Page 18 of The Bratva Enforcer and His Virgin Bride

Karl Jonathan’s name appears only once in the entire archive.

One appearance shouldn’t matter.

Except men like Karl don’t accidentally brush against dormant Rusnak infrastructure.

They survive by staying several layers removed from anything dangerous.

Which means if his name surfaced here, it was intentional.

Ben walks closer. “You know him?”

“I knowofhim.”

Karl Jonathan operates in the kind of spaces built entirely on leverage. Information brokerage. Asset manipulation. Quiet political arrangements between men who prefer never appearing publicly connected.

He’s patient. Calculated. And famously difficult to trace directly to anything illegal despite decades of suspicious proximity to organized power.

My eyes narrow slightly at the screen.

Interesting.

Veryinteresting.

I pull up another set of records immediately.

Then another.

Ben watches silently now, recognizing the shift in the room.

Because this—this feels different.

For the first time in months, the pattern is moving instead of circling itself.

A slow realization settles into place inside my mind.

Karl Jonathan didn’t stumble upon the dormant accounts. He was searching for them, which means he knows something.

I turn slightly toward Ben.

“Find a way to contact him,” I say. “I need to meet him. He knows something.”

Ben nods once and walks back toward his desk without wasting time on unnecessary questions. That’s another reason he’s lasted this long beside me. He understands momentum. When a lead finally appears after months of dead ends, you move before it disappears again.

His keyboard clicks quietly behind me as he starts working.

I lean back in my chair and rotate slowly toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan.

Rain streaks against the glass in thin silver lines.

Below, the city continues moving without pause.

Crowded sidewalks.

Headlights cutting through wet streets.

People rushing somewhere they believe matters.

New York never really sleeps. It simply changes pace.