The name came at dawn.Not shouted.Not leaked.Whispered through a channel Andrea had stopped trusting years ago.MARCEL KOVAC.Andrea stared at it on the secure screen, the letters stark and unforgiving.Chloe stood behind him, arms crossed. “That name doesn’t exist in any current registry.”“That’s the point,” Andrea replied.Gracie joined them moments later, hair still damp from a restless night. She took one look at the screen and inhaled sharply.“Kovac,” she said. “That was my mother’s maiden name.”The room went very still.Andrea turned slowly. “You never mentioned that.”Gracie’s voice was quiet. “Because she never did. She erased it before I was old enough to ask why.”Andrea felt the pieces shift—not align, but rearrange.Nikolai wasn’t rewriting Andrea’s story.He was stitching it to Gracie’s.Marcel Kovac officially died in a ferry accident twenty-six years ago.Unofficially, he had withdrawn millions from three European banks in the six months before his death, all rout

lElena Kovac didn’t sleep.She sat at her narrow kitchen table long after Andrea and Gracie left, the envelope untouched beside her tea, now cold. Outside, the city moved the way it always had—cars passing, a distant siren, laughter drifting up from somewhere below.Normal sounds.The kind that existed only because most people had no idea what rested inches from their hands.She pressed her palm flat against the envelope.Marcel’s handwriting bled through the paper like a ghost.If you’re reading this, the men failed.“They always do,” she whispered.But failing didn’t stop them from destroying everything on their way down.At dawn, Elena unlocked the storage unit she had sworn never to open unless the world was ready.It wasn’t dramatic.No lasers. No vault doors.Just a rusted key, a dented padlock, and a room that smelled of paper and iron.Inside were shelves.Hundreds of boxes.Each labeled with a date, a place, a name—some familiar, some deliberately misspelled.Marcel Kovac ha

The morning sunlight spilled across the Konstanio estate, but inside the walls, the air was heavy with tension. Andrea moved like a predator in his own home—calm, precise, calculated—but every instinct was alert. The Atlas Ledger had changed the game. The council that had always pulled strings in silence now knew the world could see the blueprint of their influence.Gracie was at his side, reviewing Elena’s notes. Her eyes scanned the cross-references between corporations, family trusts, and political offices, absorbing the gravity of what they now held.“They’re not just panicking,” Gracie said softly, almost to herself. “They’re strategizing. And whoever moves first will dictate everything else.”Andrea didn’t respond immediately. His gaze was on the city below, a sprawling web of light and dark, of people who had no idea the tides were shifting.“Then we make them reactive,” he finally said. “Not us.”Chloe appeared from the hallway, tablet in hand. “Andrea, you need to see this. E

CHAPTER 224Author POVThe prison visiting room was designed to erase power.Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Plastic chairs were bolted to the floor. Thick glass divided the living from the condemned. Every sound echoed just a little too loudly, reminding everyone inside that privacy was an illusion.Laura Santori sat perfectly still on her side of the glass.She wore the standard-issued uniform, but nothing about her looked diminished. Her spine was straight, her hands folded neatly, her gaze calm—expectant.She didn’t look like a woman serving a sentence.She looked like a woman hosting a meeting.The door on the opposite side opened.Andrea entered first, his expression unreadable. Gracie followed a half step behind him, her shoulders squared, eyes sharp with quiet defiance. A guard gestured them forward and then retreated.Laura’s lips curved faintly.“You came,” she said into the receiver. “Both of you.”Andrea picked up the phone without returning the smile. “You asked.”Lau

Author POVThe markets didn’t collapse.They hesitated—and in hesitation, power leaked.Trading floors froze mid-motion. Analysts stared at screens that refused to justify themselves. Numbers no longer aligned with narratives, and narratives had always been the glue.All because of one name.Marion Vale.A humanitarian. A patron of schools. A woman whose smile had softened wars from podiums and magazine covers.Elena watched the reaction in real time, fingers steepled beneath her chin.“No denial yet,” she murmured. “That means the paperwork’s airtight.”Beside her, Gracie stood silent, phone vibrating endlessly in her pocket. She didn’t answer it.Some calls didn’t deserve voices.Marion didn’t wait long.She never had.The press conference was immaculate—white backdrop, low lighting, a single glass of water untouched. Her expression conveyed disappointment rather than fear, as if the world had misbehaved.“These allegations are distortions,” Marion said calmly. “Context stripped of