It was Nadia who noticed it first, three weeks later, buried in a routine market report she almost hadn't bothered forwarding — a quiet, steady accumulation of Cole Industries shares by a shell company nobody in the office recognized.
"It's probably nothing," she said, dropping the printout on Adrian's desk with the particular shrug of someone who didn't actually believe her own reassurance.
"Could just be an index fund rebalancing.
But the pattern's a little too deliberate for that, if you ask me."
Adrian scanned the numbers twice, then a third time, his coffee going cold beside him. "Whoever's buying isn't trying to hide the accumulation. They're trying to make sure we notice it slowly enough that we don't panic, and quickly enough that by the time we do, they'll already have a mea
