Page 109 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

I slide his stack back toward him with two fingers. “You always say that when I can read.”

Maksim’s mouth barely moves. Almost a smile. Almost. Leonid opens his case. The sound is small. Everyone hears it.

Sergei’s eyes cut to him. “What is this?”

“Paperwork,” I say. “You enjoy it.”

Leonid places another folder in front of me, thinner than Sergei’s stack, no ribbon, no polished cover, just pages arranged by people who expected a fight.

Moretti leans forward. “What is she doing?”

Mancini bends toward Moretti. “This wasn’t disclosed.”

Moretti doesn’t answer. His eyes stay on Leonid’s folder.

Karpov pushes off the wall. “Maksim.”

Maksim doesn’t look away from me. “Let her work.”

That gives me the door. I open the first page and sign the revocation, my hand steady now that the choice is made. “This removes the authority my father buried under the old nominee chain.”

Sergei stands. “That filing is dead.”

“No.” I turn the page. “Dormant. Not dead.”

His forehead furrows.

I sign the second page. “This pulls signing rights from the placeholders tied to Yaroslavl storage and the warehouse group.”

Moretti looks at Sergei. “You said she couldn’t do that.”

“She can’t,” Sergei snaps.

I lift the third page and angle it toward him. “Because of Section Nine?”

His eyes narrow.

I read it wrong on purpose. “Section Nine says emergency authority requires the original holder’s consent before any registrar release.”

“Section Eleven,” he corrects at once. “And only if the fallback entity hasn’t accepted the continuity acknowledgment first.”

Everyone goes still. Leonid’s fingers move over the trackpad behind me.

Maksim’s hand comes down flat on the table.

Mancini closes his eyes for half a second and presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose.

I look at my father. “Thank you.”

Sergei’s face changes. There it is, the slip—the last live sequence.

Leonid turns the laptop slightly toward Maksim. “Confirmed.”

The Morettis start talking at once. Karpov steps closer to his side of the wall, and one of his men near the wall shifts his weight. I keep going.

The next page is the warehouse acknowledgment. The boring one. The ugly little hinge everyone ignored because Sergei trained them to look for hidden doors, not filed ones.

I sign.