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Mr. Sterling's office was on the fourteenth floor, a corner position, with windows on two sides that looked out over the city with a view. Sterling Jr. had cleared out within a week of Addie's departure, and the office had been cleared as well. Someone had already moved in a desk; my desk from my old office. The nameplate on it read N. ODHIAMBO, CEO in the same clean sans-serif font that was going up on the building outside.

I pulled out my chair and sat in it. I gave myself exactly ten seconds to feel it. The view. The nameplate. Then I fired up my computer and got to work.

The first thing I noticed was that I had access to the Blackwood infrastructure. It was vast and entirely organized. There were seventeen subsidiary companies nested under the main holding entity, ranging from active operations to what appeared to be dormant shells that hadn't filed meaningful activity in years.

I worked through them methodically. Not looking for anything specific, just building the map. Most of it was what I expected: logistics, real estate, two legitimate restaurant supply chains feeding the Fang Dynasty's operations, and a security consulting firm. And then, nested three layers deep under a holding company called Blackwood Maritime Solutions LLC, I found something that didn't fit.

The company was called Vantablack R&D. Incorporated six years ago, active for eighteen months, then dormant. Its listed assets included seventeen autonomous maritime vessels, a fleet of medium-range cargo drones, proprietary navigation software, and a series of patents for unmanned cold-chain logistics systems.

Autonomous vessels. Unmanned. Operating outside conventional shipping lanes by design, because the navigation system had been built to avoid standard maritime traffic corridors.

I thought about what the wolf in man's clothing had said in the garden last night before Magnus disappeared into the dark. The Volki had hit the Queens terminal.

I pulled up Vantablack's patent filings and started reading. An hour later, I had seventeen browser tabs open, three pages of handwritten notes, and the beginning of something that felt like the answer to a problem nobody had asked me to solve. But this is who I was: a problem-solver. And the Blackwood problem was more interesting than anything sitting on my desk.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MAGNUS

Sorsha Lobo kept me waiting twenty-three minutes. It was deliberate. The meeting had been her idea. The location had been her choice. The table was already set for two when I arrived — which meant the food had been ordered, the wine had been selected, and the only variable Sorsha had introduced into an otherwise prepared environment was my waiting time. Twenty-three minutes was long enough to be an insult and short enough to be deniable as one.

I drank my coffee, read my emails and did not look at the door. A notification that the new sign I'd ordered for the old Sterling offices made my top lip tug up. I wanted to see her face when I brought her to the office. But that wouldn't happen until all this mess with the Volki was laid to rest.

She would not be going to Alaska. She was too much of an asset to have so far from my reach. And what if she got cold?

Sorsha arrived in ivory silk. Her dark hair was swept back from a face. She moved through the restaurant with the unhurried certainty of a woman around whom rooms reoriented themselves . Two of her people took positions near the exit. The security tactic wasn't necessary. Sorsha had kept her throne with her claws as much as with her wit. She sat across from me, arranged her napkin, her gaze met mine.

"Magnus, you look tired."

"I had a long night."

"The Queens terminal." She made a sound that had no sympathy in it. "Terrible business. The Volki have no elegance. My daughter sends her regards, by the way. She's been asking about you."

I had no response to this because I had nothing to draw on. Rosalind Lobo was a name, a bloodline, and a contract. She had no face in my mind. She had no voice. She was a door that was going to close, and I had made my peace with standing on the correct side of it.

I was pretty sure there was something wrong with the girl. Every family paraded their offspring from the time of birth. But Rosalind? There wasn't even a picture of her in the society column.

Didn't matter. I would do my duty.

"Give her my regards in return."

Sorsha's smile was seductive. If I hadn't known for a fact that she wanted me to marry her daughter, I would've thought she was flirting with me. "You can give them to her yourself."

I went prey-still.

Was she here?

My nose worked the room in a rapid sweep, cataloguing every scent present, looking for the unknown variable. Sorsha's cold, calculating elegance. Her Second's stone and gunmetal. The old wood and whiskey and overcooked meat.

Nothing I didn't recognize.

Sorsha tilted her head, the movement predatory in its patience. "That's why we're here, isn't it? You need to ask something of my family."

"I need access to your transit network."

She knew exactly what I meant: the refrigerated pharmaceutical couriers, the federal immunity designation, the pre-cleared routes that ran through channels the Volki couldn't touch without bringing federal attention down on every pack in the Northeast. She had built that network over fifteen years. Medical supplies. Controlled substances moving under DEA clearance. Temperature-sensitive biological materials with federal transponders that made them untouchable.

"My couriers move sensitive products," she said. "High-value. The routes are protected because the product is legitimate, federally documented, and handled by licensed personnel. Introducing Blackwood materials into that stream is a significant risk to the integrity of the operation."