Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN BEHIND THE NAME K
We did not hunt Katarina Volkov with guns.
We hunted her with money.
Thomas’s ledger contained thirty-two accounts.
Twenty-seven were dead.
Four had moved within the last year.
One had moved that morning.
Money left trails even when people did not.
Within twelve hours, Marco found a Manhattan hotel suite rented through a company connected to Katarina.
I contacted federal investigators before anyone approached it.
Marco hated that.
“You trust them?”
“No.”
“Then why call them?”
“Because I want arrests, not funerals.”
Emma was sitting at my dining table when I said it.
She looked at me differently.
I noticed.
I pretended not to.
The raid found no Katarina.
But they found Raymond Bellini.
Alive.
Terrified.
And carrying a passport under another name.
He asked for a lawyer immediately.
Then, after three hours, asked to speak to me.
The FBI said no.
Good.
I didn’t need private revenge.
I needed information.
Raymond eventually talked to prosecutors.
Adrian had recruited him years earlier.
Not for Kolov.
For Katarina.
The alliance was romantic before it became financial.
Adrian and Katarina met in Switzerland fifteen years ago.
Children of enemy families.
It sounded almost poetic.
It wasn’t.
Together, they planned to use the old Castellano-Kolov war to remove both fathers’ generations and inherit what remained.
My father’s murder?
Not random.
Raymond claimed Adrian helped arrange it.
Lucia broke a glass when she heard.
I felt nothing for several seconds.
Then too much.
Emma found me alone in the library.
“You okay?”
“No.”
It was the first honest answer I had given anyone in years.
She sat across from me.
“My father spent his life hiding from something your cousin helped build.”
“Yes.”
“And your father died because of him.”
“Possibly.”
“You sound disappointed by that word.”
“I want certainty.”
She nodded.
“I understand.”
Of course she did.
Her life had been destroyed by false certainty.
Raymond gave investigators one more fact.
Katarina was not in Russia.
She had lived in New Jersey under another identity for nine years.
Married.
Two children.
Normal house.
School pickup.
Grocery stores.
And she had never stopped running Kolov operations.
Her American name:
Katherine Lowe.
Lucia recognized it immediately.
“So do I,” Emma said.
I turned.
“How?”
Emma looked confused.
“She works at the oncology foundation.”
My blood ran cold.
“What foundation?”
“The one helping my mother.”
Rose had received subsidized chemotherapy medication through a nonprofit called New Hope Oncology Assistance.
Emma had mentioned it dozens of times.
Katherine Lowe served on its board.
Suddenly Rose’s cancer support no longer looked like charity.
It looked like surveillance.
We checked the foundation.
Katherine had personally approved Rose Carter’s assistance application eleven months earlier.
Emma whispered:
“They knew who my mother was.”
“Yes.”
“They’ve known where we were the whole time.”
“Yes.”
“So why attack me now?”
That was the right question.
Thomas had been dead twelve years.
The ledger hidden even longer.
Why now?
Marco brought the answer an hour later.
Three weeks before Emma’s attack, Rose had completed paperwork for an experimental treatment program.
The application required family history.
Including previous legal names.
Rose Carter had written:
Spouse: Thomas Carter, formerly Tommaso Caruso.
Katarina saw it.
For the first time in twelve years, Kolov’s daughter had confirmation that Caruso’s family was still alive.
But there was another notation on the medical application.
Emergency contact:
Emma Carter.
Employer:
Castellano Residence.
Emma stared at the page.
Her mother had unknowingly connected the two names Katarina feared most.
Caruso.
May you like
Castellano.
And Katarina had assumed the ledger had already found its way back to me.
