Voss read the private ledger without saying a word.
To Liora, that silence was already an answer.
A man determined to dismiss something rarely bothered reading it carefully.
Voss had spent barely two minutes on the official inventory before setting it aside. Then he returned to the first page of her private ledger.
He read it once.
Then again until he was certain he didn't miss anything important.
Now he was studying the acquisition dates for a third time.
His finger traced the intervals between purchases exactly as it did when he checked shipping manifests for calculation errors.
Slow, methodical, and patient.
Eventually, he spoke. "Forty-three items."
"Forty-three confirmed," Liora replied. "There are more artifacts in the collection that I haven't examined closely enough."
She kept her voice calm.
"I wanted to bring you only what I could verify before the transfer made further inspection difficult."
