning because the price was wrong.

He thought about what kind of person arrived at that choice.

He already knew the answer to that. He went back to his desk. He had work to do.



Later that afternoon Anthony's phone rang. It was the investigator.

"She called him this morning," the investigator said. "Your wife."

"Ex-wife." Anthony turned his chair toward the window. "What happened."

"Short call. She said no. He said she was making a mistake. She ended it."

Anthony was quiet.

"Do you want me to do anything differently?" the investigator said.

Anthony thought about the file in the drawer. The photograph. The address he had been holding for three months like a card he could not quite bring himself to play. "No," he said. "Stay where you are. Keep watching."

"And if Cole's team reaches her first?"

"Then they reach her first." He said it without anger. Without much of anything. "Keep me informed either way."

He ended the call.

He sat alone in the apartment for a long time after. The ball brief was still on his desk. His lawyer was coming at three. There were decisions to be made and actions to be taken and the ordinary business of a complicated life to get through. He knew all of that.

He opened the drawer one more time.

He looked at the photograph.

He thought about the version of himself that had found this information three months ago and immediately understood its value as a bargaining chip. 

He thought about the version of himself sitting here now. The gap between those two versions was not as large as he would have liked. But it was larger than it had been.

He closed the drawer.

He picked up his phone and called his lawyer. "Come at two," he said. "Not three."

"Of course," the lawyer said. "Should I.."

"Just come," Anthony said. He ended the call. He opened the brief, he started reading it properly for the first time.