A Kiss Under a False Name - She Believed in Him Before She Learned His Real Name - Laura Bellini

INTRO - A Kiss Under a False Name - She Believed in Him Before She Learned His Real Name.INTROAt 11:17 p.m., every light in the cinema went out. They did not dim or flicker in warning. They simply vanished, taking with them the hum of the ventilation fans, the buzz of the transformers, and the low murmur of the city slipping through a half-closed service door. I was left alone in the middle of the old auditorium, between rows of seats covered in plastic, with a laptop in one hand and a laser measure in the other. "Perfect," I said into the darkness. No one answered, which was the only courteous thing that had happened to me all day. Luna Cinema was supposed to reopen in six weeks. Over the past seventeen years, the building had served, in order, as a furniture warehouse, an illegal rehearsal space, the site of three failed redevelopment projects, and a home to a pigeon population whose numbers no sensible person had ever attempted to establish. Now a private foundation had bought the property, secured funding from the city, and hired me to restore what the contract described as "the character of the original interior while accommodating contemporary functional requirements." I called it trying to persuade an old cinema not to collapse on people during its first screening. I was an interior architect specializing in historic buildings. I was thirty-two, ran my own studio, and had enough experience to know that when the electrical system stopped working a week before the first-stage inspection, panic was not the appropriate response. So I panicked professionally. I put down the laser measure, pulled out my phone, and switched on the flashlight. A white circle of light swept across the burgundy curtain, half of which had already been restored while the other half still looked as though it had survived a fire, a divorce, and several decades of indoor smoking. I was about to call the site manager when something knocked somewhere behind the stage. I froze. "Mr. Paweł?" Silence. Paweł had left more than an hour ago. Everyone had. I had been the one encouraging them to go, assuring them I would stay for only twenty minutes, take the final measurements, and lock up. That had been fifty-three minutes ago. I heard another sound. Clearer this time. Footsteps. I raised my phone higher. "Hello?" "If you're planning to hit me with that phone, I should warn you it looks expensive." The voice came from the left side of the stage. A moment later, a man stepped into the beam of light. First I saw a hand raised in surrender, then a dark jacket and a face I most definitely had not expected to see inside an abandoned cinema just before midnight. He looked maybe thirty-five, thirty-six. Dark hair, several days' worth of stubble, and that irritating kind of calm particular to people whom the world rarely forced to explain why they were somewhere they had no business being. "Who are you?" "The man you just nearly blinded." I lowered the phone a few inches. "That wasn't an answer." He smiled faintly. "Marek Domański. I'm doing photographic documentation for the foundation." The name meant nothing to me. "You're not on the list of people authorized to enter the building." "Because I was only supposed to be here for half an hour." "Any burglar could say that." "A burglar probably wouldn't spend twenty minutes sitting in a technical room trying to get your electricity back on." I looked at him more carefully. "You tried?" "With moderate success." As if to prove his point, a single emergency light came on somewhere above us. Its greenish glow was so bleak that the cinema instantly began to look like the set of a cheap horror movie. Marek glanced up. "There. We have atmosphere. All we need now are violins and the heroine making the unwise decision to go down into the basement." "I don't go into basements with strange men." "Good." "Especially strange men who aren't on the access list." His smile disappeared for a moment. Briefly. Almost imperceptibly. "A sensible rule." Something about that answer made me study him again. He did not look like a photographer. Of course there was no official way a photographer was supposed to look, but a white shirt showed beneath his jacket, and his shoes were far too good for someone who had planned on spending the night walking around a dusty construction site. "Where's your camera?" He indicated the backpack slung over one shoulder. "In there." "Can I see your ID badge?" "I don't have one." "Identification?" This time he was silent a fraction too long. "It's in the car." "Of course it is." I started toward the exit, passing him while keeping my distance. "Where are you going?" "To lock up and call security." "The front doors are held by an electromagnetic lock." I turned. "How do you know?" Something changed in his face again. "I