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“You asked.”

“What does that look like?”

“Roman numerals.”

“Obviously.”

“Then why ask me?”

“Because you're supposed to see something I don't.”

He studies the page again, and I feel the heat of him beside me. “Rank, perhaps. Account categories. Families.”

“I've tested all three.”

“Transaction type?”

“No.”

“Sequence?”

I pause. “Sequence of what?”

“That,” he says, leaning back, “is your job.”

I glare at him, but his hand settles briefly against the back of my neck. His thumb presses into the tight muscle there once before he lets me go. The touch is casual, almost absentminded, which somehow makes it more intimate than if he'd kissed me.

I collect every page containing Roman numerals and arrange them chronologically. The theory collapses almost immediately because IV appears before II in several places. I rearrange by company, then country, then Crown family. Nothing holds.

Two hours disappear.

By noon, I have constructed three theories and personally murdered all of them. The first assumes Kalliopi grouped accounts by jurisdiction. It falls apart when identical symbols appear in Athens and Moscow. The second assumes transaction purpose, which dies when shipping insurance and property settlements carry the same notation. The third survives almost forty minutes before Adrianos points out that one company I classified as Italian was Irish-controlled during the year in question.

I stare at him across the table. “I preferred you when you just threatened people.”

“No, you didn't.”

“I did. You were less disruptive.”

“You liked me last night.”

“I was temporarily impaired.”

His gaze darkens with amusement. “Repeatedly.”

Heat crawls up my neck. “I am trying to solve a conspiracy.”

“I haven't stopped you.”

“Your existence is currently sufficient.”

That earns me another almost-smile before he turns back to the documents.

I stare at Kalliopi's notes again, refusing to let myself be distracted. There has to be a reason she repeated those marks. I take the oldest file we successfully decrypted yesterday and compare its structure with the newer OB6 records. The encryption isn't identical. That shouldn't be surprising. Security systems change. Software improves. People adapt.

My fingers stop over the keyboard. People adapt, but systems evolve.

I pull up three files from different periods and place them side by side. The newest uses the architecture we've already been studying. The middle file uses a more primitive version, but the routing logic underneath it is almost identical. The oldest barely resembles either of them, except for one recurring structural feature buried inside the metadata.