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Its businesses. Its rivalries. Its blind spots. Its arrogance.

I suddenly understand why Adrianos hasn't moved from the window. This isn't someone stealing from him. It's someone studying him. Studying all of them.

I look at the total again.

"Three hundred and sixty-eight million is what I can prove."

He nods once.

"There could be twice that."

"Yes."

"More."

"Yes."

Neither of us speaks for several seconds. Adrianos finally turns from the window and looks at the map we've built together.

Five empires. Dozens of companies. Hundreds of transactions. One hidden reservoir.

His voice is quiet when he speaks.

"That's enough money to start a war."

I look at the numbers, at the years of accumulation, at the liquid accounts waiting for someone to decide the time has come.

Then I shake my head.

"No. That's enough money to keep one going."

22

Adrianos

By noon, I know two things with absolute certainty.

Someone has been siphoning money through Crown infrastructure for years, and Elena is going to make protecting her as difficult as humanly possible.

The first problem can be solved with information, patience, and enough violence applied to the correct people. The second is currently standing in my dressing room, criticizing my taste in hangers.

"I didn't know hangers could look arrogant."

I glance up from my phone. "They're hangers."

"Exactly. Yet somehow yours look as though they own property."

Elena pulls another blouse from the garment bag one of my men delivered from her apartment and hangs it beside three others. Half her wardrobe arrived this morning along with her laptop, work files, toiletries, and the collection of notebooks she insisted contained nothing important while simultaneously threatening bodily harm if anyone misplaced them.

I ordered the transfer before breakfast.

She doesn't know that yet.

Technically, she thinks the men went to retrieve the things she requested after our argument yesterday. I haven't considered it necessary to mention that I instructed them to bring everything she might reasonably need for several weeks.

There are several such details.

Her apartment now has twenty-four-hour surveillance. Two men rotate outside the building. Another monitors the street from a parked vehicle. Her mother has a discreet security detail that follows her to work, home, and anywhere else she decides to go.