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The accounts reacted to Petros's exposure by consolidating funds, which means they already existed before he became a liability. That makes the fifty-seven million a snapshot, not a total. One photograph of a machine that has been running while nobody was looking.

So I stop following Petros, and follow the destinations instead.

I can trace seven accounts with reasonable confidence, scattered across four institutions and three jurisdictions. On paper, they belong to businesses so aggressively boring I suspect somebody selected the names specifically to discourage curiosity.

A commercial property trust. An import-financing company. Two investment vehicles. A pension advisory firm with no pension clients I can identify. A company registered to provide agricultural equipment despite having never purchased anything more rural than printer paper.

I start with the property trust.

Money entered eight months ago through a clearing account attached to a real-estate transaction in Milan. I pull the underlying deal. Nothing unusual. Commercial building, legitimate buyer, legitimate seller, legal fees, taxes, transfer costs.

Then I notice the servicing charge.

0.18 percent.

Small enough to disappear inside a transaction worth tens of millions.

I trace it.

The charge doesn't go to the firm named on the invoice. It moves through a subsidiary, joins a larger settlement batch, and vanishes into one of my destination accounts.

I stare at it.

"Hello."

I check another transaction. Different property. Different country.

0.16 percent.

Then another.

0.21.

The percentages vary just enough to avoid becoming a pattern. Which is a pattern. I create another spreadsheet. Three minutes later, I create two more because apparently self-control is a personality trait I intend to develop in another lifetime.

Real estate is only one stream.

The second destination account receives money through marine insurance settlements. I pull shipping records connected to companies I already know belong, directly or indirectly, to Crown families.

Cargo leaves Piraeus. Insurance premium paid, brokerage fee assessed, and administrative charge deducted.

Nobody questions administrative charges because modern civilization has collectively accepted that somewhere, someone deserves forty-seven euros for opening a PDF.

Except these aren't forty-seven euros. They're fractions of much larger premiums. I isolate the charges.

0.09 percent.

0.12.

0.08.

Tiny. Almost insulting. Then I multiply them across thousands of shipments. My coffee stops halfway to my mouth.

"No."

I run the numbers again. Same result. I add the shipping stream to the property stream and lean back. This isn't theft the way people imagine theft.

Nobody walked into a vault. Nobody emptied an account. Nobody transferred twenty million dollars at midnight beneath a company called Definitely Not Criminal Holdings.