checked." I did not believe him. I did not yet know why. Maybe because he answered too quickly. Maybe because when he said electromagnetic lock, his gaze automatically shifted toward the side corridor leading to a service exit that did not appear on the newer plans supplied to outside contractors. I only knew about it because three weeks earlier I had found the old door myself, hidden behind a sheet of fiberboard. "There's another exit," I said. "I know." The words escaped before he could stop them. We stared at each other for several seconds. "The foundation's photographer has an impressive knowledge of the building." "I like knowing where the exits are." "I like knowing who I'm locked in the dark with." This time, he did not smile. "And rightly so." The phone in his pocket vibrated. He took it out, glanced at the screen, and immediately declined the call. For one second, I saw only the contact name. Wysocki Law Firm. There was nothing especially strange about it. People had lawyers. Photographers could have lawyers too. Still, I remembered the name. "Come on," he said. "I'll show you the service exit." "I know where it is." He raised an eyebrow. "Then you can show me." I should have called security. I should have stayed by the entrance until someone arrived. Above all, I should not have walked through the dark corridors of the cinema with a stranger. I did. Not because I trusted him. Not yet. A few minutes later, when the side door refused to budge, Marek crouched beside the old mechanism and wordlessly handed me his phone so I could hold the light for him. He did it so naturally, as though he considered it obvious that there was nothing he needed to hide from me. A message notification flashed across the screen. I did not read it. I only saw the first words. "Mr. Aleksander..." The screen went dark. I looked at him. "Marek?" He lifted his head. For a fraction of a second, I had the feeling I had made a mistake. Not about the name. About the man. "Yes?" I handed him the phone. "Nothing." The door opened a moment later. Outside, rain was falling, the street gleamed with the lights of passing cars, and the cold October air smelled of wet asphalt. I stopped beneath the narrow awning. Marek stayed beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his shoulder, but he did not touch me. "I'll walk you to your car," he said. "You don't have to." "I know." I looked at him. "Then why are you offering?" "Because I'd like an excuse to spend another three minutes with you." For the first time that night, I had no quick answer. He smiled, but this time there was no confidence in it. More of a question. And that was exactly why I let him walk with me. I did not yet know that Marek Domański did not exist. I also did not know that when I let him kiss me a few days later, the man standing in front of me would already have had plenty of chances to tell me the truth. The worst part was not going to be that he had given me a false name. The worst part was going to be discovering why he needed my trust before he dared to give me his real one.

Chapter 1 - The Man Who Wasn't on the List - A Kiss Under a False Name - She Believed in Him Before She Learned His Real Name.Chapter 1 - The Man Who Wasn't on the ListThe next morning, for the first three minutes after waking up, I was convinced the man from the cinema had been a dream. Then I saw his number saved in my phone as "Marek - Luna." I sat up in bed and stared at the screen for a while, as though the mere existence of the contact constituted evidence in some case I still could not name. He had given me his number in the parking lot. He said the foundation might need additional photographs before the old screen was dismantled and that it would be useful to have a direct way to reach me, since apparently we both worked at hours when normal people were asleep. He had dictated his surname. Domański. Not Aleksander. I had not asked about the message I had seen on his phone. He had not asked whether I had noticed it. At seven forty-five, I walked into the studio with coffee in one hand and rolled-up printouts in the other. My business partner, Natalia, was already sitting at the conference table. She wore a thick green sweater, her hair pinned up with a pencil, and the expression of someone who had just discovered that other people were, once again, the greatest threat to a well-run project. "The electrician isn't answering," she said instead of good morning. "Good morning to you too." "Paweł says last night's outage wasn't on his end." I took off my coat. "Of course it wasn't. Whose was it?" "He doesn't know, but definitely not his." I sat across from her and unrolled the plans. "The emergency lighting worked. We managed to open the side door manually too. Before nine, I want a full diagnostic of the switchboard and the stage circuit. Until that's done, I'm not letting them close the walls in the