My father told my nine-year-old daughter to leave her chair because it was reserved for his “real” grandchild, but when I placed a blue estate folder beside his Christmas dinner, his smile vanished before he even opened it.

We did not meet Maya directly at the Weinbergstrasse safehouse. Standard protocol demanded an intermediate staging point to ensure she hadn't picked up a tail from the university. We selected the cloister courtyard of the Grossmünster, where the echo of stone arches and tourist foot traffic made targeted surveillance nearly impossible to conceal.

The autumn air in Zurich was cold and damp, smelling of lake water and roasted chestnuts. I sat on a low stone ledge beneath the towering Romanesque facade, holding a folded newspaper, while Marcus maintained an overwatch position fifty yards away near the river terrace.

At precisely two in the afternoon, a figure in a dark trench coat crossed the courtyard. It was not Maya.

The man was middle-aged, walking with a slight limp, his coat collar pulled up against the breeze. He walked past my bench without breaking stride, but as he passed, a small, wax-sealed vellum envelope dropped onto the bench beside my coat.

"Do not look up," the man said in low, clipped High German. "The third party does not wish for bloodshed. They only request an audit."

Before I could shift or reach beneath my jacket, the courier had melted into a tour group entering the southern portal of the cathedral.

I picked up the envelope. The wax was midnight blue, stamped with an emblem that chilled the marrow of my bones: an open ledger crossed by a quill and an iron key—the forgotten crest of the original founders of the Continental Trust.