Page 24 of With a Vengeance

“As for the train’s legitimate workers, I imagine you paid them off.”

“I did,” Anna says.

“My father won’t be happy about that.”

“I think he’ll soon have more important matters to worry about.”

The music stops as Dante leans against the piano edge and rests his chin atop a closed fist. “Do you really think my father was behind all of that?”

“I know he was,” Anna says. “Honestly, you should, too. I have it on good authority that you work for him now.”

“So it says on my business card,” Dante replies. “But you can hardly describe what I do as work. My father barely speaks to me, and when he does, it’s to shoot down one of my suggestions. Honestly, I spend most of my day sitting at my desk and shuffling paper from one side to the other.”

“Come now. I’m sure you carve out plenty of time to flirt with the secretaries.”

“Only the ones that remind me of you,” Dante says, giving Anna a look of such acute longing that her breath catches in her throat.

“Regardless of what you do or don’t do for your father,” she manages to say, “it’s obvious he was up to no good back then. How do you think he got his hands on my father’s company? Or this very train?”

“I assumed he was doing your family a favor.”

Anna doesn’t know whether to laugh or be insulted. “A favor?My family lost everything in the process. And lest you forget, our fathers hated each other.”

“They did,” Dante says. “But I always thought that, like all good rivalries, there was some mutual respect involved.”

The comment finally makes up Anna’s mind. Insulted it is. Not to mention enraged.

“If your father had one ounce of respect for mine, he wouldn’t have organized an entire conspiracy to destroy him. Sal, Lapsford, the others, they did the dirty work, but your father was behind it all. You’re forgetting I have proof.”

“About this evidence. What, exactly, is it?”

“Memos, correspondence, more blueprints, even photographs.”

Dante leans forward, the look on his face turning from blithe to troubled. “And you think it’s enough to prove my father organized it?”

“Without a doubt,” Anna says. “The most damning evidence is the financial records. In 1942, your father transferred massive amounts of money to five numbered bank accounts in Switzerland. Care to guess who those accounts belonged to?”

“I think I already know,” Dante says.

“It’s foolproof,” Anna tells him. “I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if it wasn’t. Your father’s going to pay for what he did. All of them will. Their lives are ostensibly over the moment we reach Chicago.”

“That’s another thing I wondered about,” Dante says. “Why Chicago? I mean, I understand the symbolism behind taking the Phoenix. That’s unmissable. But a train to Washington or New York would have been faster—not to mention easier. I knew there had to be another reason. And I’ve finally figured it out. Would you like me to tell you?”

Anna stands and stretches. “By all means, explain my motivations to me.”

“You want to watch us squirm,” Dante says.

“And is it working?”

“Do you see me squirming?”

“No,” Anna says as she starts toward the door, on her way into the dining car. “Fortunately, the night is still young. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see what the others are up to.”

Dante rises from the piano to follow her. “Probably beating down the door to the locomotive at this point.”

“It won’t work.”

Anna walks briskly through the dining car and galley, forcing Dante to scramble to keep pace. In the sleeper car, he says, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. How did you make it so there’d be no other passengers?”

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