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Tiny streams from unrelated entities move through respectable intermediaries and then begin converging, not into one account because that would be stupid, but into clusters. Five accounts in one bank. Three in another. Four under a trust administrator. Different jurisdictions. Different currencies.
Same timing.
I pull the public announcement of Petros's death onto the corner of my screen.
8:17 a.m.
Then I check the first sweep again.
4:11 p.m. yesterday.
For several seconds, I simply stare.
Petros was alive then. Or, at the very least, nobody outside OB6 should have known he wasn't going to stay that way. The money started moving before his death became public. Before police reports. Before headlines. Before anybody who wasn't involved should have known Petros was burned.
My hands go cold. They didn't react to his murder. They prepared for it.
"Jesus."
"Not usually what women call me after leaving my bed, but I'll take it."
I jump hard enough to slam my knee against the underside of the desk. Pain shoots up my thigh, and I twist around to find Adrianos leaning against the doorway.
He's barefoot, wearing only dark trousers, his hair slightly disordered in a way I resent because men like him should at least have the decency to look terrible at two thirty in the morning.
"What the hell?"
"You left."
"Yes. Humans do that. We have joints. And they aid movement."
"I noticed."
"You were asleep."
"I was."
"Then this conversation is deeply concerning because either you've learned to argue unconscious, or you're no longer asleep."
His eyes move from me to the screens, and the amusement disappears. "What did you find?"
I hate that about him. One second he's being irritating for sport, and the next every part of him is awake.
"Maybe something."
"That means something."
"It means maybe."
"With you, maybe is practically a confession."
I point toward the chair opposite me. "Sit down and don't radiate."
"I still don't know what that means."
"It means you stand behind me being enormous and ominous until my frontal lobe files a workplace grievance."
He comes into the room anyway. Naturally. He ignores the chair and stops beside me.