Chapter 62 Marco
Marco
Miller selling tells me something important.
Not who’s weak.
But how they’re breaking people.
I sit in the bank office again, spreadsheets open across the desk, following the transaction chain backward.
One shell company.
Then another.
Then another.
Like Russian nesting dolls built out of paperwork.
Northstar.
Silver Pine.
Greyfield.
Each one just legitimate enough to pass casual inspection.
Then I find the mechanism.
Insurance delays.
Supplier freezes.
Credit line suspensions.
Municipal appeals.
All of it coordinated.
All of it timed.
All of it legal enough to survive scrutiny.
I lean back in the chair.
“Good,” I murmur to the empty office.
“Now you’re predictable.”
Because patterns are how you kill operations like this.
I open another file.
Another purchase.
Another stalled permit.
Another pressure point.
The playbook repeats itself every time.
Different victims.
Same weapons.
I grab my phone and call Saint.
He answers on the first ring.
“They’re using the same leverage points every time,” I say.
Silence on the line for a moment.
“And?” he asks.
“And that means we can prove it.”
Another pause.
“And then what?”
I stare at the screen.
At the web of pressure tightening around Eagle River.
“Then we stop this from being a town problem,” I say.
“And turn it into a federal one.”