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Ivan nodded. “We’ve already started.”
“Nikolai, look into every fight contact connected to Dmitry’s alias.”
A slow smile spread across Nikolai’s face. There was no humor in it. “Gladly.”
“Aleksei, find out how the ammunition shipment moved through Europe without reaching Bellandi intelligence or ours.”
“I’ll speak to the port contacts myself,” Aleksei replied.
Then Maxim looked at me. “You coordinate with the Bellandis.”
“Alessia stays with me,” I rushed to say.
Alessia turned her head toward me. “I’m sitting right here.”
“I know. My townhouse remains the safest controlled location.”
Maxim looked around the table, meeting the eyes of each brother in turn. He didn’t give a speech, but he didn’t need one. Ivan worked on his computer. Aleksei began typing names into his phone. Nikolai stared at Dmitry’s photograph with the patient concentration of a man deciding exactly how much pain one body could inflict on another.
The Morozovs moved as we always had.
Together.
And together, we would finish whatever this was.
CHAPTER 9
Sergei
We hadn’t yet left the table when Kit said, “I know who is behind the Veles Maritime company.”
Every head in the room turned toward her.
Kit sat beside Ivan with the laptop open between them, its pale light reflected in her glasses. She had been quiet for the last several minutes, which was rarely a sign that nothing was happening. Her fingers stopped moving over the keys, and she enlarged the photograph of a man none of us recognized.
He was in his late fifties, perhaps early sixties, with thinning gray hair, rimless glasses, and a face so ordinary that it had probably kept him alive for decades. He wore a dark overcoat and carried a leather briefcase as he stepped from the rear entrance of an office building.
“This is Viktor Sokolov,” Kit said. “Mikhail Orlov’s financial architect.”
Alessia remained beside me, close enough that the sleeve of her sweater brushed my arm when she leaned toward the screen.
“What does financial architect mean?” Alessia asked.
“He built the places where Mikhail hid his money,” Ivan answered. “Shell companies. Private trusts. Accounts owned by other accounts until no living person appeared responsible for any of it.”
“In other words,” Kit added, “he made criminal money look as though it belonged to no one.”
Alessia looked at the photograph again. “So, he brought Veles Maritime back?”
“Veles Maritime is the shell company,” Kit said. “Veles is the payment system behind it. Sokolov’s key is what moves the money.”
She pulled a second image onto the screen. It showed a black object no larger than a man’s thumb, with no markings except a narrow silver strip along one side.
“Every transaction gets a different signature, but the hidden fingerprint ties them back to the same access,” she continued. “Without the key—or a clone—the money cannot move.”
“So, whoever revived Veles has Sokolov’s access,” Maxim said.
“Yes.”
