“Claire,” Sarah said without greeting. “I just ran that preliminary search on Vanguard Sterling.”

“What did you find?” I asked, sitting up in my chair.

“The entity was registered three weeks ago,” Sarah said. “The registered agent is a virtual office in Mayfair, but the actual ownership trail is a maze.”

“How deep does it go?” I asked.

“It leads to three different shell companies registered in the Cayman Islands,” Sarah said. “And the bank account they listed for the wire transfer has zero assets.”

“The bank account has zero assets?” I asked, gripping the phone tighter.

“Zero,” Sarah confirmed. “It’s a clearing account that was opened with a hundred-pound deposit, which was immediately withdrawn to pay the monthly maintenance fee.”

I stood up and walked to the window.

Below, the headlights on Michigan Avenue formed a steady, crawling river of yellow and red.

“If the account is empty, how is Serena promising Adrian a thirty-million-dollar injection?” I asked.

“She isn’t using her own money, and she isn’t using London money,” Sarah said. “She’s using the reputation of Vanguard Sterling to secure short-term bridge loans from domestic lenders.”