Page 106 of Secret Heir

“What am I looking for?”

“Shell companies. Money moving through Cyprus and possibly Marseille. Patterns that suggest embezzlement or fund diversion. Anything that connects to Corsican interests.” I slide him a USB drive with copies of all the financial records I’ve been able to pull. “Start with accounts flagged in the last eight years.”

He pockets the drive. “How dirty is this going to get?”

“Very. The person you’re investigating is high up in my organization. If word gets out that I’m looking into him, people die. Starting with me.”

Stephen’s expression doesn’t change. “Understood. Give me two weeks.”

“You have six days,” I tell him flatly.

He leaves, and I spend the next seventy-two hours reviewing everything I can get my hands on. Old security footage. Phone records. Travel logs. Meeting schedules.

I find gaps when Alexander should have been at mandatory Bratva functions but wasn’t. Meetings that don’t appear in any official records but show up in his calendar as “personal appointments.” Phone calls to numbers that trace back to burner phones, untraceable.

Then Stephen comes through.

“You were right about the Cyprus accounts,” he tells me when we meet again, this time in a parking garage in Queens. “Money’s been moving through shell companies for years. All of them ultimately controlled by the same person—your target. And there’s a pattern. Funds go out to Cyprus, sit there for a few days, then route through Luxembourg before landing in Marseille.”

“Marseille.” My blood runs cold. “You’re certain?”

Stephen nods sharply. “Positive. The Marseille accounts are registered to a holding company, but when I dug deeper, the beneficial owner traces back to known Corsican families. Union Corse.”

The Corsican mob. Exactly what Aria heard eight years ago.

“How much money are we talking about?” I ask, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.

Stephen hesitates. “Total, over the past eight years? North of forty million.”

I nearly collapse. Forty million dollars siphoned from Bratva accounts and funneled to the Corsicans. It’s funding for whatever Alexander’s been planning all these years.

“Can you prove it? Documentation that would hold up under scrutiny?”

“I can give you a paper trail that any competent accountant could verify. But—” He looks uncomfortable and he takes his glasses off, wiping them carefully with a cloth. “Getting this information wasn’t exactly legal. If you try to use it in any official capacity, it won’t hold up. And the person who provided it could face charges.”

Of course. Nothing is ever easy.

“Give me everything you have,” I tell him. “And Stephen? Destroy any records linking you to this investigation. Wipe your drives. Burn the notes. This conversation never happened.”

He hands me another USB drive and disappears into the city.

I have evidence now. It’s circumstantial as fuck, but it’s real enough to at least raise questions.

I need to try one more time with Nikolai.

I call my brother and ask to meet privately. Just the two of us.

We meet at his penthouse in Manhattan that looks like it’s never been lived in. To be fair, my Hamptons estate looked like this until Aria and Daniel moved in.

Nikolai is in a suit despite it being Sunday morning, every hair perfectly in place.

“This better be important,” he says, pouring himself coffee and not offering me any. “I have a meeting with the Italians in two hours.”

“I found something.” I pull out my tablet and open the files Stephen gave me. “Financial irregularities in the Cyprus accounts. Money moving to Marseille from the Union Corse.”

Nikolai doesn’t even look at the screen. “We do business with everyone, Maksim. Including groups adjacent to Corsican interests. This isn’t news.”

“Forty million dollars over eight years isn’t ‘business as usual’, brother.” I turn the tablet toward him, forcing him to look. “This is systematic embezzlement. Money being siphoned from our accounts and funneled to the Corsicans through shell companies that all trace back to⁠—”