“That’s dangerous, Vera Nikolaevna. Your ex-husband is a powerful man. He has money, connections, reach. If he finds out you’re digging into this…”
Vera gave a dry, bitter laugh.
“What’s he going to do to me? Take the house? He already did. Take my money? There isn’t any. Ruin my reputation? He’s already told everyone I’m an unstable ex-wife trying to bleed him dry.”
“There are things worse than losing money and reputation.”
Silence settled between them. Vera stared out at the gray fall street.
“I have a daughter,” she said quietly. “Masha. She’s nineteen. She’s studying overseas on her father’s money. If I start this fight, he could use her. Stop paying tuition. Turn her against me.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“But if I don’t start, then what? Drive a taxi for the rest of my life and know I was robbed? Watch him live in our house…” She stopped.
With whom? Vera pressed her lips together. She tried not to think about that part. Two months after the divorce, Dmitry remarried. His assistant. She was twenty-six. They had been involved while we were still married. At least three years.
She swallowed the bitterness.
“You know what the worst part is? I suspected something. I saw signs. But I kept telling myself I was imagining it, that he wasn’t capable of that. Twenty years together, a child, a whole life.”
Anton Sergeyevich laid his hand over hers.
“You are not at fault for trusting your husband. He broke that trust, not you.”
Vera nodded, fighting tears.
“I want justice, Anton Sergeyevich. Not revenge—justice. I want back what he stole. Not even just for me. For Masha. So she knows the truth about her father. So she doesn’t repeat my mistakes.”
The lawyer studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded.
“All right. I’ll help you. But we need a plan.”
The plan didn’t come all at once. They sat in that coffee shop until evening. Filled half a notebook. Drank too much coffee. Anton Sergeyevich explained the legal side. Vera told him everything she could remember about Dmitry’s business dealings. By sunset, they had a strategy.
First: find someone who had worked at Granite and might know about the money transfers. Second: try to get access to Polyakov’s records. Third: look for other people Dmitry may have cheated in a similar way. Fourth: gather enough material to take to the district attorney.
“There’s one person,” Anton Sergeyevich said as they were getting ready to leave. “A former colleague of mine. Retired investigator. These days he does private investigative work. Igor Pavlovich Gromov. If anyone can dig into Granite, it’s him.”
“Is that expensive?”
The lawyer hesitated.
“Not cheap. But I’ll talk to him. Explain the situation. Igor is a principled man. He has no patience for wealthy men who cheat their own families. He might agree to work for a percentage of whatever we recover.”
Vera nodded. Hope—thin and fragile as first ice—began to form in her chest. That night she went back out on shift. She still needed money for rent, for food, for her mother’s medicine, for the investigation. But now the work didn’t feel quite so hopeless. Now she had a purpose.
Three days later Anton Sergeyevich called to say he had arranged a meeting with Gromov. Igor Pavlovich turned out to be nothing like Vera had imagined. No rumpled detective in a wrinkled trench coat. Instead, a fit gray-haired man with military posture and sharp steel-colored eyes. He was close to sixty but moved easily, spoke clearly, listened carefully.
“So. Dmitry Andreevich Sokolov,” he said after Vera finished her story. “Construction business, shopping centers, ties to city hall. I know the type. Ran into dozens over the years. They smile to your face and sharpen the knife behind your back.”
“Will you help?” Vera asked.
Gromov tapped his fingers on the table.
“It’s not a simple case. Sokolov is smart. Experienced. He covered his tracks professionally. But…” He gave the slightest smile. “There’s no such thing as a perfect crime. There’s always a witness, a document, a recording. You just have to know where to look.”
“And you do?”
