Chapter 27
AXEL
Someone in my house is a rat.
The thought has been sitting in my skull since Viktor confirmed it this morning, and I can't shake it.
Can't think around it. Can't fucking do anything except sit at this conference table, stare at Senator Harold Vance's oily smile, and try not to put my fist through his face while the betrayal eats me alive from the inside.
"The Northeastern district is mine," Vance is saying, spreading his hands like he's conducting a symphony. "Twenty-two years in office. My people love me. And with the right financial backing for this campaign, I can guarantee your organization favorable treatment for—"
"For how long?" I ask.
He blinks. "Excuse me?"
"How long does favorable treatment last? A year? Two? Until someone offers you a better deal?" I lean back with a shit-eating grin. "Put a number on it, Senator. I like specifics."
He laughs. "That's not really how political relationships work, Axel—"
My smile vanishes. "Mr. Santego."
The laugh dies.
"We don't know each other well enough for first names," I continue. "Remember that."
Viktor is standing behind my left shoulder. Sergei's at the door. I've already clocked Vance's three security men. Jacket too stiff on the left side. Fucking Amateurs. I feel insulted.
This meeting should be straightforward. A politician needing money laundered through PAC shells. I require legislative protection and a law enforcement contact who'll look the other way when my shipments pass through the port. Standard arrangement. I've done it a dozen times.
But I have no patience for it today.
Who the hell is leaking information from my organization?
"R-Right. Mr. Santego." Vance smooths his jacket. "The arrangement I'm proposing is mutually beneficial. I need campaign funds moved through legitimate channels. You need—"
"I know what I need. The question is whether you can deliver." I look at him evenly. "Tell me about the port contract."
Vance shifts. "That's a sensitive—"
"Senator." I pick up my pen, turn it once in my fingers. "I know what a man looks like when he's negotiating leverage he doesn't actually have."
His smile doesn't disappear. That's what makes him dangerous in his way — the kind of man who smiles right through the moment he should flinch. "The port contract exists. My committee oversees the licensing renewals. But I'd be stupid to put it on the table before we discuss what I actually need."
"Which isn't campaign financing at all." I set the pen down. "Is it?”
Silence.
"There's a federal investigation," Vance says finally. "Into my financial office. I need it to stop."
Ahh. There it is.
Viktor exhales behind me.
"You need a federal investigation buried," I say. "And you came to me with a port contract you may or may not control. As leverage."
Is he fucking joking with me?
"As an offer—"
"As leverage." I stand, and Vance leans back immediately. "The port contract you're offering was awarded to a competitor last Tuesday." I let that land. "Which means you walked in here with nothing."
His aide makes a sound. I don't look at him.
Vance has gone completely still.
"So here's what happens next." I keep my voice even, almost pleasant.
"You leave this building and say nothing about this meeting to anyone.
Not your aide, not your wife, not your priest." I pause.
"If you do, the SEC analyst working your case gets everything she needs to finish what she started.
Every shell you've built. Every favor you've traded.
All of it on a desk at the fucking DOJ." Another pause.
"Not because I'm angry. Just because you wasted my afternoon. "
"You can't—"
"Viktor will see you out."
Vance stares at me. Running calculations. Looking for an angle.
He doesn't find one.
He stands, adjusts his jacket, and walks out. His men file after him. The aide scrambles last, throwing one backward glance I don't bother returning.
The door closes.
"Well," Sergei says.
"Don't even start."
"Wasn't going to say anything."
"You were going to say something about diplomacy."
"I was going to say that went better than the last politician." He grins, gold teeth catching the light.
I'm already moving.
Viktor spreads the files across my office desk an hour later. Printed transaction records. Entry logs. Access timestamps.
"Six months," he says. "Two hundred thousand out, same account, every month. Always authorized from inside the estate network."
"Always from inside, or made to look like it?"
"That's the question." He drops into the chair across from me, looking as strung out as I feel. "Aurora's still working the routing trail. After Zurich it fractures into four accounts. She'll get there, it'll just take time."
I nod. Think about Aurora at her laptop, pulling apart financial architecture that would stump most professionals. She found this in a day. Damned sexy female.
Focus.
"Who has authorization-level access to the transfer system?"
