270 Park Avenue, New York City.
Rain streaked across the floor-to-ceiling windows, soft and steady, the gray afternoon light cutting through the storm clouds that hovered above Manhattan.
Inside the executive boardroom, the air was thick with that peculiar silence that falls right before a financial hurricane.
At the far end of the table, Marianne, Head of Ultra-High-Net-Worth Relations, broke the silence. Her tone was low but sharp.
"They're connecting us to Nova Technologies. Treasury filed a formal request through the OCC this morning — joint query with Homeland Security."
Across from her, Thomas Whitmore, the bank's Chief Risk Officer, adjusted his glasses. He'd been staring at the internal ledger summary for the past ten minutes, hoping the numbers would rearrange themselves into something less incriminating.
