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Elena walks him through the old fee structure, the regulatory changes, the restructuring that supposedly killed LTP-4, and then the records proving somebody selectively revived it. Karras interrupts twice. She answers both objections before he can finish making them. By the eighth transaction, he stops pretending the pattern is accidental.

By the twelfth, his cane is no longer perfectly still against his knee.

“Now let’s talk about your absences,” Elena says.

His head comes up.

She slides another page forward. “Switzerland. Nine days. No LTP-4 charges. Medical leave. Six weeks. Nothing. Mykonos, five years ago. Twelve days away. Nothing.”

Karras's jaw tightens.

“The fee stops when you stop,” Elena says.

“You’ve been watching the wrong thing.”

“Then help me watch the right one.”

“That fee existed long before you walked into this room.”

“And somehow dies every time you leave it.”

“You don’t understand how private banking works.”

This time Elena does laugh, but there is no warmth in it. “I understand private banking well enough to know obsolete charges do not resurrect themselves selectively across transactions connected to shell companies that later feed hidden reserve accounts.”

That finally reaches him.

His face does not collapse, but the confidence underneath it cracks. Elena turns the laptop toward him.

The transfer map fills the screen. Greek companies. Italian companies. Russian, Irish, Colombian. Processing fees leading to intermediaries. Intermediaries feeding reservoirs. The architecture of theft laid out so cleanly that even a man who has spent decades hiding inside it cannot pretend not to recognize the shape.

Karras's color changes slightly.

“You recognize it,” Elena says.

“No.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I said no.”

“And your face disagreed.”

Karras's eyes harden. “You are very confident for a woman who does not understand the people she is accusing.”

Elena sits back. “I don’t think you built OB6.”

That hits him harder than anything else has. His gaze jerks toward her before he can stop it. The name clearly means something.

Elena moves immediately.

“I think you’re too visible,” she says. “Old Crown. Trusted. Familiar. Useful. Men like you don’t build networks like this because you don’t need to. You operate doors other people can’t see.”

His grip tightens on the cane.

“Who gave you instructions?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”