Viktor ticks off fingers. "You. Me. Sergei for smaller accounts, nothing over fifty thousand. A few senior staff with limited clearance." He pauses. "Forty-three people in total who've had access to this building in the last six months."
"One of them is selling me."
I move to the window. The grounds look normal. Green lawns, stone paths, my men on their rounds. All of it orderly. All of it possibly compromised.
"The attack two nights ago," I say. "Whoever planned it knew the estate layout. The blind spots in the sensor coverage. Which wing Aurora was in." I turn back. "That's current intelligence, not blueprints. Someone is feeding them real-time updates."
"Which means they're still active." Viktor's jaw tightens. "Still watching."
Who the fuck is playing this kind of long game?
The Volkovs are obvious but wrong. They're brute force, they throw men at problems, they don't run six-month patience operations. The mysterious caller surfaces in my memory instead. Measured. Educated. Almost amused.
"Pull everyone's financials," I say. "All forty-three. Quietly. I don't want whoever this is to know we're looking." I look at Viktor. "And review the security footage from the week before the attack. Every camera."
"That's hundreds of hours."
"Then start now." I hold his eyes. "Nobody knows we're investigating except you, me, Sergei, and Aurora. Not even Alexei. Not until we know where the leak is."
Viktor nods, gathers the papers, and leaves.
I stand in the empty office and stare at the files spread across my desk like a map of everything I can't see yet.
Think. Start somewhere.
I think. I get nowhere. Every thread I pull leads back to the same answer: I don't know enough yet. Someone is patient and careful and already three steps ahead, and I am running blind in my own house.
I need to find this person. The thought is absolute. And when I do, God help them.
I look out of the window. The afternoon light is starting to fade.
Viktor is somewhere reviewing footage. Sergei is coordinating perimeter checks.
Everything that can be done tonight is being done, and I still feel useless, like I'm standing in the middle of a burning building trying to find the match.
I need—
I know what I need.
I leave the office.
She's at the desk in the corner of my room, not her suite; she barely uses her suite anymore. Laptop open, a cup of tea gone cold at her elbow, dark hair pinned up with one curl escaping down the side of her neck. She doesn't hear me come in.
I stand in the doorway and watch her for a moment. The way her pen moves when she makes notes. The tilt of her head when something doesn't compute.
"Have you eaten?" I ask as I walk in.
She jumps. "Oh my goodness! Don't do that."
"I’m sorry. You know I walk quietly." I say with a very unapologetic grin.
"Still creepy." She swivels, and her eyes look me over. "How was the meeting?"
"He came with nothing and tried to hide it." I cross to the desk and glance at her screen. Numbers. Account structures. A web she's been building all day. "Sent him home."
"Gently?"
"Gently enough," I grunt.
She gives me the look that means she knows exactly what that phrase costs in my vocabulary. "And the investigation?"
"Nowhere yet." I sit on the edge of the bed facing her. "I just know the mole's probably been in place longer than six months."
She goes still. Thinks. "How much longer?"
"Can’t say."
"Hmmm." She pulls up a tab. "I found something else this afternoon. Three small transfers, under ten thousand each. Different amounts, not part of the monthly pattern. But they all happen within forty-eight hours of a major security event."
I look at the dates. Cross-reference in my head.
The Volkov attack. The warehouse fire. The club.
"Bonus payments," I say.
"Performance payments." She looks at me. "Whoever the mole is, they're not just leaking. They're getting rewarded for results."
The cold thing in my chest hardens into something specific. Not fear. Fury.
"Close it," I say.
She closes the laptop without arguing. Stands, moves to where I'm sitting, and puts her hands on either side of my face. Tilts it up to look at her.
"You need sleep," she whispers m. "Viktor is working. The footage is being reviewed. Everything that can be done tonight is being done."
"The mole is still in this building."
"I know. And we'll find them." Her thumbs trace my jaw once. "But not by staring at spreadsheets until three in the morning."
I reach up and cover her hands with mine. Hold them there and just breathe.
There it is. The thing I came up here looking for.
Peace. Contentment.
Outside, the estate is quiet. My men are on their rounds. The investigation is moving even as we sit here doing nothing.
Someone in this building is a traitor.
I don't know who.
But I will find them.
And when I do, I think, looking at Aurora's face, at this woman I have somehow managed to fall completely and irreversibly in love with, God fucking help them.