23. Elena #2
Three years ago, surgery. Public charity board minutes mention that he took a six-week medical leave. I search the dates. Nothing. Not one charge. The fee disappears for forty-one days. It returns two days after he resumes work.
My skin prickles, and I go back five years.
Vacations? Silence.
Return? Fee.
Again, and again and again.
The pattern becomes so clean I no longer need to convince myself. Dimitris Karras has been touching the money.
For years.
I don't know whether he's OB6. I don't know whether he created the network. But he's inside it. I stand so quickly that my chair rolls backward and hits the cabinet.
Adrianos is in his office. I grab the laptop, then stop.
No.
If I'm going to put a seventy-one-year-old Crown banker in front of Adrianos, I'm not bringing excitement.
I'm bringing evidence.
I spend another twenty minutes building the case. Fee schedule. Restructuring documents. Transaction records. Timestamps. OB6 movements. Karras's access. Absence periods. Return dates.
I arrange everything chronologically. Only when the pattern can survive somebody actively trying to destroy it do I pick up the laptop.
Adrianos is on the phone when I enter his office. He looks at me once and ends the call without saying goodbye. Apparently my face has become informative.
"What?"
"I found something."
He gestures to the chair, but I don't sit.
"Do you know Dimitris Karras?"
Adrianos's expression doesn't change, but something behind it does.
"Yes."
"How well?"
"Why?"
"Answer first."
His eyes narrow.
There are very few people in the world who could probably speak to Adrianos this way and retain all their original limbs.
I'm becoming recklessly comfortable with being one of them.
"He's run Asterion's private operations for decades," Adrianos says. "He handled accounts for my father."
"Yours?"
"Some."
"Volkov?"
"Probably."
"Lorenzo?"
"Yes."
"Declan?"
"Yes."
"Santiago?"
"Asterion has serviced Crown business since before any of us controlled our families."
Exactly.
I set the laptop on his desk and turn it toward him.
"I think he's moving OB6 money."
Adrianos doesn't touch the computer.
"Think?"
"I thought you'd enjoy that word."
"I don't."
"I know."
"Proof."
There it is. Not disbelief. Not Are you sure?
Proof.
I show him the obsolete fee. He reads the restructuring documents while I explain what LTP-4 was and why it should have disappeared eleven years ago.
"Yet it didn't," he says.
"Not completely."
I open the transaction list.
"Somebody kept applying it selectively. At first I thought it was theft. It's too small to matter individually, but then I compared the timestamps."
I show him the first match. Then the second. Then the next ten. Adrianos leans forward.
"Seven minutes."
"Every time."
"What does the fee do?"
"Financially? Almost nothing. Operationally? I think it's a marker. The charge identifies the transaction. Seven minutes later, the skim moves."
"Automated?"
"Possibly. Or somebody is monitoring the code. Either way, Asterion is part of the mechanism."
"That doesn't give you Karras."
I almost smile.
"No. This does."
I show him the access records. Then Karras's medical leave. His travel. His vacations. The complete absence of LTP-4 whenever he's gone for significant periods.
Adrianos's expression turns blank as I conclude the oldest verifiable transaction—nine years ago.
Karras authorizes a Crown settlement at 10:31.
LTP-4 is applied at 10:34.
At 10:41, money moves through an entity I now know fed one of the reservoir accounts.
I sit back.
"Nine years," I say. "That's as far as I can prove from the records I have. It could be longer."
Adrianos says nothing. For a moment, I wonder whether he doubts me.
Then he asks, "Could someone be using his credentials?"
"Once? Yes. Repeatedly for nine years, while somehow stopping when he's unavailable and restarting when he returns? Technically possible. Realistically ridiculous."
"Could he be applying the fee without knowing what it triggers?"
"Yes."
That matters, and I make sure he hears it.
"I can prove Karras touches the mechanism. I cannot prove he understands the entire network. He could be the architect, a participant, or someone following instructions."
"But he's involved."
"Yes."
No hesitation now. I have him. Not because somebody confessed. Not because Adrianos threatened the right man. Not because a convenient witness survived long enough to whisper a name.
A fee nobody remembered existed betrayed him eleven years after it should have died. Adrianos looks through the records again, and something dark settles over his features.
I know that look. I've seen versions of it before. This one is worse because there is no anger in it. Only decision.
He closes the laptop.
"Where is his location now?"
The satisfaction disappears from my chest. I understand immediately what that question means.
Not can we speak to him? Not should we investigate further?
Where is he?
I straighten. "Adrianos."
His gaze lifts to mine.
"We need him alive."
"I know."
"For more than five minutes."
His mouth shifts almost imperceptibly.
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
"Karras may be the first person we've found who has direct access to this network. If you terrify him into cardiac arrest because you enjoy making entrances, I will be extremely difficult about it."
"You already are."
"Then imagine worse."
He stands and reaches for his jacket. The movement sends a cold thread through my stomach.
"Where are we going?"
"To ask Mr. Karras about an obsolete processing fee."
I stare at him.
"That's your interrogation opening?"
"No."
"I was going to say it needs work."
He puts on his jacket, fastens one button, and picks up his phone.
"What is your opening?"
Adrianos looks at me, and I immediately regret asking.
"Get your laptop."
I don't move.
"Why?"
"Because you're coming."
That surprises me.
"You want me there?"
"You found him."
Something warm and inconvenient tries to move through my chest. I kill it immediately, naming it professional validation. Nothing more.
"Then I'm asking the questions."
"No."
"Adrianos."
"You can ask some."
"I have the evidence."
"And I have Karras."
"That's precisely what concerns me."
For the first time since I entered the office, the darkness in his expression eases.
Barely.
"Compromise," he says.
I narrow my eyes. "You're learning."
"Don't make me regret it."
I grab my laptop.
By the time we reach the elevator, two security men are already waiting. Adrianos must have sent the order while I was arguing with him, which is irritatingly efficient.
The doors open.
I step inside beside him with nine years of blood money sitting on the computer beneath my arm.
Somewhere in Athens, Dimitris Karras is probably having an ordinary afternoon. Perhaps he's drinking coffee. Signing documents. Moving money. Living inside the safety of a reputation built over decades.
He has no idea that four hundredths of one percent just betrayed him.
And we're coming to get him.