Chapter 8: The Table Between Them
Nobody moved.
Reyes's hand went to his side.
Ashworth's pen was still.
Dante looked at Reyes's hand.
"I'm not armed.
I came to talk to my wife."
"This isn't the place for that," Reyes said.
"She's six months pregnant and she spent the night in a friend's apartment because she's afraid of me." Dante's voice was even.
Controlled.
"I came to talk.
That's all."
"Dante." Amara's voice was steady.
She surprised herself.
"Sit down."
He looked at her.
"Sit down," she said again.
He pulled out the chair across from her and sat.
Reyes stayed standing.
Ashworth didn't move.
"How did you find this place?" Amara asked.
"I had your rental car tracked.
The GPS in the transponder."
She filed that away.
Another thing she hadn't known.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I want you to come home."
"That's not going to happen."
"Amara—"
"It is not going to happen, Dante." She kept her voice level.
"I am sitting at a table with a federal prosecutor and an agent who have been building a case against you for two years.
I have given them documents that close four of their six counts.
This is not a conversation about whether I come home."
Something moved across his face.
Not anger.
Something more complicated.
"You don't know what you've done," he said.
"I know exactly what I've done."
"There are people connected to those accounts who are not going to accept a federal investigation quietly.
People who are not me.
People who don't make distinctions between a wife and a problem."
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm warning you."
"There's a difference, you said." She held his gaze.
"That's what you told me last night.
That you were warning me."
He leaned forward.
His voice dropped.
"Come home.
Let me fix this.
I can make the investigation go away — I have done it before.
You and the baby will be safe.
Selena is gone, I'll send her away, whatever you need.
But you have to stop this right now before it goes somewhere I cannot pull you back from."
Ashworth's pen moved.
Writing.
"You're offering to obstruct a federal investigation," Ashworth said, "in front of a federal prosecutor."
Dante looked at her.
"I'm speaking to my wife."
"You're speaking in my presence.
Everything said in this room is on record."
His jaw tightened.
Amara looked at him across the table.
This man who had cooked pasta at midnight.
Who had held her hand in a hospital until dawn.
Who had built a financial crjme operation for eleven years and married her in the middle of it and told her she would never have to wonder.
"I'm not coming home," she said.
"I'm not stopping this.
And if there are people connected to those accounts who might consider me a problem, then the fastest way to make me safe is to cooperate with the people sitting at this table."
"You don't understand how this world works."
"I understand it better than you think.
I've been watching it for eight years."
He sat back.
For a moment he looked at her the way he had looked at her once, a long time ago — not calculating, not managing, but actually seeing her.
It lasted only a second.
Then it was gone.
"I want to speak to my lawyer," he said.
"That's your right," Reyes said.
"Stand up slowly."
Dante stood.
He looked at Amara one last time.
"Whatever you think this ends with," he said, "it won't be what you're imagining."
"I'm not imagining anything," Amara said.
"I'm just finishing what you started."
He walked out.
The door closed.
Ashworth set her pen down.
She looked at Amara.
"That was either very brave or very reckless," she said.
"Probably both," Amara said.
"He's going to move money in the next twelve hours.
He's going to try to collapse the shell companies."
"Can you stop him?"
Ashworth looked at Reyes.
Reyes picked up his phone.
"We already have a freeze order," he said.
"We were waiting for this meeting to execute it." He looked at Amara.
"We needed to know whether you were going to cooperate before we moved.
Now we know."
He stepped out to make the call.
Ashworth looked at Amara across the table.
"Mrs.
Moretti," she said.
"I want to ask you something, and you don't have to answer."
"Ask."
"Why did you wait three weeks?
After you found the document.
You had everything you needed.
Why did you wait?"
Amara looked at the envelope on the table.
"Because I needed to be sure," she said.
"Not about him.
I was sure about him the moment I saw the photographs." She paused.
"I needed to be sure about myself.
That I was doing this for the right reason."
"And what's the right reason?"
Amara put her hand on her belly.
"Her," she said.
"Just her."
Ashworth looked at her for a long moment.
Then she picked up her pen and went back to writing.
Outside, through the thin wall, Amara could hear Reyes's voice — low, fast, certain — executing the order that would freeze every account connected to fourteen routing numbers and four shell companies and eleven years of a life built in the dark.
May you like
It was 10:47 in the morning.
Her daughter kicked once, hard, as if she understood.