technical corridor." Natalia pushed her laptop aside. "'We managed'?" I became very interested in my coffee. "What?" "You said we. In your message, you said you were alone." "I was. Then the foundation's photographer appeared." "At midnight?" "Before midnight." "Ah. Well, that makes it sound completely normal." I looked at her over the rim of my cup. "His name is Marek Domański. Apparently he's doing documentation for the foundation." "Apparently?" That was the irritating thing about Natalia. She never needed the whole story. Two badly chosen words were enough. "He didn't have a badge." "ID?" "In his car." "Camera?" "He had a backpack." Natalia leaned back in her chair. "Lena." "I know." "No, I don't think you do, judging by the tone you're using." I was thirty-two, had been running my own business for six years, and for most of that time had successfully avoided having to explain strange men to anyone. Unfortunately, Natalia had known me since university and considered herself exempt from those rules. "Nothing happened." "That isn't an answer to the question I haven't asked yet." "Then don't ask it." She smiled. "Good-looking?" I pushed one of the plans toward her. "We have a problem with the ventilation shaft here." "Very good-looking." "I didn't say that." "You didn't have to." My phone vibrated beside my hand. The name we had just been discussing appeared on the screen. Marek - Luna. I did not turn it over fast enough to stop Natalia from seeing it. "Construction photography has clearly raised its customer service standards." "Shut up." I opened the message. "I don't know whether texting before your first coffee is allowed. You left your technical pencil by the door last night. I have it. Also: don't turn the stage circuit back on until someone checks the cable beneath the old projection booth. The insulation looks bad." I read it twice. My first thought was professional. My second was considerably less sensible. "What?" Natalia asked. I handed her the phone. After reading the message, she stopped smiling. "How does a photographer know what the insulation on a cable under the projection booth looks like?" "I'd like to know that too." "And how does he know where the cable is?" That was an even better question. I called Paweł. He answered on the fifth ring. "Hey, Lena." "Don't power up the stage circuit today." "I already told you the outage wasn't-" "Paweł." He fell silent. "Why?" "Check the cable beneath the old projection booth. The entire run." "Did somebody find something?" I looked at Marek's message. "Possibly." "Who?" "Check it first." I hung up and typed a reply. "How do you know about the cable?" His answer came almost immediately. "Because I was there yesterday." "Do you photograph cables?" Three dots appeared, disappeared, then returned. "Sometimes I photograph things no one else notices." I did not like that answer. I liked the man who had written it even less sensibly. I put my phone in my bag. "I have a meeting with the foundation at ten," I said. "I'll ask about him." "Good." Natalia watched me for a moment. "And?" "And what?" "What if they say they don't have any photographer named Marek Domański?" That was an option I preferred not to consider yet. "Then I call the police." "And if they say they do?" I stood and reached for the plans. "Then I stop behaving like the heroine in a cheap horror movie." "So you won't go into a basement with him." "That is not part of the plan." "Not at this time of day, anyway." I gave her the middle finger and left. The Nowy Kadr Foundation occupied three rooms on the second floor of a restored tenement building on Piotrkowska Street. The first time I went there, I had expected an institution that smelled of archives, dust, and coffee from a thermos. Instead, I found glass, pale wood, and a reception area that looked more suited to an investment firm than an organization devoted to saving old cinemas. The foundation's president, Dorota Krajewska, was waiting for me in the conference room. She was in her fifties, had short silver hair, and a habit of looking at people as though every minute of every conversation needed to justify its own existence. There was also a man at the table whom I did not know. "Lena Bielska, our lead architect," Dorota introduced me. "And this is Tomasz Rudzki, ownership adviser." We shook hands. Adviser to what? I wanted to ask. Instead, I took a seat. "Let's start with the outage," Dorota said. For the next twenty minutes, we discussed the schedule. Paweł had already sent a message saying that the cable beneath the projection booth did, in fact, need replacing. The insulation had partially melted in two places, probably much earlier. If they had run it under full load without checking, we could have lost considerably more than a day. Dorota wrote something in her notebook. "Who noticed it?" "The photographer who was there last night." She looked up. "What