Page 57 of Keller

"I don't mind early mornings."

She almost smiles. I feel it against my chest more than I see it. Then she steps back, putting two inches of cooling air between us. We're still intimately close, but not emeshed. My hand is still anchored behind her neck.

"I have some work I need to do tonight."

I brush my thumb along her jaw lightly, wanting more but respecting her boundaries.

"I get it. Maybe a rain check?"

"I'd like that," she says, a tiny tug on her full lips.

"Me, too. Thanks again for a great afternoon."

She unlocks the door and slips inside, as if she lingers for much longer, she might change her mind. "Goodnight, Keller."

"Goodnight, Quinn Mercer."

The latch clicks softly behind her.

I stand on her porch for a few moments after she is inside. The jasmine on her railing is sweet in the cooling air. I turn and walk back to my car.

The driver's seat is still warm when I slide in. I don't start the engine immediately. Instead, I sit in the quiet, my fingers resting on the steering wheel, and consider the shape of what just happened.

I don't usually linger on porches. I don't usually want more time.

I start the car and pull away from the curb, her porch light flickering on behind me.

The monitors throwblue light across Wells's face as I step into his office at the Stone Intermodal headquarters. He usually works from home, but said for me to meet him here today.

Three screens form a half-circle on his desk, each displaying different data streams. Server logs scroll on the left, and an encrypted dashboard dominates the center. The right screen shows transaction histories in columns so dense they blur at the edges.

The room hums with the sound of several cooling fans at once. The quiet mechanical breath of machines doing work humans cannot track with their eyes.

"Did you pull up the Reyes file?"

Wells doesn't look up. His fingers move across the keyboard, and the center screen shifts. A profile appears. Alejandro Reyes. Forty-seven. Venezuelan passport. Current residence listed as Panama City.

"Offshore liquidity flagged irregular three weeks ago." Wells enlarges a section of the dashboard. "Shell company in the Caymans feeding into a secondary account in Luxembourg. The pattern doesn't match standard wealth management. I'm not sure you can trust it."

I lean closer to the screen. The numbers tell a story if you know how to read them. Deposits clustered in odd intervals.Withdrawals that spike before market shifts. Nothing overtly criminal, but just unusual enough to require attention.

"AML exposure?"

"Moderate." Wells pulls up another window. "The shell company traces back to a holding group with legitimate mining interests. But the transaction timing suggests layering. Could be clean money structured to look dirty, or dirty money structured to look clean."

Neither option is good for our tables.

My father built this operation on discretion because high-net-worth players expect privacy. They also expect that we have vetted everyone in the room. One federal investigation, one asset seizure tied to a player at our tables, and the whole network collapses.

"What about the dark web chatter?"

Wells minimizes the Reyes profile and opens a new screen. Text scrolls in fragments in a coded language I don't understand or even try.

"Three mentions of upcoming games in the last forty-eight hours. There's nothing specific enough to indicate a leak, but more like speculation from people who want in but don't have access."

I nod. Standard background noise. The tables attract attention precisely because they are exclusive. People talk about what they cannot have.

"Keep monitoring Reyes. If the liquidity pattern doesn't clean up in the next two weeks, I'm going to decline his application."