Milena choked on her sip of plum wine, burgundy droplets spraying across her grease-spotted cuff. "Prison?" Milena hacked, scrubbing her mouth with a scarred knuckle. "Wire fraud? Osian handles the corporate financing! I am the innovator! I’m building solid-state micro-architecture in an era where people still wipe their noses on linen! Do you know what kind of patent portfolio I’ll command by 1985?" Kezia did not blink. She merely leaned further back into her daybed, her fingers buried in Zivko’s thick mountain fur. The cat rumbled like an idling locomotive, entirely indifferent to the frantic woman unraveling three feet away. Three years ago, Kezia had watched old Vancura collapse across an oak desk covered in identical blue-lined ledgers. He had spent eighteen months working twenty-hour shifts, gulping bitter chicory broth, desperately running between maritime customs and regional banking bureaus to out-maneuver Osian Hrubis’s phony bills of lading. Kezia remembered the smell of his cold sweat, the tremor in his hands, and the terrible, hollow thump when his skull struck the floorboards at 4:00 AM. A massive cardiac arrest brought on by panic, sweat, and pointless striving. Right then, over his cooling body, Kezia had made a solemn promise: sweat was for cattle. The moment one ran, one admitted weakness. Victory did not belong to the beast that pulled the plow; it belonged to the patron who owned the shade. "Your patent portfolio won't fetch three kopecks in the women's penal colony at Ostrava," Kezia murmured, examining the mother-of-pearl trim on her fingernails. "The Ministry of Financial Oversight does not differentiate between an engineer and a conspirator when both signatures share the family seal." Milena sprang from the armchair, pacing like a caged terrier across the parquet. Her hair was held together by an elastic band that had lost its spring, greasy locks sticking to her temple. Dark violet rings scooped out the hollows beneath her eyes. Her fingers twitched, constantly miming an absent keyboard. "He said it was bridge funding! He told me the ten million was a dummy holding to buy fabrication tooling!" Milena’s voice hit a sharp, brittle pitch. "We had to import the silicon ingots under false freight tags because the local docks are choked with steel quotas! It’s all stored in Drydock 4! All of it! The etching presses, the circuitry molds—it's genuine technology!" Kezia raised her glass, the ruby liquid catching the amber glow of the hearth Jaro had lit forty minutes prior. "Drydock 4," Kezia repeated softly. "How ambitious." "Yes! Ambitious!" Milena spat, glaring at Kezia’s immaculate emerald silk gown, at her uncreased hem and spotless ivory mules. "While you lay here like a useless, decorative slug, I am bringing the future to this backwater! You don't do anything! Jaro sweeps your floors! He irons your skirts! You produce zero economic output! How are you not disgusted with yourself?" Kezia let out a delicate, airy laugh that sliced through Milena’s rant like a razor through gauze. "Look at you, Milena," Kezia said, tilting her head with mild pity. "You claim to possess the knowledge of a distant century. You hold the secrets of tomorrow. Yet here you stand in 1978: exhausted, broke, hunted by the federal inspectorate, smelling of motor oil and cold mutton. Your skin is gray. Your hands tremble. Your father treats you like an unpaid assembly worker, and your brilliance has bought you nothing but a bed on a cot behind a machine shop." Milena flinched as if slapped. "Meanwhile," Kezia purred, stroking Zivko's broad ear, "I have lifted nothing heavier than a silver teaspoon all week. My husband prepares my poached pears with cinnamon. My sheets are Egyptian cotton, washed in lavender. I will never lift a finger, Milena, and yet I will sleep in silk while you scrub grease in a prison laundry." Milena looked down at her work boots, soles peeling with yellow glue, then back at Kezia’s immaculate hem. Tears of pure frustration cut tracks through the soot on her cheeks. "You're a monster," Milena whispered. "No, darling. I am simply a lady who understands the value of rest," Kezia replied, turning her gaze toward the heavy oak door. "Tomas. You may come out now." Tomas crept out from behind the heavy velvet portiere near the study, clutching a brass-bound notepad. His round face was pale, his pencil poised over the scribbled notation: *Drydock 4 - phony freight / silicon imports*. "Did you record every word?" Kezia asked without looking at him. "Every syllable, Mistress Kolar," Tomas said, straightening his spectacles. His fingers twitched with clerkish excitement. "If Hrubis Sr. is storing the purported hardware at Drydock 4, that’s where the counterfeit shipping manifests will be anchored. If we secure the bill of lading directly from the warehouse master before midnight, Horak will have no choice but to clear Mister Jaro completely." "Jaro is in the cellar checking the plum preserves," Kezia instructed lazily. "Do not disturb him. He becomes terribly tedious when he worries about my state of mind. Go to Drydock 4 yourself, Tomas. Confirm what is inside. Take no risks, exert no unnecessary speed, and do not tear your coat." "Right away." Tomas bowed stiffly, cast one vindictive glare at the hollow, slumped figure of Milena, and scurried out the side entrance into the fog. Milena stumbled toward the front foyer like a sleepwalker, mumbling broken formulas and dates, completely shattered by the realization that her historic genius had made her nothing more than her father’s disposable dupe. Kezia stayed precisely where she was, closing her eyes as the mantel clock ticked toward ten. Thirty minutes crawled past. The manor was quiet, save for the crackle of birch logs and the distant, rhythmic hum of Jaro organizing copper cookware two floors below. Peace settled like a warm blanket over her lap. Then the telephone in the corridor shrieked. It didn't ring with its usual polite chime. The bell clanged with a frantic, stuttering violence. Zivko lifted his heavy head, ears flattening in irritation. Kezia sighed. "Must everything be so noisy?" She didn't get up. She waited until the fifth ring, expecting Jaro to answer from the kitchen extension, but the basement door must have muffled the noise. Grudgingly, with an expression of profound martyrdom, Kezia slid her feet into her velvet mules, walked the eight paces to the mahogany credenza, and lifted the heavy black receiver. "Speak quietly," she commanded. "Kezia!" Tomas’s voice came through the line in a strangled, breathless shriek. Wind whistled violently behind him, punctuated by the metallic clatter of an outdoor phone kiosk. "Tomas. Control your tone." "There's nothing here!" he sobbed, the receiver shaking so hard against his teeth she could hear the rattle. "Drydock 4 is empty! It's a ghost company! There are no silicon molds, no presses, no imports! It’s just rows of empty rotting crates and three dozen barrels of salt brine! The Hrubises never manufactured a single component! It was never tech—it’s pure phantom paper!" "Then Osian's entire syndicate collapses under its own rot," Kezia said smoothly. "Return to the manor and have tea." "I can't!" Tomas wailed, the line suddenly overwhelmed by the crunch of heavy gravel outside the booth. "They knew! Osian knew Milena would break! His men were already waiting here to torch the building!" A deafening *CRACK* exploded through the earpiece—the unmistakable sound of an iron tire iron slamming into safety glass. "They see me!" Tomas screamed, his voice dissolving into static. "They’re smashing through the glass—they’re—"

The Futile Hustle