Chapter 4: What Diane Marsh Kept
Diane Marsh lived in a ground-floor apartment in Pilsen with three deadbolts on the door and curtains that were always drawn.
She was in her mid-forties, with the careful stillness of someone who had spent a long time being very quiet in rooms where powerful people forgot she was present.
She let us in without a word, checked the hallway behind us, and locked all three bolts.
"You're Elizabeth Calloway," she said, looking at me.
The name hit me like cold water.
"I go by Emma."
"I know what you go by." She moved to the kitchen table, where a cardboard box sat beside a closed laptop.
"I also know your father was Thomas Calloway.
And I know he worked for the Vitali Group for eleven years before he died."
The room tilted slightly.
"My father was an accountant," I said.
"He worked for a logistics company."
"He worked for a logistics company that was a subsidiary of Vitali Holdings." Diane sat down and folded her hands on the table.
"He didn't know that when he was hired.
By the time he figured it out, he'd already seen things he wasn't supposed to see."
Liam put his hand on the back of my chair.
"What things?" I asked.
Diane opened the box and removed a folder.
She slid it across the table to me.
Inside were financial records — columns of numbers, account transfers, property transaction logs.
My father's name appeared on three of the pages.
Not as an author.
As a witness signature.
"He signed off on two internal audits," Diane said.
"He didn't know what he was signing.
The documents were presented to him as routine compliance reviews.
But they weren't.
They were records of a fund that was being used to finance the pressure campaign against the south side properties.
Payments to building inspectors.
Payments to a city official I won't name yet.
A payment to the man who owned the insurance company that investigated the fire."
My hands were very still on the folder.
"My father died in a car accident," I said.
"Yes."
"Four years ago."
"Yes."
"Are you telling me—"
"I'm telling you the accident happened six days after he submitted a formal ethics complaint to the Vitali Group's internal legal team." Diane's voice didn't waver.
"I'm telling you the complaint was buried.
I'm telling you I found a copy of it in a file that was supposed to have been destroyed.
And I'm telling you that the man who ordered that file destroyed was not a mid-level manager."
I looked at the folder in my hands.
"Who was it?"
Diane reached into the box again.
She placed a single printed email on the table, face down.
"Before I show you this," she said, "I need you to understand something.
I've been sitting on this for eight months because I was afraid.
I have a daughter.
I have a life.
And the people involved in this are not people who accept inconvenience quietly."
"Show me," I said.
She turned the email over.
The sender line read: A.
Vitali.
The message was four sentences.
The last one read: *Make sure the Calloway file is gone before the end of the quarter.
All copies.*
The room was completely silent.
Liam's hand tightened on the back of my chair.
I looked at the email for a long time.
At the name at the top.
At the date — three and a half years ago, seven months before my father's accident.
"He knew about my father," I said.
"He knew your father was a problem," Diane said carefully.
"Whether he knew what would happen next—"
"He signed the order to destroy the evidence." My voice came out flat.
"Whatever happened after that, he signed that order."
I set the email down on the table.
My hand was completely steady now.
The shaking from the morning, from the bathroom floor, from the pregnancy test — all of it was gone.
Replaced by something cold and very clear.
"I need copies of everything in that box," I said.
Diane nodded slowly.
"That's why I called Liam."
I stood up.
Liam stood with me.
"One more question," I said.
"Does Alessandro Vitali know who I am?
My real name?"
Diane looked at me for a moment before answering.
"He didn't," she said.
"But someone on his staff ran a background check on every catering employee from the Obsidian gala two weeks after the event." She paused.
"I don't know what they found.
I left the firm before I could find out."
May you like
I picked up my bag.
"Then we don't have as much time as I thought."
