The first contract confirmed that Rusk's company had promoted the exhibition. The second showed that the event's safety plan had been revised twice in the week before the session. The third was an agreement between the gym and Viktor Saye's management, specifying that all demonstration drills would stop immediately on a coach's command.
The incident report recorded that Tomas had called for a halt. The report also stated that witnesses disagreed about whether Saye had heard him.
“That sentence is doing a lot of work,” Elaine said, tapping the page. “It allows the report to acknowledge the stop command without establishing whether it was ignored.”
“Can we prove he heard it?” Mara asked.
“Not from this document.”
The handwritten note was more revealing, though not conclusive. It appeared to be from a staff member to the event coordinator, warning that Saye had been practicing a high-risk variation not included in the approved plan. The note had no signature. A date in the corner placed it two days before Tomas's death.
“Who wrote this?” Mercer asked.
“We don't know,” Elaine said. “The paper is a copy. We would need the original and, ideally, a witness who can authenticate it.”
Mara felt her pulse rise. She had imagined that the truth would arrive as a single decisive fact, a door swinging open onto a room fully lit. Instead, it was a pile of incomplete records, each one offering another question.
“Rusk says she was in the building,” Brielle said. She had been invited to sit in only because Mara had agreed that she could hear the lawyer's summary. “Could she be the author?”
“He could be,” Elaine replied. “So could a dozen other people. We cannot turn possibility into accusation.”
Mara nodded, though frustration tightened her jaw.
Elaine moved to the final page. It was a short memo from the gym's former administrator, dated several weeks after the accident. It referenced a payment made to Saye's management company and described it as a settlement of outstanding promotional expenses. There was no amount visible on the copy.
“Was there a civil settlement?” Mara asked.
“Possibly. This memo doesn't establish that the payment was related to the accident. It could be routine accounting. We need bank records or the original ledger.”
The meeting lasted two hours. By the end, they had no confession, no proof of deliberate wrongdoing, and no reason to believe the old report could simply be overturned. They did have a clearer map of what remained unknown.
Outside the office, Mara stood beneath the academy's sign and watched rain run along the curb. Brielle came to stand several feet away, leaving enough space that she did not have to ask for it.
“I thought I'd feel different,” she said.
“Because you found something?”
“Because I looked. I expected either relief or rage. Instead, I feel tired.”
“Maybe that's what it costs to stop guessing.”
She turned to him. “You have a talent for saying things that sound wise after someone else has done the hard part.”
He smiled faintly. “I'm working on earning my own.”
Mara almost smiled back. Almost. “Don't rush it.”
The following week, Elaine began contacting former staff members from the Rotterdam gym. Some had moved abroad. One had died. Two refused to speak. A retired medic agreed to a telephone interview but remembered only the aftermath, not the drill itself. Every lead narrowed the uncertainty without eliminating it.
Then an email arrived from a former assistant coach named Pavel Orlov. He said he had kept a personal notebook from the event and was willing to meet, but only away from the academy and without Rusk present.
Mara read the message three times.
For the first time in six years, someone who had been there wanted to speak.
Pavel chose a small café near the river, far from the sports district and the hotels where promoters conducted their business. He arrived twenty minutes early and sat with his back to the wall. He was in his sixties, with a thick gray moustache and hands that trembled slightly when he lifted his cup. He recognized Mara immediately but did not reach for her hand.
“You look like Tomas,” he said.
She felt the familiar ache beneath her ribs. “People used to say I looked like our mother.”
“Your brother had her eyes. You have his way of standing.”
Mara sat opposite her. Elaine Park had insisted on attending, and Mercer waited at a nearby table. Brielle had offered to come but Mara had declined. This was not a moment she wanted to share with a man whose involvement in her life was still too new to understand.