Page 51 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

Dmitri notices my hands. “What is it?”

“Patrick being Patrick,” I say, and my voice comes out flat.

The programmer, a lean man with pale blue eyes, thinning hair, and a faint beard, clears his throat from his station. Chromatic lenses flash over his eyes when he looks at the screen. “The lock wants layered answers. I tried parish names, birth years, common family records, and every obvious combination.”

“And you are?” I ask without looking at Dmitri.

“Yuri,” he says and smiles.

“Patrick goes where he can get applause,” I say. “He hides things in vanity.”

Yuri stands and comes to my table. “Then use his vanity.”

I type my grandmother’s maiden name first, then the parish where she was baptized. Saint Brigid’s. Patrick loved saying it after two drinks. An Irish church record made him royalty once he was drunk.

The first layer opens.

Yuri watches from behind my chair. “Well, that is rude.”

“Wait,” I say.

The second prompt asks for a year. My throat tightens before I understand why. Patrick never forgave Dad for selling the old family house. He didn’t love the place. The house was grander than his taste, but he loved being able to mention it. Our people had roots, he used to say. Sadly, roots never paid mortgages or fixed pipes.

I enter the year our father sold it. The second layer opens. Dmitri shifts beside me, and his sleeve brushes my shoulder. My body notices, unsettling and brief, then lets it go.

A third prompt appears.

Phrase.

I stare at the empty field, and my stomach rolls.

Dad used to say it when Patrick came home with another apology, another excuse, another reason the money had gone somewhere it shouldn’t have.

No debt leaves the table. He meant responsibility. Patrick heard punishment.

To him, debt was a credit card policy. Borrow today, enjoy tonight, pay later if anyone could catch him. He hated Dad’s phrase because it ruined the fantasy.

I type, NoDebtLeavesTheTable.

The archive unlocks.

For one second, no one speaks, and I let myself have the win. Small, mean, perfect.

“Congratulations,” Yuri says. “Your brother is disgusting and predictable.”

“I’ve been saying that for years.”

Folders spill open across the screen. Medical shipments, charity papers, Boston routes, Moscow payments. I click through fast, unable to make my hands stop.

Yuri copies the folder list. “Saint Agnes Relief,” he says. “That shows up in three medical shipments.”

A man leans over my shoulder from the other side, and Dmitri gives him one look that makes him step back.

I keep working. “New Harbor Medical Aid is here. The payments go through Boston first, then Moscow. These aren’t aid groups. They’re covers with nicer fonts.”

Another man in a dark suit comes forward and hands Dmitri a printed sheet.

Dmitri takes it. “What is it, Leonid?”