Lila took a mug and sipped the sweet wine, tasting an undercurrent of blackberries, breathing out happily at the first sip. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford Sangre; it was only that her family boycotted the family who produced it. The chairwoman had a falling out with the Holguíns when Lila was a little girl. Ever since, her mother refused to stock the wine in their cellar, as did every Randolph establishment and every lowborn business who leased land from the family. It had been written into their contracts. The slight had hurt Holguín’s label so much that it had nearly gone out of business a year later.
Somehow the label still clung to life. If Chairwoman Holguín and Chairwoman Randolph ever made amends, both stood to make a great deal of money. But for that to happen, a great deal of highborn drama would likely pass first.
“Tell me about this job,” Lila prodded.
“Don’t you ever just take a break? Is there ever a moment when you aren’t all business?”
“I don’t have the time.”
“Make time.”
“If I had the time, I’d rather sleep.”
“Fine.” Tristan dropped a manila file on the coffee table and sat next to her on the couch. “I told you last night that my people bombed Slack & Roberts. What I didn’t tell you is that Toxic downloaded every file on their servers beforehand.”
“Why?”
“For information, of course. To prove some suspicions we had. Toxic spent all yesterday morning hacking into their files, and we spent the rest of the day and night going through the data. We didn’t find anything in the legal files, of course. Someone important might request them.”
“Someone important?”
“You know what I mean. No one puts a smoking gun in a file that Bullstow might request at any time,” Tristan said, and sipped his Sangre. “We moved on to the billing data soon after.”
He picked up the file on top of the coffee table and dropped it in her lap. “Like I told you yesterday, we’ve suspected that Slack & Roberts have been colluding with several highborn clients on a number of defense cases, ignoring the people they should be defending in order to pass the prisoners onto the highborn as slaves.”
Lila opened the file. “What is this?”
“Billing data on several of their clients. They were all sentenced in a drug raid six months ago on Wilson-Kruger property. Supposedly, some young wastrel son of the chairwoman was dealing black market heroin and trance tabs out of a club on the estate.”
“Club 137.”
“Yes. The club manager called Bullstow, not realizing that the chairwoman’s son was inside. The two blackcoats arrested the kid as well as everyone else they found with drugs, several of whom were Wilson family servants. Chairwoman Wilson, to everyone’s great amazement, disowned her son on the spot. Slack & Roberts stepped up to take the cases, since several of their lawyers hadn’t met their pro bono quotas for the month. At least, that’s what they claimed. These are from the company’s private files. Do you see anything strange?”
Lila thumbed through the papers. Given her familiarity with security and legal documents, it took only a few moments to spot an issue. “This source code is the same throughout the stack. 01435. I assume this is a code for pro bono work?”
“Is it? Why would a pro bono case need a billing source code?”
“Because paperwork is anal retentive the world over. Is it a pro bono code or not?”
Tristan took a sip of wine and shook his head. “No, it’s not. I’ll skip to the good part. The legal fees were paid, and they were paid from the same source. All of them.”
“What does the code mean, then?”
“No idea. When we dug a bit more, we found copies of the bank transfers. The sending account is from a bank in Burgundy. The Liberté. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” He gauged her reaction with a smug little smile.
Lila’s head snapped up. The Liberté was notorious in the Allied Lands and the rest of the commonwealth, especially among the highborn. They used it and other such banks in Burgundy as way to disperse bribes, to buy quasi-illegal goods, and to pay off spies. The more inept highborn used them to pay off hackers, thieves, and specialists in corporate espionage.
Of course, those weren’t the only reasons why one might use Burgundy banks. They also functioned as intermediaries, a way to shuffle funds in and out of the Holy Roman Empire. It had been traitorous to do business with the kingdoms of Germany and Italy for nearly two hundred years. If a highborn wasn’t hanged immediately for conducting business with the empire, then she’d be exiled from her family and her mark would be up for grabs.
She’d not get it back. Ever.
But that only happened if you weren’t good enough, weren’t sneaky enough to hide your trail from the government and the press. As an independent and neutral country, the Republic of Burgundy could help with that, though it was impossible to obtain a visa to do business in person. Member nations of the commonwealth had long considered Burgundy morally off limits for aiding their enemy in a time of war, at least officially, but the banks in Burgundy were accommodating. Despite their country’s status, they had a solid reputation for protecting the anonymity of account holders on both sides. It was what had kept them out of the war for so long, even though they slept between the two great powers. They had found a niche, they proved useful to both parties, and they would do anything in their power to keep it that way.
Liberté meant secrecy. Liberté meant scandal.
Lila flipped to the end of the file and scanned the transfer data. “You think this money is coming from Chairwoman Wilson.”
“Yes, but not from any account she could be tied to. That’s why I want to hire you. Find the owner of this account. Prove it belongs to Celeste Wilson. She’s been selling the workborn into slavery, and I want her in a holding cell where she belongs. In return, you get to bring down the chairwoman a great deal earlier than you thought possible.”