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“He was my father.” My breath caught against the pressure in my chest. “And I loved him. But I also hate him.”

I turned away and braced both hands against the desk.

My shoulders shook once, but no tears came. I had spent so many on my father that my body seemed unwilling to surrender any more.

Behind me, the floorboards creaked.

Demitri crossed the room but stopped before reaching me. He pulled the white covering from a chair near the fireplace and sat, resting his forearms on his knees.

He didn’t fill the silence.

He remained there while every memory I possessed rearranged itself around the possibility that my father had been a monster.

“I keep thinking about the names,” I whispered.

Demitri waited.

“The women on the screen. The girls.” My fingers pressed deeper into the wood. “The youngest was thirteen. Thirteen, Demi!”

My father had known what it meant to raise a daughter, to worry when she walked home alone and to wait up when she was late. How was it possible that he could be so uncaring about other people’s daughters?

Compliant.

Injured.

Transferred.

I closed my eyes.

“What if he didn't care until the operation threatened him?”

Demitri’s silence lasted long enough to tell me he had considered the same possibility.

“We may never know when his conscience began troubling him,” he said. “Or whether conscience was the reason he turned against them at all.”

The honesty hurt, but it didn’t insult me.

I turned to face him.

He had found his own bishop’s name in the same files. Demitri was not standing outside my devastation, untouched by it. He was sitting in the middle of his own.

“You believe Ferretti knew,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You don't want to believe it.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But you do.”

His jaw tightened. “His instructions were precise. His signature appeared on multiple authorizations. Believing otherwise would require me to ignore what was in front of me.”

The fury inside me shifted, making room beyond my own pain. The bishop had not merely deceived Demitri. He had taken everything Demitri believed the Church represented and turned it on its head.

I moved to the chair opposite him and pulled away the sheet before sitting. Dust lifted between us, briefly visible in the thin light from the windows.

For several moments, neither of us spoke as Demitri and I sat with truths neither of us could destroy.