photographer?" Natalia would have been fully entitled to say I told you so, though fortunately she was not in the room. "Marek Domański. He said he was doing documentation for the foundation." Dorota frowned. Tomasz Rudzki, on the other hand, did not move an inch. Which was exactly why I looked at him. "We haven't hired anyone by that name," Dorota said. The room went very quiet. "Maybe he works for an outside contractor?" "Our photographic documentation is handled by Marta Bieńkowska. She is a sixty-one-year-old woman, and she has been in Portugal since the beginning of the month." "I see." I saw absolutely nothing. Dorota reached for her phone. "Where did you meet him?" "In the building." "How did he get in?" "He claimed he had access." "And he was alone with you?" Her tone shifted just enough for irritation to overtake concern. "I managed." "I'm not questioning that. I'm asking whether an unauthorized person entered Luna after hours." "It looks that way." Tomasz spoke for the first time in several minutes. "Did he say anything else?" The question came too quickly. I looked at him. "About what?" "The foundation. The project. What he was looking for." "He said he was taking photographs." "And you believed him?" I disliked people who suddenly became formal exactly when they wanted courtesy to sound like an accusation. "No. That's why I'm asking about him now." Dorota raised a hand. "Tomasz." "I only want to know whether he took anything." "I didn't see him take anything." "Did he photograph documents?" "I don't know." "Was he in the projection booth?" The question stopped me for a moment. "Probably." Rudzki swore under his breath. Dorota looked at him. "What is in the booth that he shouldn't have seen?" "Nothing." "Then why are you reacting as though there's a safe in there?" Rudzki pushed back his chair. "Old technical documentation. Some of it hasn't been catalogued yet. We have obligations under the grant agreement." It sounded reasonable enough to be unconvincing. "The documentation is locked in storage," I said. "The booth was empty apart from the old projectors and the electrical cabinet." Rudzki looked at me as though I had just told him something he very much did not want to know. "Was the cabinet opened?" "Not by me." Dorota ended the subject with a cold instruction to change all access codes immediately and send security the man's name and description. I should have felt relieved that the matter was being taken seriously. I did not. As I was leaving, I heard Rudzki behind me. "Ms. Bielska." I turned. Dorota remained in the conference room. Rudzki followed me into the corridor. "If that man contacts you again, please do not give him access to anything." "I wasn't planning to send him the keys to the archives." "I'm serious." "So am I." He lowered his voice. "The building has a complicated ownership history. There are people who have an interest in seeing the current project fail." "What people?" "That is not your problem." I smiled without amusement. "If someone enters a construction site at night where I'm responsible for the project, it becomes at least partly my problem." "Then focus on the project." He walked away before I could answer. I hated conversations like that. Not because someone was trying to put me in my place. I was used to that. I hated them because people often revealed more while trying to say nothing than they did when they actually answered questions. Rudzki had just told me two things. First, he already knew someone might be interested in Luna. Second, he was much more afraid of it than Dorota was. Outside the tenement building, I called Marek. He answered on the second ring. "Good morning." "The foundation doesn't know you." Silence on the other end. He did not pretend to be surprised. That was worse than any possible answer. "Lena..." "How do you know my name?" Another silence. "It was on the information board at the construction entrance." True. My studio's name and my surname were displayed there. "And where am I supposed to find your real surname?" "Domański is my real surname." He lied calmly. It was remarkable how different a lie sounded once you already knew you were hearing one. Yesterday, I had found his composure attractive. Now I could hear the places where he carefully stepped around certain words. "You said you worked for the foundation." "I said I was doing documentation for it." "Don't make an idiot out of me." "I'm not." "Then why are you choosing your sentences so carefully that technically you never say anything I can later catch you on?" This time he did not answer immediately. "You're right." That agreement threw me more than another excuse would have. "Who are you?" "I can't tell you everything yet." I laughed once. "Great. Then I can tell you everything you need to know. Don't enter Luna again. The access codes are being changed. If you try to go in without permission, security