Page 43 of Beautiful Evidence

Rory pulls a pack of gum from his coat pocket and offers me one. I shake my head, and he pops a piece in his mouth, chewing slowly as he watches Nico and Diego stroll off toward the side alley, jackets loose and hands deep in their pockets. No urgency now. The job’s done.

“Those two make it look easy,” Rory says, nodding toward them.

“They’ve done worse,” I answer. “This? This was clean.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, rocking back on his heels, “clean jobs usually mean dirty follow-ups.”

He looks over at me, jaw working. “You really trust her to do this?”

I take a breath through my nose and finally glance away from the street. “She’s not stupid. She knows what’s at stake. I’m not worried about her skills. I’m worried about her conscience.”

Rory lifts an eyebrow. “You think she’ll crack?”

“No,” I say. “I think she’ll carry it. Even if no one else knows what she’s done, she will. And that’s a different kind of damage.”

He gives a low whistle, then nods like that settles it. “Guess we’ll find out.”

I slide into my car across the street and dump the gloves in a burn bag under the seat. My hands are still shaking from pure adrenaline. It's a rush to do what we do, but I have a feeling Alessia is going to be shaking too, for an entirely different reason.

If she pulls it off, we’re through the worst of it. I keep thinking about what that might mean—what kind of life we could build in Rome once this is buried. She could go back to medicine, if not in the public eye, then behind the scenes. I could step out of the shadows without stepping away from the family. Start running things cleaner. Cut out the rot before it spreads. There’d still be danger, still be blood, but we’d be building something that lasts. A future inside the world we were born into—but on our own terms. But none of it happens unless she gets through tonight.

Vincenzo: 2:59 PM: My part’s finished. You’re up.

I stare at the screen for a second before locking it and sliding the phone into the center console. There’s nothing else to say. If she can hold the line like I did—if she can get the paperwork filed and the sample suppressed—then we might actually survive this. She’s smart enough to rewrite the rules. I just have to hold the door open long enough for her to walk through.

27

ALESSIA

The cursor blinks against a white screen while I sit frozen, index finger hovering above the keyboard. The login screen waits for my credentials, the same ones I’ve used for years. I type them in like it’s any other morning and I’m not about to erase the truth.

The system loads slower than usual, and the pathology records come up in a list. I scroll until I find it—Matteo Vescari, case code 411-23. My pulse jumps when I click in. I half expect an alert to flash, a firewall to trigger, something to block what I’m about to do. But the software obeys me like it does every day.

That’s what makes it worse. If there were friction—if the system pushed back, stalled, flagged something—it might feel harder to cross the line. But everything responds like it always does. It feels too easy, and that ease makes me sick.

The guilt creeps in quietly, not because I believe my father deserves justice, but because I know how hard I worked to earn this access. I was proud of it once. I believed in rules and records, and now I’m the one dismantling them.

Everything is in place. The histology files are logged. The toxicology report is clean. The scene photos are labeled, and the autopsy notes are stored in sequence. I skip to the forensics tab and pull up the DNA record—Chain Sample #84723. It’s the record tied to the blood under his fingernails. It’s the same one that pointed straight to my father.

I open the metadata and disable the visibility layer. Then I run a permanent deletion script. It prompts me—Are you sure?—as if this is just any other misfiled sample.

I clickYes.

Then I close my eyes for a second to will away the shame I feel. When I open them, the screen refreshes and the link vanishes. I run two more commands to clear cached data, then wipe the shadow file. All backups are erased. Every reference log and lab flag is deleted.

But that’s not enough. I know the protocols inside and out. I know how to bury things so deep they’ll never resurface—but it still feels like painting over rot. I picture what will happen if someone decides to dig anyway. What if they request an audit? What if someone reopens the case out of spite or curiosity? What if someone else I trained with starts asking questions I can’t answer without giving myself away?

That fear keeps pushing me, harder than guilt ever could. So I do more. I rewrite the input fields manually, changing the record type to read, “Sample degraded. No viable DNA sequence obtained.” Then I scrub the timestamp and inject a false string of lab attempts so it looks like we tried to rerun it. That’s the part that will get the right eyes off my back. It won’t trigger any supervisor flags. It won’t get sent up to the magistrate.

When I’m done, I sit back and stare at the empty screen. My hand drifts to the mouse again, fingers trembling. I open the print menu and send the modified report to the lab printer. The hum and whir of the machine feels too loud in the sterile quiet, and I feel accused and judged too. I pull the paper from the tray, still warm, and skim every word again.

Degraded sample. Secondary attempts unsuccessful. Inconclusive.

I sign it with a trembling hand, and my heart is beating so fast it makes my teeth hurt. I slide the sheet into a folder and head for Records.

The hallway outside is washed in sterile light that feels bright enough to expose everything. I keep my head down and move quickly. I know the security cameras are on so I keep my steps even, and I don’t look around.

Downstairs, I log the file into the central pathology cabinet and sign the transfer register. The nurse at the desk barely glances at me. The nurse doesn’t say anything. No one looks up. I nod once, careful not to draw attention, and turn away with steady steps.

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