"You found the paper trail," Stephen said, stepping up beside me again. He looked at the list of settlements, the column of wasted talent and silenced voices.
"Vance doesn't traffic people," I said flatly, the realization solidifying into something hard and cold in my chest. "He’s too smart for that. Trafficking is messy. It involves police and borders."
I pointed at the screen.
"He just makes sure they can never work again if they say no. He cuts their tendons with contracts. Same result. Completely legal."
I looked up at Stephen.
"That's the genius of it," I said. "He builds a prison out of their own signatures."
Stephen’s eyes gleamed behind his glasses. He reached out, his hand covering mine where it rested on the table. "And?"
"And that," I said, turning my hand to grip his fingers, "is also where we destroy him."
"How?" Mateo asked, stepping into the light.
"We don't sue him for the settlements," I said, my mind racing, connecting the dots I had missed before. "We sue him for anti-competitive behaviour. This isn't just abuse; it's a monopoly on labor. He's created a cartel that systematically removes talent from the market to artificially inflate the value of his compliant assets."
Stephen inhaled sharply. "Antitrust."
"Exactly," I said. "Settlements are private. NDAs are private. But market manipulation? That’s public. That regulates."
I looked back at the screen, at Illyana's name.
"He thought he was burying a witness," I whispered. "But he just handed me a pattern of racketeering conduct."
I pulled the keyboard closer.
"Stephen," I said. "Get the draft ready. We're adding a new plaintiff class."
"Who?"
"Everyone," I said. "Everyone he ever erased."
EIGHTEEN
Mateo
The rain in Surrey was different from the rain in London. In the city, rain was just another layer of grime, tasting of diesel and wet concrete. Here, in the manicured silence of the suburbs, it tasted of wet grass and judgement.
I sat in the rental sedan, unmarked, generic, invisible, three houses down from the address Rowan had tried so hard to scrub from the internet. My engine was off. Just the rhythmicthweep-thweepof the wipers marking time.
It was 11:00 PM. The street was asleep.
Except for the grey four-door sedan parked directly across from number 42.
The occupant hadn't moved in two hours. He was professional enough to keep his engine off to avoid the exhaust plume, but amateur enough to light a cigarette every forty-five minutes, the cherry glowing like a beacon in the dark cabin.
Vance was getting desperate. He wasn't sending scouts to capture content anymore. He was sending threats.
I didn't need a background check to know what was in the glove box. I could smell the intent from here, a sour, metallic spike that cut through the damp air.
I checked my phone. The extraction team was four minutes out. A private ambulance service, fully vetted. It was the cleanest way to move a civilian without causing a scene. Neighbors don't ask questions when they see a stretcher; they just close their curtains and feel relieved it’s not them.
But the sedan was a variable.
I opened the car door. The air was cold.
