Javier already has Leo face-down on the lawn, pinning him with one knee pressed against his back.

Marco arrived at eight-fifteen.

He was dressed well, as always — jacket pressed, shoes clean, the kind of careful presentation that Dante had once read as professionalism and now read differently.

Dante was already at the desk when Caruso brought him in.

Leo was standing near the window.

Mia was seated in the chair by the far wall, a coffee cup in her hand, watching the door.

Marco looked around the room and smiled.

"Big crowd for a Monday morning."

"Sit down, Marco," Dante said.

Marco sat.

He set his phone on the arm of the chair — face up, screen visible.

A small habit.

Dante had never noticed it before.

Now he wondered how many calls had been made from that chair, from that phone, with that screen angled just enough to catch a notification without anyone else seeing.

"Mia said there was trouble at the party," Marco said.

"Javier?"

"Javier was part of it." Dante folded his hands on the desk.

"Tell me about the Geneva account."

The room went very still.

Marco's expression didn't collapse.

It shifted — a small tightening around the eyes, a fractional pause before he spoke.

A man deciding which version of the truth to try first.

"I'm not sure what you mean," he said.

"The account registered to a holding company called Veltro Partners.

The one that received four transfers in the last eleven months, each routed through a property management firm in Lisbon." Dante looked at him steadily.

"That Geneva account."

Marco looked at Leo.

Then at Mia.

Then back at Dante.

"Someone's been feeding you bad information," he said.

"I don't know who, but—"

"The logs are on the desk," Dante said.

"Fourteen months of access records.

Your name appears on forty-one separate file requests that have no corresponding meeting, no corresponding task, and no corresponding authorization." He pushed a single sheet across the desk.

"Pick one.

Explain it to me."

Marco looked at the sheet.

He didn't pick it up.

"I want to call my attorney," he said.

"You can do that." Dante leaned back.

"After you answer one question."

Marco waited.

"Was it only you?"

Something moved across Marco's face.

Not guilt — he was past guilt.

It was calculation.

The look of a man deciding how much his silence was still worth.

"Yes," he said.

"Only me."

"You're certain."

"Yes."

Leo pushed off the window.

"Then why did the Lisbon firm have two authorized signatories on the account?"

Marco said nothing.

"The second signature," Leo said, "is a name we don't recognize.

Which means either you created a false identity, or someone else is on this with you." He moved closer.

"Which is it?"

Marco's jaw tightened.

He looked at Dante.

"I want my attorney."

"Call him," Dante said.

"And while you wait for him, I want you to understand something." He stood up slowly.

"I'm not angry, Marco.

I want you to hear that clearly.

I'm not angry.

What I am is finished." He walked around the desk.

"Nine years.

You sat at my table.

You were in the room when my children were born.

You carried my father's coffin." He stopped in front of him.

"And for the last year, you have been selling everything I built to a man in Geneva who doesn't know my name."

Marco looked up at him.

For a moment — just a moment — something real crossed his face.

"He knew your name," Marco said quietly.

"That was the problem.

He already knew everything.

I wasn't selling it to him.

I was trying to control what he already had."

The room was completely silent.

"That's a different story," Dante said.

"I know how it sounds."

"Then explain it."

Marco looked at his phone.

Then at the door.

Then at Dante.

"Sutter came to me first," he said.

"Fourteen months ago.

He already had the port contracts, the shell structure, three years of transfer records.

He didn't buy it from me.

He had it." He leaned forward.

"He told me that if I cooperated — gave him updates, confirmed what he already had — he would keep it contained.

If I didn't, he would hand the full file to a regulatory body in three countries simultaneously."

Dante looked at him for a long time.

"You were being blackmailed," he said.

"Yes."

"And you didn't come to me."

"He told me that if I told you, the file went out within twenty-four hours." Marco's voice was steady now — the steadiness of a man who had been carrying something very heavy for a very long time and had finally set it down.

"I believed him.

I still believe him."

Dante turned and walked back to the desk.

"Where is the file now?" he said.

"With Sutter.

Or whoever he works for.

I don't know the full structure."

"But you have contact information."

"Yes."

Dante sat down.

He looked at Leo, then at Mia, then back at Marco.

"Then here is what happens next," he said.