Page 55

"Exactly."

The Crown's greatest strength created the perfect weakness.

Five powerful organizations cooperate without truly integrating. Enough trust to transact. Too little trust to inspect.

OB6 lives between them.

I open a fresh page and start mapping every fee I've identified according to the family infrastructure it touches.

Adrianos pulls the keyboard closer on the second workstation.

I look at him.

"What are you doing?"

"Helping."

"Can you use Excel?"

His expression is insulting.

"That wasn't an answer."

"I own banks."

"So do people who can't reset their own passwords."

"Elena."

"Show me."

He does.

I watch him efficiently navigate the data, but dislike this development.

"You could've told me."

"You never asked."

"I've been operating under the comforting assumption that your financial expertise ended at threatening people who understand spreadsheets."

"Disappointed?"

"Deeply."

We work. Really work, and for the next hour, something shifts between us.

Adrianos identifies ownership structures faster than I can research them. I flag transactions. He tells me which companies matter, which are fronts, which partnerships existed only temporarily, which routes were established because one family needed access to another's territory.

I see money.

He sees motive.

I find a cluster of insurance deductions routed through Piraeus and assume the Greek connection matters. Adrianos points out the cargo belongs to a company under Lorenzo's protection, insured by a Greek syndicate because the shipment passed through Adrianos's port.

"So the point isn't who owns the company," I say.

"It's where their interests overlap."