Epilogue
Adrianos
Two Weeks Later
There are three coffee cups in my study. None of them belong to me.
I stand in the doorway and stare at the nearest one, abandoned beside a stack of financial reports that also do not belong there.
A second cup sits dangerously close to a side table that cost more than Elena's first apartment, while the third appears to have been forgotten beside one of the three monitors now occupying the desk where there used to be one.
Two weeks ago, this room was orderly. Two weeks ago, my entire penthouse was orderly.
Now there are files on a chair because Elena apparently believes chairs are horizontal filing cabinets.
Her shoes are beneath the console table despite my repeatedly pointing out that we have closets.
A charger stretches across the kitchen counter like a trip wire, and someone has placed sticky notes on the edge of a seventeenth-century cabinet.
I remove one.
CALL LORENZO'S ACCOUNTANT.
I stare at it. Then put it back.
"Absolutely not."
Elena's voice carries from the room across the hall. I walk toward it.
"I don't care if you've been processing the accounts that way for fifteen years. You've been doing it incorrectly for fifteen years."
I stop outside the door.
She's sitting at a desk with a headset on, glaring at two monitors filled with financial data. Her hair is twisted into something that probably started the morning as a bun but has surrendered several strands around her face.
She doesn't notice me.
"No, that wasn't a compliment." A pause. "Because six separate companies should not be paying the same consulting fee to an entity without employees. Yes, I'm aware of who owns it. That's why I'm asking."
I lean against the doorframe. For years, I paid an obscene amount of money for silence.
After Nikos died, noise became unbearable. After my parents, it became worse. Silence asked nothing of me. It didn't remind me that people had once laughed in rooms that were now empty. It didn't leave belongings behind or create routines that could disappear without warning.
So I bought enough space that silence became unavoidable. Then Elena moved in.
She hasn't been here fourteen days, and somehow my penthouse sounds alive. I didn't know how much I'd missed that.
"Fine," she says into the headset. "Send me the original statements, not the summaries somebody prepared because they apparently believe I'm easily distracted by attractive formatting."
She ends the call and finally notices me.
"How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to feel sympathy for Lorenzo's accountant."
"He'll survive."
"Will he?"
She gives me a flat look. "Unlike some people, I don't kill everyone who annoys me."
"I don't kill everyone."
"Comforting."
I enter and glance at the screens. "Anything?"
The humor disappears.
Elena shakes her head. "Nothing conclusive. We found another two companies linked to the old network, but both stopped moving money months ago. Whoever controlled them cleared the accounts before Karras died."
OB6.
Two weeks of investigation has given us thousands of additional transactions, seventeen shell companies, several compromised businesses, and enough evidence to confirm that the network touched every branch of the Crown.
What we still don't have is the person behind it.
Or the purpose of the money already deployed.
Once, that uncertainty would have consumed me. I would have put more men on it, demanded answers that didn't exist yet, and punished someone because action feels better than waiting.
Now I have Elena.
I've discovered that waiting becomes marginally less intolerable when the person beside you can threaten an accountant over a consulting fee.
"You're staring at me," she says.
"I'm thinking."
"That generally worries me."
I reach over and close the file she's reading. She immediately opens it again. I close it.
Her eyes narrow. "Adrianos."
"Lunch."
"I'm working."
"It's three."
She looks at the corner of her screen. Her expression changes. I enjoy that more than I should.
"That's impossible."
"It's a clock, Elena. It has limited opportunities for deception."
"I ate."
"When?"
She looks suspiciously toward the empty coffee cup beside her.
"Coffee isn't food."
"It contains calories."
"So does whiskey. I'm not serving you a bottle for dinner."
"Depends on the whiskey."
I close the file again, but this time I take her hand before she can reopen it.
"Come."
"I need another twenty minutes."
"You said that an hour ago."
"How do you know?"
"Because unlike you, I understand clocks."
She mutters something insulting under her breath but lets me pull her from the chair. That is when I see she's barefoot.
I look down. "Where are your shoes?"
