They agreed on immediate steps without pretending agreement on every fact. Oliver would request preservation of submission files, contracts, edits, and correspondence. Nia would retain her original records. Adrian would obtain his own advice. Lin and Fang would contact their agent. No one would release the dinner recording as proof of matters it could not establish. A fluent impromptu response showed language competence. It did not, by itself, prove who translated a novel. Nia wrote that distinction in her notebook. She wanted her accusation believed, but not because the room enjoyed seeing a rich man's confidence collapse. The files needed to bear weight the performance could not.
At home, she placed the advance copy on her kitchen table. Her roommate, Dani, arrived an hour later carrying leftover bread and cheese from the staff meal. Nia opened the book at random. Sentences she remembered sat beside revisions she did not. A description of winter light remained entirely hers. A paragraph she had struggled with had been improved. A character's speech sounded flatter than the version she submitted. She felt anger, admiration, and nausea at once. Adrian had worked on the text. He had also left her out. Recognizing the first fact did not make the second disappear. Dani watched her turn pages and wisely asked only whether she wanted food.
Nia retrieved two external drives and an old laptop from beneath her bed. One drive would not mount. Panic rose immediately, unreasonable and physical. Then she remembered the second backup at her mother's house. Her father had driven city buses for thirty years and considered losing a schedule through poor filing a preventable offense. He had taught her to keep copies before anyone called it professional practice. He was gone now, but the habit remained. She checked the other drive, found the folder, and sat down hard enough to make the chair creak. Dates, versions, comments, audio notes. Not every record was complete. Enough existed to begin.
She checked each copy before disconnecting the drives and labeling them separately.
The oldest full draft carried her name in the file properties and in the header. Adrian's comments appeared throughout, thoughtful and sometimes impatient. Later drafts showed changes from both of them. An email proposed credit in the form translated by Nia Bellamy with Adrian Wells. Another discussed equal naming if their roles developed. None authorized sole credit for him. Nia saved untouched copies, recorded the folder structure, and stopped herself from reorganizing everything in a burst of tidiness. Original disorder could contain useful history. She wrote a chronology on a separate page and listed the records supporting each date. By dawn, she had proof of work and a new understanding of how long she had spent explaining its disappearance to herself.
Her phone rang at seven. Her mother had seen a short clip of the wager posted by a guest. The clip ended before the authorship question, leaving a clean story about a waitress's surprise talent. "Did he pay you?" her mother asked. "Not yet." "Did you really translate the book?" Nia looked at the pages spread across her table. "Much of it. I need to establish exactly how much and what happened." Her mother was quiet, then said she would bring the backup after breakfast. Nia wanted to sound composed. Instead, she said, "Please bring food too." It was the most honest sentence she had spoken all night.
Chapter 4
The Work in the Margins
Nia's mother arrived with eggs, rice, and a storage drive wrapped in a clean towel. Patricia Bellamy had worked as a school administrator long enough to distrust any crisis described entirely through adjectives. She asked for dates, ate while Nia explained, and did not once suggest that a hundred thousand dollars solved the problem. The money had not arrived. Even if it did, payment for Miles's wager would not purchase the right to put someone else's name on Nia's work. Patricia unpacked the food and moved the book away from the edge of the table. "We can be angry after you've eaten," she said. "You'll have more stamina."
Professor Helen Wu called that afternoon. She had taught Nia at university after the library classes that first introduced her to Mandarin, and remained her most exacting reader. She recommended an experienced publishing lawyer, Rosa Bennett, and offered to review a small sample within her expertise. She would not announce conclusions about the entire translation before comparing it. Nia thanked her. The initial caution hurt because she wanted immediate, unqualified defense. It also reassured her. Helen had never improved a sentence to protect Nia's feelings. She would not begin improving evidence for that purpose now. They arranged a meeting after Nia slept for several hours.