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“No.”

“Someone has been building this.”

Adrianos looks at me. “For how long?”

I search farther back until I find the earliest transaction Kalliopi successfully identified.

More than two decades.

I stare at the date.

“At least twenty years.”

That number changes everything.

Twenty years is enough time to study five criminal empires from the inside. Enough time to place people where they become useful. Enough time to learn how money moves, which institutions are trusted, which weaknesses survive from one generation of leadership to the next.

Generation one siphons small amounts. Generation two introduces shell companies. Generation three crosses jurisdictions. Generation four penetrates infrastructure connected to every Crown family and accumulates hundreds of millions without anyone noticing.

This isn't improvisation. It's evolution. And suddenly I understand what Kalliopi found. She wasn't killed because she discovered missing money. Money can be replaced. Accounts can be closed. Trails can be buried.

She discovered history.

She discovered that whatever is happening now began long before the current murders.

My vision blurs.

I blink hard and see Kalliopi hunched over a desk in my memory, making those ridiculous little notations because she knew someone might eventually find them. Maybe she hoped that someone would be me.

My chest tightens until breathing hurts.

Without thinking, I reach sideways. Adrianos's hand closes around mine immediately. No question. No hesitation. His fingers thread through mine, warm and solid, and I stare at our joined hands as grief presses against the back of my throat.

Weeks ago, I would have made a joke. I would have said something about the terrifying Crown king providing emotional support during an accountant's nervous breakdown over Roman numerals.

I don't have one now.

I lean toward him until my shoulder rests against his, and Adrianos stays exactly where he is. He doesn't tell me not to cry. Doesn't tell me we'll avenge her. Doesn't fill the silence with promises neither of us can guarantee.

He simply holds my hand.

“What did she find?” he asks after a while.

“The beginning.”

My voice barely sounds like mine.

I look at the screen again. “Maybe not the actual beginning. But enough of it. She realized the network had generations because it kept changing. Someone learned from every version, improved it, expanded it.”

“Someone inside.”

“They'd have to understand Crown infrastructure intimately. Not just now. Across leadership changes. Across families. Across decades.”

Adrianos's thumb moves slowly across my knuckles.

I pull the timeline onto the main screen. The current murders sit at one end. Kalliopi and Petros are there. The stolen money. The attacks. Farther back are Nikos and Adrianos's parents, surrounded by financial movements I still cannot explain.

And at the opposite end sits the earliest decrypted record.