will call the police." "I understand." "And don't call me." "I understand." I should have hung up. I did not. "How did you know about the cable?" "I checked the installation." "Why?" "Because a few months ago, I saw a report about the building. It mentioned overloads in the booth circuit. Last night I smelled overheated insulation." That was the first concrete answer he had given me. "What report?" "A technical one." "For whom?" "Lena." "There. Again." I heard him exhale. "I don't want to lie to you any more than I already have." "That is an impressively low bar." "I know." "Then stop." "I can't answer everything yet." "Then we have nothing to talk about." I ended the call. For five seconds, I stood motionless on the pavement. Then my phone vibrated. It was not a message from Marek. Paweł. "You need to come over. We found something behind the wall in the booth." Twenty minutes later, I was back at Luna. The construction site was full of the particular kind of chaos that looked like complete loss of control to outsiders and like an ordinary working day to us. Drills. A radio. Several crews talking at once. Plastic sheeting rustling beneath our shoes. Paweł was waiting for me at the entrance to the projection booth. "He was right about the cable," he said. "I know." "Who the hell was he?" "It's complicated." "So you don't know." "Exactly." We went inside. One of the walls had been partially dismantled. Behind a panel that, according to the documentation, was merely secondary construction added in the nineties, they had uncovered a section of older brickwork. There was a small metal door in the middle. Square. Covered in rust. "What is that?" I asked. "I was hoping you'd tell me." I moved my fingers over the surface without touching it. It did not appear on any plan I had seen. "Did you open it?" "No. I figured we'd had enough surprises after last night." Fair enough. We took photographs, marked the location, and I called the conservation officer overseeing the project. We were to wait until he arrived the following day before opening it. As I was leaving the booth, I noticed something white on the windowsill. A small photographic catalog card. I picked it up. One side bore the logo of a printing company. On the other, someone had written several numbers and a date. 17.04.2008. Beneath the date were two initials. A.W. I stared at them longer than I should have. "Is this yours?" I asked Paweł. He shook his head. "Never seen it before." I turned the card over again. At the bottom was a small, almost completely worn-away imprint. Wysocki Development. The name from Marek's phone came back to me immediately. Wysocki Law Firm. And now Wysocki Development. Coincidence was possible. But since last night, I had been developing considerably less patience for coincidences. I slid the card into a transparent sleeve in my folder, then looked at the metal door set into the old wall. I did not know what Marek had been looking for. For the first time, though, it occurred to me that perhaps he had found something before I ever met him.

Chapter 2 - The Old Photograph - A Kiss Under a False Name - She Believed in Him Before She Learned His Real Name.Chapter 2 - The Old PhotographAt eleven the following morning, there were five people in the projection booth, and every one of us had a different opinion about whether the little metal door should be opened. The municipal conservation officer wanted everything documented before any intervention. Paweł wanted to open it immediately. The foundation's representative, Tomasz Rudzki, wanted to wall it back up and behaved as though only basic standards of decency were preventing him from doing it with his own hands. I mainly wanted to know why Rudzki had arrived twenty minutes after my call to Dorota, when only the day before he had insisted that technical details of the project were not his responsibility. The fifth person was the photographer documenting the discovery for the conservation office. A real photographer this time. His name was Krzysztof. He had an ID badge, two cameras, and absolutely no interest in electrical cables. "I see no reason to treat this as a historic element," Rudzki said. "It's an ordinary box." The conservation officer, Mr. Bogucki, adjusted his glasses. "Since we don't know what it is, it's rather difficult to establish what it isn't." "We have a schedule." "Historic buildings have an unfortunate habit of not reading schedules." I almost smiled. Rudzki did not. "Ms. Bielska, how much delay will stopping work here cause?" "If we're talking about this wall alone, none. The crew can move to the foyer." "Excellent. Then let's leave it and come back in a few weeks." Bogucki stared at him in genuine amazement. "I think you misunderstood me. We document it, and we open it today." Rudzki's jaw tightened. That was enough for me to stop pretending my suspicions were merely the product of too