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Huh. Nell was faster than I thought. Had she just pulled off everything I'd tasked her with in less than a day? It should've been impossible. Clearly, she was far more brilliant than I had expected.

Viktor stood there, eyeing me, bushy brow raised expectantly.

"I'm sorry for your troubles. Do you need a hug?"

"What I need is the new face of Sterling and Associates. Whoever you've installed over there just put their hands in my pocket. I want them on their knees."

Get in line, buddy. "The Sterling transition has been complex, Viktor. We're auditing all third-party interests to ensure the Ironwood taint hasn't spread into the client accounts."

"Audit my balls," Katya snarled. Her hand moved toward the hilt of the blade she kept at her hip. "Sterling built our shell companies. Sterling held our keys. You've absorbed that firm, and now our liquidity is evaporating. That is not a coincidence."

"Sterling's infrastructure is being reviewed and consolidated," I said. "If your accounts are experiencing disruption, I'd suggest your own compliance team examine your exposure."

"Our exposure," Viktor said, his voice dropping into something more dangerous than the shouting, "is that whoever is running Sterling's back-end systems right now is either very loyal to you or very afraid of you. Either way, they are dismantling us. And we want them stopped."

I kept my face smooth. The Volkovs knew about Sterling's systems. They knew someone was inside those systems. They did not know it was a woman sitting in my cabin eating plantain chips and getting her vanilla scent all over my sheets.

"The Sterling transition is a Blackwood internal matter," I said. "Any disruption to your accounts is a consequence of the Ironwood audit. Take it up with Barrett."

Barrett, to his credit, nodded vigorously inside his cheap suit.

Viktor opened his mouth to retort. His pocket began to vibrate. Then Katya's. A series of high-pitched pings echoed through the stone room. It was the sound of a dozen high-priority alerts hitting at once.

Viktor pulled out his phone. His brow furrowed as he scrolled. His face turned from red to a sickly, ashen gray. His eyes widened, his pupils dilating until he looked like he was staring at a ghost.

"What is it?" Sorsha asked.

"It's …gone," Viktor's hands shook. "Three billion rubles… it’s been liquidated."

A jolt of pure, unadulterated electricity shot down my spine. Nell. She'd effectively cut the legs out from under the Volki. It was a masterpiece of structural violence.

It was also a problem I hadn't planned for.

I hadn't given her a timeline. I hadn't staged the room, positioned my exit, or calculated the fallout of three billion in Volki liquidity evaporating while I was sitting alone at a table full of Alphas and their Seconds with nothing between me and their teeth but a suit. I didn't let a single flicker of surprise reach my face.

"You did this," Viktor roared, lunging across the table.

I was faster.

The gun was in my hand before he cleared the woods — not pointed at Viktor, but at Katya. The logic was simple. Everyone in the room understood it immediately: Viktor was too furious to be rational, which made him too furious to be an effective hostage.

But Katya was cold. Katya was calculating. And Viktor would die for his sister.

Family first. It wasn't just a Blackwood motto.

Nobody moved.

No enforcers came through the door. No Second stepped forward. Not even Elias, which told me the boy was smarter than his age and the new-alpha-smell suggested. There were rules older than pack law: you don't interfere in a direct challenge. You sit on your hands and wait to see who's left standing.

Gun trained on his sister, I didn't take my eyes off Viktor.

"I want to be clear about your intentions." My voice was the same temperature it had been all evening. "Are you challenging me and my family, Viktor? Or are you having a bad day because you had a business booboo?"

The room held its breath.

Viktor's chest heaved. The fury in his eyes was volcanic. Beneath it something older and colder was working: the survival calculus every Alpha learned before they learned to walk.

He looked at his sister. At the gun. Back at me.