Elena looks down too, as though surprised to discover they aren't attached to her feet.
"Somewhere."
"Where?"
"If I knew, they wouldn't be somewhere."
I close my eyes briefly. The woman can reconstruct twenty years of criminal financial activity from microscopic processing fees but cannot locate her own shoes.
"You left one in the kitchen this morning."
"Excellent. We're halfway there."
I look at her. She smiles. And there it is. The thing I still haven't learned how to prepare for.
Happiness.
Not the violent relief of surviving something. Not lust or possession or the temporary satisfaction of defeating an enemy.
Something smaller.
A barefoot woman standing in my study after ruining its organization. I pull her toward me. She gives a surprised laugh when she hits my chest.
"What was that for?"
"Nothing."
"Suspicious."
I kiss her forehead. Her hands settle against my waist. The moment is ordinary. That's why it matters.
We eat lunch on the terrace.
Elena steals food from my plate despite having the same food on hers, then denies it while chewing the evidence. I decide not to argue because apparently love involves tolerating crimes I would punish severely in other people.
My phone vibrates beside my hand.
Elena glances at it. "If that's Evander, tell him you're eating."
"Why?"
"Because yesterday he called during dinner."
"He had information."
"He had a license plate."
"It was relevant."
"It belonged to a florist."
"It could have been a criminal florist."
She stares at me. I pick up the phone before she can explain why that's ridiculous. The message isn't from Evander. It's from Declan.
I haven't heard from him directly since the Crown meeting. Lorenzo has spoken to him, but whatever dragged Declan out of that room has kept him occupied. He hasn't volunteered an explanation, and none of us has pushed hard enough to force one.
Yet.
There is no text at first. Only a photograph of airport surveillance. I enlarge it. It’s a woman walking through arrivals with a suitcase dragging behind her. Dark hair. Composed expression. Nothing in the image explains why Declan sent it to me.
"Who is that?" Elena asks.
“I'm not sure; her face isn't clear in the photo because it's grainy.”
I scroll down. There are two words beneath the photograph.
Maeve Gallagher.
The name pulls something loose from memory.
Gallagher.
Then I remember his face at the Crown meeting. The way every trace of control disappeared when he read that message.
Ghosts should stay buried.
Elena leans closer. "You recognize the name."
"Yes."
"Friend?"
"No."
"Enemy?"
"I'm not sure."
She takes the phone from me and studies the photograph. "That's an alarmingly vague answer from a man who usually classifies people within thirty seconds."
I take the phone back.
"Maeve Gallagher disappeared seven years ago."
"Disappeared how?"
"I don't know the entire story."
Her eyebrows rise.
"You don't?"
"Contrary to what you've apparently concluded, I don't know everything."
"This relationship becomes more disappointing by the day."
I ignore that and study the photograph again. Maeve Gallagher looks ordinary enough walking through the terminal.
But Declan's reaction wasn't ordinary.
Men like us collect enemies. We learn to recognize threats before they reach the door. We understand revenge because we've delivered enough of it ourselves.
What unsettles men like Declan isn't an enemy returning. It's history returning with unfinished business.
Elena watches my face. "Who is she?"
I look again at the woman who has just returned to New York after seven years away.
"Trouble."
Elena reaches for her coffee.
"Should I get my laptop?"
I take the cup from her hand and replace it with water.
"No."
Her expression becomes offended.
"We're finishing lunch."
"You're becoming domesticated."
"Don't insult me."
She smiles and steals another piece of food from my plate.
I let her.
Tomorrow, OB6 will still be waiting. The Crown will still be fractured. Somewhere, hundreds of millions of dollars are financing a war none of us fully understands.
But tonight Elena will leave files where they don't belong. She'll lose another shoe. She'll argue with me about security and drink coffee long after she should have stopped.
And I'll have all the noise I once thought I never wanted again.
My phone remains on the table between us, Maeve Gallagher's photograph still glowing on the screen.
Seven years after disappearing, the Irish king's ghost has returned.
Maeve Gallagher has come home, and Declan’s life is about to be turned inside out.
The End.