In the end, Cassandra decided to be a dutiful daughter, after a fashion.
"Tom, go easy on him. My father has a short temper, and the way he talks..."
"More punchable than you?"
"You could put it that way. But he does need something from you, so he probably won't push too far." Cassandra had already resigned herself to the situation. Both of them were difficult. She couldn't manage either one. What was she supposed to do?
She had at least told Tom to go easy. That counted as filial piety, surely.
"I'll let my father know then. When are you free?"
"Tomorrow afternoon. If he can make it, we meet. If he can't, we don't, my schedule this week is packed, and I'm not rearranging it for him."
Cassandra nodded. "I'll ask him."
She pulled out her WhatsApp and sent a message. By the time they left the restaurant and made their way toward Gringotts, a reply had already come through. Tomorrow afternoon was confirmed.
"He said it's fine, he'll be home all afternoon. Where should I pick you up?" Cassandra asked.
Tom thought it over and settled on Gringotts as the meeting point. Gringotts did have access to the Floo Network, though only for outgoing travel, you couldn't enter through it, which was rather the point. If that weren't the case, any would-be robber with Floo powder could simply step directly into the vaults.
...
Meanwhile, in a rundown little house in Flushing.
"Rouse, have you still not made up your mind?"
Solenne stood looking down at her rounded belly, one hand resting gently against it, feeling the quiet rhythm of life beneath her palm. Her expression, however, was anything but gentle as she turned on the man sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Do you want our child born into a life of running? Dodging Graves and his people forever? You want me and the baby hiding in the dark with you, moving every few months? What happens when the child is old enough for school?"
"I need an answer today. Either we leave, or I take the baby back to Caruso and you can keep tangling with them on your own."
Rouse's expression closed over. He said nothing, walked out the door, and lit a cigar, breathing the smoke in and out in long, slow pulls.
He and Solenne had been hiding in New York for nearly half a year. But last month, while out to buy basic supplies, they had been spotted by Graves' people. They'd fought their way clear well enough, but were now sheltering in yet another new location.
Rouse was not a fool. He could see, with considerable clarity, that it was most likely Solenne who had led them there.
She had drawn the hunters to them on purpose. The goal was simple enough: force him out of New York, toward Germany, toward his mother's kin, and through them, to a connection with the Saints.
It wasn't grief that settled in his chest. It was anger. Anger that Solenne didn't seem to care about the child in her belly at all, not really.
He finished the cigar, ground it out, and walked back inside with measured steps.
"We leave tomorrow. Berlin."
The woman's face brightened at once, her eyes going soft in a way they rarely did. "Darling, I knew you'd come around. New York is far too dangerous. And yes, Grindelwald controls Berlin, but your mother's people are Saints by blood too, aren't they?"
"Solenne," Rouse said, his tone perfectly mild with just a hint of curiosity. "You want to join the Saints?"
"Of course not." She shook her head quickly. "I just want to live quietly. No more running and hiding."
Rouse smiled at her, watching as she turned to begin packing.
The warmth behind his eyes cooled, degree by degree, until there was very little left.
Berlin was fine. Once the child was born, there would be no reason to keep the performance going.
...
Gringotts.
After collecting Cassandra's dividend, the two parted ways, Cassandra back home, Tom upstairs, to pay a visit to the goblin Fhamir, the one who had negotiated their original partnership.
"Mr. Riddle. It has been far too long."
Fhamir's smile was considerably warmer than any of their previous meetings. As far as the current Gringotts was concerned, Tom was nothing short of a deity of wealth walking through their doors.
Not because the card payment system was generating enormous transaction fees, but because the sheer convenience of it had made spending easier, and wizards had responded by spending more freely. Every industry Gringotts had invested in was reaping the benefits.
"I'll keep this brief, Fhamir."
Tom settled into a chair amid the goblin's enthusiastic hospitality. "I'm here to upgrade the main system, and to introduce two new types of cards."
"Upgrade?" Fhamir blinked. "The current system is running perfectly. What would necessitate an upgrade?"
"The existing bank cards don't support international transactions. I've made a new breakthrough in communication rune-work, it can link the systems between Gringotts branches across different countries and allow full data exchange. Do you want the upgrade or not?"
"Yes. Absolutely yes." Fhamir's delight was immediate and unrestrained.
Cross-border payments. The utility of the entire system had just climbed to another level entirely.
"And the new cards?"
"Here's how it works."
Tom produced two new cards and placed them on the desk.
The first was a supplementary card, fixed spending limit, designed for family members outside the primary account holder to use.
The second was a credit card.
Even with an empty vault, a cardholder would carry a guaranteed line of credit. Tom, in the end, simply could not help himself, he was bringing the entire architecture of modern finance into the wizarding world.
Pressure drives progress, after all. Without the occasional broomstick loan or mortgage hanging over your head, what exactly would motivate anyone to work hard and advance magical society?
He wasn't going to compete with Gringotts over interest revenue, either. That business was theirs to run, the credit card would function perfectly well without him in that particular picture. What Tom wanted was a processing fee on every single transaction that ran through the system.
Small. Consistent. Infinite in volume.
Word spread through the building quickly, and the goblins who had handled the original negotiations filed one by one into Fhamir's office. The meeting stretched until evening before anything resembling a preliminary agreement began to take shape.
The main obstacle was the goblins themselves. They were extraordinarily reluctant to part with even a fraction of the transaction fee, each concession extracted as though it were costing them a limb. Tom's patience, never his most abundant resource, ran dry. He didn't lower his rate. He raised it.
Tom's greatest leverage was the card payment system itself. The goblins had tasted what it could do, and until they found some viable alternative, they were in no position to make a genuine enemy of him. The negotiation, ultimately, could only end one way.
- - - - - - -
T/N:
Added the 2 missing chapters