Chapter 799: Terrible Time

Beatrice’s father knew where he had put the original agreement.

"The blue case," he said. "Behind the old product records. I didn’t throw it away."

Beatrice sat beside his bed with the address already written down.

For a while after the fraud, she had wished he would stop reading those papers. Each time he opened them, he looked for the sentence that should have warned him, then blamed himself for not seeing it earlier.

Now she was glad he had kept them.

"I’ll bring it back," she said.

His hand moved toward hers.

"Don’t go alone."

"I won’t."

Rovan stood near the doorway, his injured shoulder held in a fresh sling. He had said very little since hearing what she wanted to do.

Mingyue had agreed to send guards with them. Alex was still with his daughter, but Vesa had carried Beatrice’s request to him and returned with permission to enter the purchased business and recover her family’s papers.

Her father had pledged both the business building and the family house. Alex had since bought the business; that sale had not given him the house or settled the loan claim against it. Beatrice meant to recover what her father still could. She had no wish to undo the purchase that had kept the shop from disappearing altogether.

When she reached the doorway, Rovan stepped aside instead of offering to carry her. She could walk with a support, though she needed to stop if the pain grew worse.

"You don’t have to come into the records office," she told him.

He looked at her.

"I thought you wanted me there."

"I want you to tell the truth if you know something. That isn’t the same as dragging you around to make your family answer."

His gaze moved toward her father, then back to the passage.

"I’ll come."

***

The blue case was still in the shop’s office.

Dust had worked its way through the edge of the cabinet, but the seal inside had held. Beatrice recognized her father’s careful arrangement as soon as she opened it.

Loan agreement. Research reports. Payment receipts. Letters asking why the promised return had not arrived.

She paused over the letters. Her father had kept even the unanswered copies in order.

The guards gave her room to collect them. The building needed repairs before the clinic or shop could reopen, but the main rooms were standing, and no one had removed the files from the upper office.

Beatrice closed the case and carried it back to the waiting transport.

Vesa had found a bank clerk among the shelter arrivals. The branch manager confirmed that the woman handled the old collateral files and that their secured records room had survived. He sent her to meet Beatrice while he checked the holdings upstairs.

She was waiting behind a damaged counter when Beatrice arrived.

"I can give you the account documents," she said. "I can’t promise the family will accept anything done here while the city is like this."

"Give me what the records actually say."

The clerk looked at the guards before entering her staff seal. The local archive opened under her name.

"My father authorized me to bring these," Beatrice said, placing his signed request on the counter. "If you need to hear it from him, the ward can connect us."

"I will before I change his account."

"Good. He’s had enough things changed without being asked."

Beatrice placed her father’s agreement beside the display.

The reference numbers matched, as did the first interest charge and the receipt her father had kept when the money left his account. The clerk opened the archive’s dated copy; Beatrice compared the report attached there with the one in the blue case.

The money had gone out before the demonstration’s supporting material was filed in the bank record.

Beatrice pointed to the two times.

"My father was told the report was already checked."

"The approval says it was," the clerk replied.

"Then show me what they checked, and when it reached this account."

The woman opened the attachment.

It contained the government facility’s endorsement and the name Halden had used, followed by guarantees that had allowed the loan to bypass the usual review of a new research venture.

Darius Varn’s approval appeared on the first page.

Other names followed.

Beatrice read them slowly. One belonged to a supplier her father had trusted for years. Another belonged to the office that had accepted the alchemy report.

The clerk brought out a second file when Beatrice asked for the underlying payments.

Several of the same names appeared there, attached to fees paid from the money her father borrowed.

The archive called them review and introduction fees. Her father’s receipts called the same transfers research costs. He had been paying the people who told him the work was safe.

Rovan looked over her shoulder.

"That account belongs to a family company," he said, pointing to one of the recipients.

Beatrice turned toward him.

"Do you know that, or are you guessing?"

"I know the name. My uncle used it when arranging things for me."

"What things?"

"Travel. The place I stayed. Some bills."

He withdrew his hand from the screen.

"Keep that account with his statement," Beatrice told the clerk. "We can ask who paid those bills."

Rovan drew farther from the display. He had enjoyed the arrangements without asking that question.

The clerk hesitated over the next record. "This one still has an active contact."

"Darius?"

She nodded.

"He isn’t here. The instructions come through the account."

Rovan’s face changed.

"My uncle Varyn told Alex he’d left Proxima," he said. "He wouldn’t give him a straight answer about when."

"Can you reach him?" Beatrice asked the clerk.

"I can request approval for a change to the collateral."

"Do that."

The clerk called the ward first. Beatrice’s father appeared propped against his pillows, annoyed at how long it took him to sit forward. He confirmed the request in his own name.

"I asked for those reviews long before this," he said. "Ask them why my letters weren’t enough."

Beatrice kept the blue case beneath the display until the call ended. The clerk attached his recorded challenge to the collateral request and sent it through the company account.

They waited beside the counter.

Rovan kept looking toward the door. Beatrice could hear the uneven movement of his breath when the contact indicator changed.

A man’s face appeared on the display. His clothes were clean, and nothing behind him resembled the ruined streets outside the bank.

"Who authorized this?" he asked.

The clerk gave her name and the account reference.

Darius’s gaze moved across the people standing behind her.

He recognized Rovan first.

"So you’re alive."

Rovan did not answer.

Beatrice stepped closer to the display.

"My father is alive too."

Darius looked at her for a moment. Then the irritation left his voice.

"Miss Beatrice. This is a terrible time to reopen a financial dispute."

"It was a terrible time when he couldn’t get out of bed because of it."

"I heard your family had difficulties. I was going to look into the matter when circumstances allowed."

Beatrice put the first receipt where the clerk’s device could show it.

"Then start with this."

Darius glanced at the record. His gaze paused on the reference before he looked away.

"Those are internal arrangements. They don’t change your father’s obligations."

"They show who received his loan."

"The research failed. That happens."

"Then why were the people approving the research being paid from it before the bank had its supporting report?"