Page 129

Elena glances at him. "Where?"

"Three slides."

She does.

Volkov rises and approaches the screen. His attention fixes on a cluster of transfers routed through a Bratva-linked investment structure.

"Open those."

Elena enlarges the transactions, and I watch Volkov's face change.

"You recognize something."

He doesn't answer immediately. His eyes move over dates, transfer codes and destination accounts before settling on one particular transaction.

"I've seen two of these channels before."

Elena turns toward him. "Where?"

"During the investigation into Evelina's father."

The room changes again.

I lean forward. "You thought they belonged to him."

"I thought they were part of his betrayal."

"Could they have been?"

"Some of them, yes." Volkov points toward the screen. "But this one never made sense. The money entered one of our legitimate structures, disappeared through two intermediaries, and reappeared somewhere it shouldn't have. At the time, I assumed her father was hiding something I hadn't uncovered."

Elena moves closer to the screen. "Give me the date."

Volkov does.

Her fingers fly over the keyboard. She searches the records, brings up another transaction, and compares the underlying identifiers. Then she finds a third. Volkov swears under his breath.

"What?" Lorenzo asks.

Elena enlarges the metadata. "They're generation four. These transactions used the same architecture Kalliopi identified years later."

Volkov looks at me. "Then whatever happened with Evelina's father wasn't isolated."

"No," I say. "It wasn't."

Elena turns back toward the table. "That's what we've been missing. Every time something happened, we treated it as a problem belonging to whichever family it touched. Kalliopi's murder belonged to Adrianos. The betrayal involving Evelina's father belonged to Volkov. The heir murders belonged to the families affected. The missing money looked like theft. Petros looked like another casualty. Financially, they overlap."

Santiago leans back in his chair. "Convenient."

I turn toward him. "What is?"

"That we're suddenly being told every problem we've had for decades belongs to one invisible conspiracy."

Elena doesn't react. "I'm showing you financial evidence, not asking you to believe in ghosts."

"Transactions can be manipulated."

"Of course."