{Katarina}
Kat sat at her desk for a long time with Rizzi's note in front of her. Then she did the thing she was good at and started over from scratch.
[Okay. Start over. Throw out everything you thought you knew and rebuild it with Drava on top.]
For weeks she'd had Renzo at the center, the one who wanted her box, leaned on her suppliers, gave the orders. But Renzo was a middleman. A guy working off a balance, one rung up from Samara, scared of the people above him.
Above him was Drava.
So Kat moved Drava to the top and watched everything underneath line up again.
The Black Lotus, in debt to Drava. Samara's mother, in indenture to Drava. Half the operations she'd bumped into all season, paying Drava. Duscari's "debt folk." The polite assessor in town. The Greypass liens getting bought up quietly and legally.
All of it stopped being a dozen separate problems. It was all one thing, and that thing had a name.