little sleep. Krzysztof took a series of photographs. Bogucki examined the mounting. The metal door probably belonged to a small technical recess or an old wall safe. The lock was simple and badly corroded. After more photographs had been taken, Paweł received permission to drill it out. Rudzki stepped into the corridor to make a phone call. I did the same. I had absolutely no intention of contacting Marek. So I sent him a message. "What does the date 17.04.2008 mean?" I stared at the screen and felt ridiculous for several seconds. He might not answer. He might ask where I had found the date. He might lie again. He replied a minute later. "Where did you get it?" "You first." Five minutes of silence. Then: "Don't discuss it with Rudzki." A rush of anger went through me so clean and sharp that it was almost calming. "I'm standing next to him right now." My phone rang. I waited until the third ring before answering. "What did you find?" he asked without a greeting. "So suddenly you're allowed to ask questions?" "Lena, please." For the first time, I heard tension in his voice. None of yesterday's composure. None of the irony. "Why is the date important?" "Tell me where you saw it." "Why?" "Because if it was on a document or photograph found inside the building, I need to know." "You don't need anything." "You're right. I should have said I very much want to know." "You still haven't answered." He was silent for a moment. "On April seventeenth, 2008, a document concerning the property was signed." "What document?" "An agreement that should never have been signed." I walked farther down the corridor. "Between whom?" "Not over the phone." I laughed without humor. "Of course." "Meet me." "No." "Lena." "Yesterday you gave me false information. Today the foundation has no idea who you are, Rudzki is behaving like a man who would happily bury half this building, and suddenly you know the date from a card we found here. I'm not going anywhere to meet you until you at least tell me why I should trust you." Silence on the other end. "You shouldn't trust me," he finally said. That was not the answer I had expected. "You're really good at persuading people." "I don't want to persuade you of something I haven't earned." I closed my eyes. That was the problem with Marek. Even when he said something that should have pushed me away, he said it in a way that made me want to hear his next sentence. "Then why should I meet you?" "Because Rudzki knows more than he's told you. And you've just found something he's clearly afraid of." I looked through the open door of the booth. Rudzki stood beside the metal recess with his arms crossed. "What time?" Marek gave me the name of a café near Plac Wolności. "In an hour." "Public place." "Deliberately." "And bring identification." "What kind?" "The kind with your real name on it." He did not answer. I hung up. When I returned to the booth, the lock had already been drilled out. The metal door opened with a groan. Inside were two thin folders, a metal film canister, and an envelope wrapped in transparent plastic. Everything was covered in a layer of dry dust, but the inside of the recess itself was surprisingly clean. Rudzki stepped forward. "That belongs to the foundation." Bogucki immediately blocked his path. "For the moment, this is material discovered during work on a listed property. No one touches anything until it has been documented." Krzysztof photographed the contents inch by inch. I stood beside him and stared at the envelope. A name had been written on the front in blue ink. JAN WYSOCKI. Rudzki saw it at the same moment. The color drained from his face. "You know that name?" I asked. He looked at me. "Of course. Wysocki Development once owned part of the shares in this property." "When?" "A long time ago." "In 2008?" For a moment he did not answer. "How do you know that date?" This time, I was the one who remained silent. Bogucki turned the envelope over. It was sealed. "We'll open this at the office once the report has been completed." Rudzki took another step. "There's no need. If it's addressed to Jan Wysocki, it should be given to his heirs." "If we confirm that it is private correspondence," Bogucki replied. "At this point, we don't even know who placed it here." "I can contact the family." "No need." The voice came from the doorway. I turned. Marek stood at the entrance to the booth. For the first second, the only thing I thought was that he had no right to be there. During the second, I noticed what he was wearing. A dark overcoat. A navy suit. A white shirt. No photographer's backpack. No attempt to look like a man who had come to document construction work. Rudzki stared at him as though he had just seen someone step out of a grave. "What are you doing here?" Marek did not look at him. He looked at the envelope. At the name. Jan Wysocki. "You know the family?" Bogucki asked. Marek raised his