Page 17 of The Bratva Enforcer and His Virgin Bride

But fragments are useless without the final pattern tying them together.

And Creed, the man who designed it, knew that.

My gaze drifts toward his file sitting apart from the others. There’s almost little to no information about Creed, since his name was an alias.

He was a financial architect. Pattern specialist. Dead sixteen years. Officially murdered during a home invasion in Moscow. He had no children and no family, so his body was found alone five days after his death.

Unofficially? That version has never made sense to me. I was eighteen when Creed died, so I don’t know all the information, but it never really made much sense.

Creed was paranoid by nature and brilliant by reputation. Men like that don’t die from random theft.

The problem is that every trail connected to him eventually collapses into silence. No surviving partners. No digital archives. No usable records. Almost as if someone systematically erased him after his death.

Since then, we’ve been trying to find someone who knows anything about the code, so we can rectify our financial records and stop losing money.

Ben walks toward the bar near the windows, pouring himself another drink.

“You’ve been staring at that file for three days,” he says.

“Because it keeps repeating.”

That gets his attention.

I tap lightly against the desk.

“The transaction structures tied to the dormant accounts mirror his organizational patterns.”

Ben frowns slightly. “You think he built the final layer.”

“I know he did.”

“You have proof?”

“No.” I pause. “Only patterns.”

Ben studies me for a second before nodding once. He learned years ago not to dismiss my instincts when numbers start repeating themselves in ways they shouldn’t.

Because patterns are rarely accidental.

Especially in systems designed by intelligent men like Creed.

I open another encrypted folder, scanning through recovered correspondence from old Russian financial circles.Most of it is garbage. Recycled names. Dead intermediaries. Meaningless references.

Then one line catches my attention.

Not because of what it says.

Because of who sent it.

Karl Jonathan.

My expression stills.

Ben notices. “What?”

I enlarge the file.

A transfer authorization request from nine years ago. Blocked before completion.