It takes me another ten minutes of disbelief and looking for alternative explanations, and then I get to work. I make a list of every person with access to these account structures and start narrowing.
Eight names.
Jimmy appears at seven with my schedule and a coffee I didn't ask for, both delivered without eye contact, both set on the corner of my desk. He knows learned exactly how much space to take up and is gone before I can nod.
The coffee goes cold while I work.
I find two more transactions before the trail goes cold. Money is bleeding out of La Sirena's accounts. Small amounts — fifty, sixty thousand in the last six weeks — disguised as routine expenses, moving through shell companies with enough layers that a casual audit would miss it entirely. Someone who knows how I built these systems, knows how I think, set this up to be invisible to me specifically.
And they're sending money to the Zayas family. Whoever did this isn't just skimming. They're funding the people who want to tear down everything Jorge spent forty years building.
At nine I take the back stairs down to the main floor.
La Sirena in the morning is a different building than La Sirena at midnight. The cleaning crew is finishing the floors, their machines running low under the sound of someone reading the reservation list at the host stand. The bar is being restocked, bottles moved from dolly to shelf in the unhurried rhythm of the day shift. Morning light comes through the Art Deco windows at an angle that catches the dust still settling from last night, golden and specific — the kind of light that makes the glamour look like construction. The club smells like cleaning product and leather and the ghost of last night's smoke.
I move through it without stopping. The floor manager is by the stage, reviewing something on a clipboard. Two servers are near the hostess stand with the reservation list between them. A woman with brown hair, wrong shade, wrong everything, passes me on her way to the back hallway, and my chest does something involuntary, one stupid second of the wrong reaction before I catch it and move on.
Jimmy intercepts me near the bar. Tablet in hand. "Morning briefing's set for eleven. Gunner's already in the security room. And the funeral home called. Jorge's ashes are ready for pickup."
I nod. File each item. Don't look at Jimmy directly, just process the information and continue toward the stairs.
At eleven I take the back stairs up to the security room, which is Gunner's domain and looks like it. Monitors everywhere, no furniture that invites comfort. A man who considers relaxation a security vulnerability.
Gunner is standing when I arrive. He's always standing.
He's a wall of muscle in a black t-shirt, arms straining the fabric, a face that's been broken and healed wrong at least twice. Scar through the left eyebrow, neck tattoos visible above the collar. He's looking at the monitors when I enter and shiftshis attention to me without nodding, without any greeting. Just transfers his focus like he's moving a camera.
The other staff give him wide berth. Not because he's rude. He's not. He's just present in a way that makes people nervous, like standing next to a loaded weapon. You know it probably won't go off. You're aware of it constantly anyway.
I've heard people call him a beast.
"There is a mole bleeding money to the Zayas," I tell him.
Gunner looks at me, and for a moment, the animal behind his eyes beats its chest.
"Who is it?" he asks.
"Eight people have access to the relevant accounts. If we rule out me, Gabriel, and Marisol, that leaves five. I can probably narrow it further, but that's all I've got for now."
"Which five?" he asks.
I pull up the files on his wall monitor. Mid-level employees, each with legitimate access to the relevant accounts, each with a gap in their timeline I can't yet explain.
"So we question them," he says.
His emphasis on the word 'question' makes clear that he is referring to a very physical, very painful round of inquiry.
"Not yet. I want to set traps. Send different information to different people. When the Zayas move on something, I'll know which thread to pull."
Gunner looks at the files. His eyes move slowly, not reading but taking inventory. "Security footage?"
"Pulled. Nothing on camera."
"Phones?"
"Working on it."
He nods once. Looks back at the monitors.