eyes. "Yes." Rudzki stepped toward him. "Aleksander, can we speak outside?" The entire world narrowed to one word. Aleksander. Not Marek. Not the message I had glimpsed by accident. Not my suspicion. A name spoken by a man who clearly had known him for a long time. Marek-Aleksander-closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. Then he looked at me. He did not pretend I had not heard. That, at least, was something. "No," he said to Rudzki. "We'll talk here." "This isn't the place." "This is exactly the place." Bogucki looked from one man to the other. "Would someone care to explain what is going on?" The man I had known as Marek stepped into the room. "My name is Aleksander Wysocki." I did not look at anyone but him. "I'm Jan Wysocki's son." Rudzki swore. I felt as though every small detail from the past several hours was shifting inside my head and arranging itself into a new pattern. Wysocki Law Firm. The message: Mr. Aleksander. The card bearing the Wysocki Development logo. His knowledge of the building. Rudzki asking what he had been looking for. Except the new pattern did not make anything clearer. "And Marek Domański?" I asked. Aleksander looked directly into my eyes. "Doesn't exist." The sentence hurt more than it had any right to. We were strangers. We had spent perhaps half an hour together. He had made me no promises. I had not had time to entrust him with anything. And yet the night before, I had let him walk me to my car. I had saved his number. That morning, I had smiled at his message for a few seconds. At a man who did not exist. "Fantastic," I said. "Lena..." "No." Bogucki raised a hand. "Mr. Wysocki, if the envelope may concern your family, that is even more reason for us to secure it according to procedure. Please do not attempt to take it." "I have no intention of doing so." Rudzki gave him a hard look. "You have no rights here." Aleksander turned toward him. "That remains to be seen." "The foundation acquired the property legally." "I'm not talking about the current acquisition." Silence fell inside the booth. Rudzki went even paler. "Be careful." "About what?" "What you say." Aleksander smiled without the slightest trace of amusement. "For eighteen years, everyone has been very careful about what they say. That is exactly why we're standing here." Bogucki sighed. "Gentlemen, if you have a legal dispute, please do not resolve it in front of me, because I'll be forced to start taking considerably more detailed notes." Paweł coughed, pretending he was not hiding a smile. I was still looking at Aleksander. "You knew about this recess?" "I suspected there was something here." "Is that why you came yesterday?" "Yes." One word. Finally, a simple answer. "And you needed a photographer cover story to get inside?" "I needed to enter without alerting Rudzki." "So you lied to me." "Yes." Rudzki looked at me. "Ms. Bielska, I suggest you have no further conversations with him without a representative of the foundation present." "Tomasz," Aleksander said calmly. "Stop giving her orders." "I don't need your help," I said. Both of them fell silent. That gave me far more satisfaction than it should have. Bogucki decided that the entire contents of the recess would be packed, sealed, and transported to the municipal office. Every document would be catalogued. Aleksander could later submit a formal request for access if he established a legal interest. Rudzki left first. Paweł followed him. When I was left by the door alone with Aleksander, he looked as though he wanted to come closer. He did not. "We were supposed to meet in an hour," I said. "I know." "And then you would have shown me identification?" He reached into the inside pocket of his coat. He took out his wallet, removed his ID card, and held it out to me. I did not want to take it. I took it. Aleksander Jan Wysocki. Thirty-six years old. The photograph was his. So was the surname. I handed the card back. "Congratulations. You exist." "A small step forward." "Don't joke with me." He put the ID away. "Okay." "Why the false name?" For a moment, he looked at the metal door the conservation officer was now closing. "For many years, my father co-owned a company that held shares in Luna and two neighboring properties. In 2008, those shares were transferred to another company. Officially, it all happened with his consent." "Unofficially?" "Before he died, my father claimed he had not signed one of the documents." "Claimed?" "He was seriously ill. There were periods when he remembered everything, and periods when he didn't know what day it was." For the first time, it did not sound like a prepared explanation. Something appeared in his expression that I had not seen before. Not sadness exactly. More like the shame of a man still wondering whether he had the right to believe someone he could no longer question. "Why didn't you take it to court?" "I did. There was no