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“The external inquiry,” he says. “Someone asking about Berezin’s second layer means there’s a second layer worth asking about. So I looked.”

I open the folder. Numbers, dates, routing codes that don’t resolve into anything legitimate. Two years. Berezin was pulling from our operations for two years, and nobody caught it, which means either he was very careful or someone who could have caught it wasn’t looking. Both options piss me off for different reasons.

“Where does the money land?”

“Clean shells. Nothing registered to any name we know. Whoever designed the terminal accounts didn’t want it traced forward or backward.” Marka crosses his arms. “They wanted a gap in the middle that looks like the end of the road.”

“Berezin built this himself?”

“Maybe,” Marka says. “Or someone built it for him.”

I go through the routing structure on the second page. Four shells deep, clean landing, then nothing. Professional work. Not the work of a man operating alone.

“The external inquiry,” I say. “Dmitri have anything yet?”

“No name. He’s still working it.” Marka uncrosses his arms and leans forward. “What bothers me is the timing. Berezin’s been dead four weeks. The inquiry started a couple of weeks ago. Why wait?”

“Either they didn’t know he was dead when they started,” I say, “or they’re looking for what he left behind.”

Marka doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to.

My wife is one floor above us right now, at the desk in our bedroom, working a drive she found in her father’s apartment. Three weeks and she hasn’t told me a single thing she’s found. Berezin’s daughter, running her own operation in my house, and I let her because I need what she’s found, and pulling the drive before she’s done is the wrong play. That calculation hasn’t changed.

What’s changing is how solid the ground was under the decision I made eleven weeks ago.

“There’s more,” Marka says.

I wait.

“The shell structure Berezin used for the skimming. Our analysts found a partial match in records from a DeLuca-adjacent operation that was shut down fifteen years ago. Same four-shell routing, same clean landing, same gap at the end.”

I keep my face right. “Someone taught him the structure.”

“Or built it for him,” Marka says. “Either way it didn’t originate with Berezin. This method is at least fifteen years old. Could be older, that’s just as far back as we’ve traced it.”

I close the folder. The Bratva has been in this city for forty years. The Crown is twenty-five. Whatever was running before the Crown formed had its own networks, its own methods. Pre-Crown. Old faction. Most of them got swallowed or put down when the structure solidified after the all-out war between the organizations.

Most.

“The ambush venue came from Berezin,” I say. “But the shell structure didn’t. Someone handed him the method, which means someone above him set the room. That person is still breathing.” I look at the folder. “The shell match to a DeLuca-adjacent operation is fifteen years old. Lorenzo lost a family member to the same symbol. Whoever built this was inside the structure once and isn’t anymore.”

“Or wants back in,” Marka says.

“Da,” I say. “That’s the problem.”

I stand up and walk to the window because sitting still right now isn’t something I’m capable of. The garden is dark, one light on upstairs, same as every night. My wife at her desk, working her way through whatever her father left behind, three weeks of it, and she hasn’t said a word to me about any of it.

I put Berezin in the ground because his name was at the end of every thread I pulled. His venue, his communication log, his confirmation. All of it pointed at him, and I pulled the trigger. That part I don’t second-guess. What I’m sitting with now is that he was the closest link in a chain that didn’t start with him and didn’t end with him either.

Lavro would’ve said that before I pulled the trigger. One sentence, while I was still deciding. The chair’s been empty for eleven weeks, and I’ve been missing things.

I turn back from the window. “She knows something.”

Marka doesn’t ask who.

“Three weeks with that drive,” I say. “She’s Berezin’s daughter, which means she knows how he thought, how he built things. She’s further along than we are.” I look at the folder on the table. “It’s time I take the drive. I’m going to talk to her.”

Marka’s jaw tightens. “Or she’s known everything from day one, and she’s been sitting on it.”