Traded by the Consigliere

Karina Nowak's partner stole eleven million dollars from a syndicate that does not sue. He also left her name on every signature. When the consigliere arrives at her Gary office to collect, she has already reverse-engineered the syndicate's entire shell structure from municipal filings — because Karina has never once been able to leave a book alone. Adam Zielinski came to close an account. He leaves with a new one: eighteen months of Karina's service, on paper, under his own name. It is the only arrangement that will keep her breathing past the weekend, and she drafts the contract herself, in three hours, on a legal pad, because she intends to hold him to every line. She didn't plan for the analyst role to be the easy part. Or for Adam to kill his own capo at a family dinner over her name. Or for two people with the same skill at moving money to end up in a city where neither of them has one — counting euros, with no contract left to lean on.