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I stepped in front of her before anyone else could approach.

“Adriana, look at me.”

“He knew what they were doing.”

“We don’t know what he knew when he authorized those routes.”

“He sent women to them.” Tears filled her eyes, though none fell. “My father helped move them.” Her knees weakened.

I caught her by the arms, prepared to take her weight, but she forced herself upright before she could lean on me.

The fury in her face was almost enough to conceal the grief beneath it.

“I need one person to tell me the truth,” she said, her voice rising. “Just one person who doesn’t lie to me because they think the truth will hurt too much.”

Artemus turned back to the monitor, granting her the privacy of not being studied. Tone rose from the sofa and moved closer, but she stopped before reaching for her.

Adriana pressed her palm against her mouth.

For several seconds, she stared at her father’s name as if looking long enough might change what surrounded it.

Then she turned and walked out of the room.

I started to followed her.

“Demi,” Atlas called.

I stopped at the doorway.

He glanced toward Ferretti’s signature on the screen.

“The bishop. If Ferretti is involved, the Church may already know you’ve returned to your family.”

I thought of my parish outside Rome. The convent. The sisters who had sheltered Adriana. The women who had accepted food from my hands and slept behind doors I had promised were safe.

Ferretti knew all their names.

“Find out how deep the network goes,” I ordered.

Atlas held my gaze. “And if it reaches beyond Ferretti?”

He didn’t need to name how high this could go. The possibility entered the silence between us.

Adriana’s father might have been a willing participant, a frightened accomplice or a man who had joined the operation before attempting to destroy it from within. We didn’t yet have enough evidence to decide which version of him was real.

Ferretti’s guilt required no interpretation. It was written in his own hand.

“Then we don’t stop with the bishop.”

I left the office.

Ahead of me, Adriana moved through the hallway alone, carrying the possibility that the father she mourned had helped build the nightmare now hunting her.

For the first time since I returned home, I understood that the enemy had not merely followed us to the Cavalho gates. It had been waiting inside the institutions we trusted long before either of us began running.

27

ADRIANA