Chapter 800: House

Darius did not answer immediately.

The clerk had stopped touching the controls. One of the guards asked her quietly to keep the connection and record together.

Darius noticed.

"Who are those men?"

"People making sure these files survive," Beatrice said.

His gaze shifted toward Rovan again.

"You should explain to her that this can be handled within the family."

Rovan’s good hand tightened around the side of his coat.

Beatrice waited.

Alex had once put Rovan in her shop and ordered him to obey her. Beatrice kept her eyes on him now, waiting until he answered for himself.

"I can’t explain away those payments," he said.

Darius’s expression cooled.

"No one asked you to. You aren’t involved in matters at that level."

"Then don’t ask me to answer for them."

Rovan had gone pale. He stayed beside the counter while the silence stretched.

Darius turned back to Beatrice.

"We can return the house. Cancel the remaining charge. Your family has suffered enough."

Beatrice looked down at her father’s letters.

Her father had begged them to inspect these same records. Now that she had placed them in front of a guard, Darius was offering what he had refused to discuss when her father asked alone.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"An agreement that the matter is settled. No further allegations based on documents you don’t understand."

"And the other borrowers?"

"That has nothing to do with you."

Beatrice opened the list beside her father’s reference.

The clerk had shown her other accounts with the same guarantors. Different products, different promises, the same people introducing each other and taking a share of the fees.

Some amounts were smaller than her father’s. One was large enough that Beatrice understood why the clerk had looked frightened before opening it.

"These people were useful to you," she said.

Darius’s eyes narrowed.

"The suppliers. The officials. The people who vouched for Halden. You made them approve it, then paid them from it."

"You’re inventing a conspiracy from ordinary fees."

"Then let them explain the work they did."

The clerk brought up a note attached to the introduction record. It described Beatrice’s father’s business reputation and the people who would accept his involvement as proof that the venture was safe.

Beatrice read the sentence twice.

They had wanted the part of the business her father was proudest of.

People had trusted the venture because her father supported it. Once they signed the approvals and accepted payment, the family could threaten to expose their involvement.

She had thought the worst part was losing the house while her father lay awake wondering how he would repay the staff.

Taking his money had only been part of the plan. They had used his name to recruit people, and he had never been important enough to be told why.

Rovan spoke quietly beside her.

"Varyn told Alex it was for names. Useful people. He said your company’s case wasn’t about the election."

Beatrice looked at him.

"You heard him say that?"

"Yes. I was there."

"Write down his words," Beatrice told the clerk. "Beside the introduction note."

Darius’s voice sharpened.

"Rovan. Think about who will receive your next message when you need help."

Rovan stared at the screen.

Beatrice felt the urge to tell him that someone else would always help him now. She did not know that. If he spoke against his family, they might refuse to help him again.

He looked down at his sling, then back at Darius.

"Finish speaking to her."

Darius held his gaze before looking away.

The clerk moved to close the account view, and Beatrice stopped her.

"Leave it open."

"Not everything in the reserve was spent," the clerk said. "There are securities attached to these accounts. Some are held here."

Darius began to object.

The guard beside the counter asked the clerk to show which records matched the property held in the secured room. He sent the numbers back to the people protecting the bank, then waited while she brought out the sealed holdings register.

Beatrice checked her father’s reference first.

The house had not been sold to a new occupant. It remained among the collateral the family-controlled company intended to dispose of.

The clerk turned Beatrice’s original agreement to the disputed-collateral provision. A recorded challenge from the borrower allowed the branch to halt an unfinished local disposal while it checked the supporting documents.

Her father had underlined that clause in blue. One of the unanswered letters in his case quoted it.

"Why didn’t you stop the transfer then?" Beatrice asked.

The clerk read the margin entry. "It was referred to the company for a response."

"And they never answered."

"No."

Beatrice laid today’s recorded request beside the letter. "He’s answered you again. Don’t send him back to them."

The branch manager came down from the secured room after the clerk called him. He authorized the hold and asked the guards to keep watch outside the holdings room while the bank staff inventoried it. The assets would remain in the bank; no one was being paid from them today.

"Stop this one," Beatrice said. "Keep a copy of what it showed before you do."

Darius leaned closer to the display.

"I can make that return easy. All you need is a signed settlement."

"Then return it without asking me to silence the others."

He said nothing.

The clerk preserved the account and marked the pending transfer suspended. Upstairs, the staff began checking the disputed holdings against the register while the guards watched the entrance. Ordinary deposits remained outside the hold.

The house was not back in her father’s hands yet, but the company could no longer sell it while the claim was being checked.

Darius ended the call before the clerk finished showing which other transfers were pending.

Beatrice let him go.

They had his offer, the original agreement, the approvals, the payments and the company’s record of why her father’s name mattered. The assets on the checked local register could no longer be quietly moved while the bank inventoried them. Beatrice kept that list separate from the missing money; her father would ask how much could actually come back.

Rovan sat down carefully, looking at the dark screen.

Beatrice waited until he looked away from the screen.

"Will you repeat what you heard if they ask again?" she said.

He looked up.

"Yes."

The clerk made a second copy for the receiving office. Beatrice kept the first with her father’s blue case.

Among the linked records was a separate group of payments carrying Varyn’s security-office references. They did not belong to the loan’s research charges.

Beatrice marked them for someone who knew what that office had been doing.

Outside, Beatrice had to stop before reaching the transport. Her leg had begun to tremble. Rovan waited with her while she called the ward.

"They can’t sell it while the claim is checked," she told her father.

He asked her to say it again.

She did. The blue case rested against her injured leg, and for once she did not mind its weight.