Fools.
The table is silent. I can feel their eyes on me—Niko’s impatient, Kazimir’s flat and cold, Igor’s rheumy but calculating. Mikhael hovers at my shoulder, waiting, as he always does, for my word. They all know what I am to this family. Not the soldier, not the enforcer, not the street muscle. I’m the surgeon with a scalpel, the one who sees through the blood and dirt to the arteries that keep us alive.
Ten years in London taught me the difference between crude laundering and real finance. While they broke bones in alleyways, I was turning millions of black money into portfolios, trusts, and shell companies clean enough to pass through European banks without a second glance. I built pathways so smooth even auditors couldn’t trace them.
And now, someone’s bleeding us dry through those same arteries.
I drop the page onto the table and lean back. “This isn’t random. Whoever’s behind this knows our routes. They’ve slipped into Marino’s channels like a parasite, siphoning piece by piece. Clever enough to bury it under Greek shells and Luxembourg trusts, but lazy enough to leave fingerprints.”
I tap the Hamburg transfer, the flaw that caught my eye. “Here. Outdated routing code. It doesn’t match the new systems I set up. That means whoever’s skimming doesn’t have direct access to me. Which means Marino is either complicit—or being used.”
The silence grows heavier. They’re waiting for the verdict, the strategy, the kill order. I returned to take this rotten system and drag it into the twenty-first century, to make it untouchable. Uprooting thieves and greedy bastards is an important step.
My eyes snag on a page that doesn’t belong. The ink is faded, the handwriting old-world neat, not the sterile spreadsheets I’m used to. Igor must’ve dragged this out of some basement vault.
I smooth the paper flat. A debt agreement. Dated fifteen years ago.
Vassilis Marino borrowed five million from the Rusnaks to cover a shipping disaster that nearly gutted his fleet. Standard enough—except it was never repaid.
I skim the terms once, twice. Then the words stop me cold.
Collateral.
In the event of death or failure to pay, Marino’s debt would be covered not only by tangible assets—ships, properties, accounts—but also by family.
My pulse ticks hard as I trace the line again. A name written with almost casual finality:
S. Marino.
For a moment, the room fades. The voices, the stale cigar smoke, even the weight of everyone watching me. All I see is that single initial, that surname, that possibility.
It can’t be.
But the numbers, the ink, the damn signature—they don’t lie.
Hold on.
I flip back through the file, searching for anything that proves I’ve misread, that “S. Marino” isn’t what I think it is. My fingers still on a thin, half-crumpled photograph tucked between brittle pages.
The pier is unmistakably Greek—blue sea, whitewashed railings, sunlight like glass. And there she is. Younger, hair longer, smile wide. Sasha. Her arm looped through a woman’s I can only assume is her mother.
My blood spikes hot in my veins.
It doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t make sense. A girl—her—used as collateral in the twenty-first century? Ridiculous. Absurd.
Except it isn’t. Not here. Not in this world. The Rusnaks don’t discard old-world arrangements. A debt is a debt, and when it carries the family’s name, it’s honored—no matter how brutal the terms.
“Lev?” Niko’s voice cuts in. “You okay?”
I lift my head, school my face into something flat, neutral. I nod once. My hand, though, is still locked tight around the photograph, crumpling its edge.
I force myself to keep reading, scanning the margin notes until the truth slams into me.
Vassilis Marino has been dead for years.
And Sasha’s mother—she told me herself—gone when Sasha was eighteen. Cancer.
Which leaves one name. One asset.
