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Still nothing proves wrongdoing. A private bank with Crown clients appearing in Crown transactions is approximately as suspicious as finding alcohol in a bar.

I need something else. So I stop looking for suspicious activity. If somebody has survived this long inside legitimate financial systems, suspicious is the last thing they'll allow themselves to be.

I look for boring. Banking is excellent at boring.

Fees, service charges, settlement costs, compliance deductions, foreign-exchange commissions. Thousands upon thousands of tiny administrative movements, each with enough paperwork to make the average investigator lose the will to live.

I am not the average investigator, and I actually find paperwork soothing. This probably explains several things about my social life.

I start with Asterion's fee schedules. Current structure. Previous structure. Older structure.

The bank underwent a major operational restructuring eleven years ago after new European banking regulations changed how several categories of cross-border transactions were processed. Certain charges were merged. Others were eliminated.

I compare the old schedule with the new.

Nothing.

I go back another year. Then another. Until my coffee gets cold.

At some point, one of Adrianos's staff replaces it without speaking to me. I take a sip fifteen minutes later and realize it's hot again.

I don't know whether to be grateful or disturbed.

Then I see it. Legacy Transaction Processing.

Code LTP-4.

0.04 percent.

I stare at the line.

The charge was introduced eighteen years ago to cover manual reconciliation on certain private settlement accounts. Eleven years ago, when Asterion restructured, manual reconciliation was eliminated.

So was LTP-4.

At least officially.

I search the recent transactions and find nothing. I try again, but still nothing appears. I almost dismiss it, then search using the fee percentage instead of the code. Three results appear. My hand stops on the mouse. All three are buried inside larger settlement deductions.

I open the first.

0.04 percent.

The second.

0.04.

Third.

Same.

"Why are you still here?"

I pull the original documentation. The fee should not exist. It has not existed for eleven years, yet somebody is still charging it selectively. I search every Crown-related Asterion transaction I can access, and the results climb from six to twelve, then twenty-nine. The fee is not applied consistently, which is why nobody noticed it. Sometimes months pass between appearances; sometimes it shows up twice in one week. The amounts are microscopic. Five thousand here, eleven thousand there. On transactions worth tens of millions, they disappear into rounding. But a fee does something money thieves often forget: it creates a timestamp. Every charge must be assessed at a specific point in processing. I extract the timestamps, then pull my OB6 transfer records onto another screen. My heartbeat begins to climb.

First LTP-4 charge: 09:17.

OB6 intermediary movement: 09:24.