evidence." "And the date?" "April seventeenth is the date the annex was signed, the one that transferred part of the rights to a company later controlled by people connected to Rudzki." "And the foundation?" "It bought the building years later. I'm not claiming Dorota did anything illegal." "But Rudzki?" Aleksander hesitated. "He was the lawyer on the original transaction." That explained Rudzki's reaction. It did not explain Aleksander. "Then why hide your surname from me?" "Because if I'd walked in as Aleksander Wysocki, I wouldn't have made it past reception." "I didn't ask why you lied to security." He looked at me. "I'm asking why you lied to me." That was the harder question. I knew it from his face before he answered. "At first, because I didn't know who you were or whom you trusted." "And later?" He said nothing. "Exactly," I said. I started toward the exit. "Lena." I turned. "Later, I should have told you." "But you didn't." "No." "Why?" He looked at the floor, then back at me. "Because for the first time in a very long time, I was talking to someone who looked at me without knowing who I was, how much money I had, what my father had done, or what they might want from me. And I was selfish. I wanted to stay Marek for a little longer." I had not expected that answer. It would have been easier to dismiss if it had sounded cleverer. "Marek doesn't exist," I reminded him. "I know." "So whatever you liked about last night happened because I didn't get to choose whether I wanted to talk to Aleksander Wysocki." He accepted that without defending himself. "You're right." "Stop telling me I'm right." "Okay." I almost laughed. Almost. I turned away again. "There's something else," he said. I stopped. "What?" "You didn't happen to find an old photographic catalog card, did you?" I did not move. "Why are you asking?" "Because my father's papers mentioned catalog cards used during Luna's inventory. They had the Wysocki Development logo and handwritten dates." "I found one." His expression immediately became serious. "Do you have it?" "Yes." "Can I see it?" "No." He did not object. "I understand." I took out my phone. "I can show you a photograph." I had taken one that morning at the studio. I opened the image and held the screen toward him, keeping the phone in my hand. He stared for several seconds. "A.W.," he said quietly. "You know who that is?" He did not answer immediately. His face changed completely. "Aleksander?" He looked up. "My mother." That was not what I had expected. "What was her name?" "Anna Wysocka." I looked at the initials again. "Did she work on this project?" "Not officially." "What does that mean?" "It means we've just found the first evidence that she was inside this building on the day the document my father later claimed was forged was signed." I felt a chill even though the corridor was warm. "Is she alive?" "No. She died three weeks after that date." I said nothing. There was no drama in his voice. That made the information land even harder. "An accident?" I asked. "Yes." "And you think it was connected?" "I don't know." The answer came too quickly. "It was almost nineteen years ago. I'm not going to turn this into a crime story just because I don't understand something. I want to know why she was here and what was hidden inside that wall." For the first time since we met, he said something I believed without reservation. I did not trust him. But I believed that was what he wanted. I started toward the stairs. This time, he walked beside me, keeping several steps between us. At the exit, I stopped. "If you enter Luna again without official permission, I'll report it." "I understand." "If I ask you something and you don't want to answer, say you won't answer. Don't lie." "Okay." "And we are not on the same side." "I never assumed we were." I looked at him. "Really?" "I hope we will be. That isn't the same thing." Outside, the rain had stopped. Light reflected off the wet pavement, and pale fragments of autumn sun appeared in the windows of the nearby tenement buildings. Aleksander stopped by the door. "You still don't want to have coffee with me?" "I was going to have coffee with Marek." "And with Aleksander?" I studied him. "I only just met Aleksander." He nodded. He did not try to stop me. I had walked several yards when I heard him behind me. "Lena." I turned. "Your pencil." He pulled my black technical pencil from his pocket, the one I had lost on the first night. He came only close enough to hand it to me. Our fingers touched for a brief moment. This time, there was nothing accidental about it, even though neither of us prolonged the contact. "Thanks," I said. "You're welcome." I walked on. It was only when I reached my car that I realized I was gripping the pencil far too tightly. Marek Domański truly did not exist. The problem was that Aleksander Wysocki turned out to be considerably harder to ignore.