Chapter 7
The foundry manager remembered Beatrice.
Not the fall.
The afternoon before it.
She had asked to use a private recording room once used for documenting artist interviews.
The manager assumed she was preparing a donor statement.
A technician found an old inventory reference.
One audio card.
Removed from the recorder that night.
Never cataloged.
Signed out by:
Grace Hale.
Grace denied taking it.
The signature looked like hers.
She called it forged.
Raffaele did not argue.
He asked who else knew the card existed.
The technician remembered Beatrice.
Sofia.
And Preston.
That was all.
The card itself remained missing.
But a secondary system had captured several seconds of audio because the recording booth was connected to the gallery’s old intercom.
Technicians recovered fragments from an obsolete backup.
Static.
Footsteps.
Beatrice’s voice:
“You don't get to decide what she remembers.”
Then Grace:
“Lower your voice.”
Then Preston:
“Give me the card.”
The audio stopped.
Sofia listened once.
Only once.
Her hands started shaking afterward.
That phrase triggered another memory.
Beatrice standing between Sofia and Preston.
Preston moving toward her.
Grace holding Sofia’s wrist.
Something cold touching Sofia’s lips.
Sofia pulled away from the headphones.
“I wasn't just standing there.”
Raffaele waited.
“She was protecting me.”
That possibility changed Beatrice’s death again.
May you like
Maybe Sofia had not wandered into someone else’s argument.
Maybe she had become part of it.
