Page 57 of Cruel Lies

"So now, shit is falling apart."

"Not yet. But it's going to." He hands me a tablet with a spreadsheet pulled up on the screen. "That's the problem I found this morning. Look at the second column."

I pick it up and scroll. It's a standard ledger, tallying debits and credits for a dozen-plus front businesses that conceal the Bratva's real source of income. But running down the second column is a series of small discrepancies lit up in angry red. A payment that arrived two days late, an invoice logged twice, a transfer that went out to the wrong shell and had to be quietly walked back.

None of them are large. But if we keep making mistakes like this, someone is bound to notice sooner or later.

My cousin seems to have reached the same conclusion. "Give a smart forensic accountant a month and a subpoena, and every one of those little hiccups starts to point in one direction."

"Toward the guns," I say grimly.

Navi nods. “Bingo.”

Without meaning to, both of us have fallen back into whispers. Neither of us likes to air our dirt out loud in this building, even in this room, with the soundproofed glass and the twice-daily bug sweep and the assurances that nobody is listening.

"The firm can wash the money," he says. "But it's not enough. A trickle? Yeah, sure, no problem. These guns aren't a trickle, Ro. Give it a few more weeks and they'll be a fucking fire hose. Theonly thing worse than no money is too much of it. That's the issue we're dealing with right now."

I set the tablet down and think. "How long do we have?"

"Before it becomes traceable?" Navi considers. "If nobody's actively looking right this second, maybe a few months. If somebody starts looking—a federal somebody, a rival somebody, or even just a curious somebody—" He shrugs. "Weeks. Maybe less. It depends on how good they are."

I lean back in my chair, lace my fingers over my stomach, and stare at the ceiling.

What I need is not a new Pyotr. His departure, as unwelcome as it was, is kind of a gift. It's shown me that I can't allow my empire to depend on one man.

Men are weak. They have families and sicknesses and they get wanderlust at the worst possible moments.

What I need is a machine that can look at ten thousand small, boring, disconnected transactions and find the story hidden inside them before anyone else does.

What I need is to run my own books through something colder and faster than Pyotr's failing heart, find the seams before the feds do, and stitch them shut.

What I need, in other words, just walked out of my office a few short minutes ago.

I already knew this. But I've been lying to myself about all the reasons I keep pursuing Calista Meadows. No matter how much I intend not to repeat my father's mistakes and end up as a man buried by his own selfish lies, I find myself trudging down the same path that killed him.

"Navi," I say. "You passed our answer in the elevator."

He blinks at the unexpected turn. "The girl?"

"Her company builds predictive analytics. Fraud detection." I sit up. "She built an engine that takes disconnected data and finds the pattern inside it. She used it to catch her husband cheating on her."

Navi's leg comes off the arm of the chair. He's not smiling anymore. "You want to hire her?" he guesses slowly. "A civilian? Ro, I dunno…"

I shake my head. "I can't hire her."

"But you just said?—"

"No. Hiring her isn't an option. She doesn't know what we are, and I have no intention of telling her. Nor do I have any intention of letting her close enough to uncover the clues herself."

He throws up his hands, exasperated. "Then what's the point?"

"If I can't hire the tool," I say slowly, "then I'll simply acquire it instead."

When he understands what I'm saying, his jaw drops. "You're going to take her company?"

I pull the tablet back toward me, but I don't look at it. I'm looking at nothing. "It's already vulnerable. Her ex made sure of that. He listed himself as registered agent and officer on the formation documents. On paper, the ownership of that company is a beautiful mess. All we have to do is insert ourselves into the mix."

Navi is pouting. "What happened to all these ethical concerns about being her lawyer? Your morals won't let you represent her in a divorce from her dirtbag ex, but stealing her life's work is perfectly fine?"