Page 221 of Maksym

I turned toward the Council.

The screen behind me shifted from rooms and bodies to documents. Clean, sharp, organized. The language of men who thought numbers purified appetite.

Financial records filled the projection: shell companies, wire transfers, property acquisitions, transport invoices disguised as medical logistics, security contracts routed through commercial real estate holdings in Phoenix and beyond. Lucia’s team had arranged them in sequence so elegantly that part of me, the federal prosecutor who had once built complex financial crime cases from uglier fragments, felt a grim professional admiration.

No wonder Lucia had been Kazimir’s right hand. She understood war, but she also understood paper. Paper killed empires when sharpened correctly.

“My own testimony is not the only evidence before you,” I said.

My voice sounded calm.

“What you have seen is a representative sample compiled from Lucian Devereaux’s private security system, business records, and corroborating site surveillance gathered by Lucia Kozlov’s investigative team.”

A few eyes moved toward Lucia again. She stood like judgment, wearing black.

“The arrogance is important,” I continued. “Lucian Devereaux recorded his own crimes because he believed his position protected him. He preserved conversations, inventories, movement logs, feeding schedules, payment routes, and donor classifications. Those classifications are not donor classifications in any lawful sense. A donor may withdraw consent. A donor may set limits. A donor may leave.”

I let the word leave settle.

“The humans in those rooms could not.”

On the screen, a chart expanded. Names were redacted. Locations were not. Phoenix holdings. Private wards. Commercial buildings. Transport corridors. Vegas-adjacent shell leases. I had insisted on preserving enough specificity to show risk without compromising ongoing rescue operations. Law was always part scalpel, part shield. Knowing which edge to show mattered.

“These records show a network operating across multiple human jurisdictions and intersecting with supernatural territory. They show properties purchased through shell entities connected to Lucian Devereaux and Alastair Crowe. They show payments to security contractors and ward-workers. They show movement patterns designed to avoid both human law enforcement and supernatural oversight.”

I turned slightly, enough that the Council could see my face and the documents behind me.

“I speak now not only as a victim, though I am one. I speak as a former Assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted complex financial crime and human trafficking cases. Human systems are imperfect. Often cruel in their neglect. Lucian counted on that. He selected victims who would be difficult to trace, then moved money in ways meant to make each disappearance look isolated.”

Lucian made a sound from the gallery. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a snarl. I did not look at him.

“His mistake was scale,” I said. “Scale creates patterns. Patterns create exposure.”

The next slide displayed a series of human banking alerts, property tax records, false employment documents, missing-person references linked by geography and timing. Redacted, but clear enough.

“Had one mortal investigator with the right clearance and sufficient stubbornness pulled on these threads, they would not have found vampires immediately. Not at first. They would have found shell companies. They would have found questionable real estate transactions. They would have found transport irregularities, falsified payroll, medical supply purchases with no legitimate patient population, and repeated associations with missing vulnerable adults.”

My mouth almost curved. No humor reached it. “I know that because I was that investigator.”

The chamber seemed to draw inward around the sentence.

“Before Lucian Devereaux abducted me, I had begun examining portions of his commercial real estate activity in the Phoenix area. I was not looking for vampires. I did not know vampires existed. I was looking for financial crimes and possible human trafficking. I had identified enough irregularities to make him nervous.”

The screen changed to a scan of one of my old case notes. My handwriting.

Seeing it hurt in a different way. Lucian had taken two years from me. He had not taken the work.

“Lucian did not merely violate human victims,” I said. “He brought mortal law enforcement within reach of supernatural concealment. He created a trail that, if followed far enough, risked exposing not only himself, but all of you.”

That reached them.

I saw it move across the thrones. Moral horror had done part of the work. Self-preservation finished what morality sometimes could not.

“Every sovereign in this chamber understands the cost of exposure,” I continued. “Human governments do not need to understand everything before they become dangerous. They need only enough proof to keep looking. A warehouse. A body. A survivor. A ledger. A camera. A careless immortal who believed the shortness of human lives made human institutions irrelevant.”

I finally turned my head toward Lucian.

He stood between guards now. At some point while I had spoken, Council security had moved close enough to make his space smaller. His wrists were bound in cuffs that looked like black iron, but carried something more than metal in them. The restraints circled him with pale runes that seemed to drink the light. Alastair Crowe stood several paces away in similar cuffs, his face gray, his mouth pressed tight enough to whiten the skin around it.