Serafina’s POV
The mistake didn’t announce itself with alarms or blood.
It arrived quietly, the way real disasters always did wrapped in competence, hidden beneath calm voices and screens that still pretended to behave.
I was standing by the counter, my phone pressed to my ear, listening to Matteo breathe on the other end of the line while he cross-checked numbers I’d already memorized. The safehouse smelled like coffee and disinfectant, the kind of artificial cleanliness that never quite masked fear.
“Say it again,” I told him.
“The Zurich liquidity channel cleared,” Matteo replied. “Early.”
“How early?”
“Thirty-six minutes.”
That was wrong. Not suspicious. Not inconvenient.
Wrong.
I lowered the phone slowly. “That channel doesn’t move without staggered confirmation.”
“I know,”
