I look back at Dante. “Put it down.”
His fingers tighten around the glass. “No.”
The corridor goes still. Luca moves one degree.
I don’t signal him. Not yet.
Dante looks almost pleased by his own refusal. “You wanted records. Witnesses. Here they are.” His eyes flick to Marco. To Salvatore. To the guards. “Good. Let them hear it.”
“They will,” I reply.
“You stole my life.”
“No.”
His mouth twists. “No?”
“You wasted it.”
The words hit hard. Dante’s face changes. For one second, I see the boy beneath the man. The boy outside Isabelle’s locked bedroom door. The boy I did not know how to hold without turning him into something useful. The boy who learned early that grief becomes leverage if carried loudly enough.
Then the boy vanishes. The man remains.
“You gave her everything,” he says. “The file. The proof. My confession. You think I don’t know?”
Evie’s face changes by a fraction. Calculation.
So he knows. Good. Then this ends tonight.
“How?” I ask.
Dante laughs once. “You still think your house loves you enough to keep secrets?”
“Name.”
He smiles. There it is—the last small power of a cornered man. “No.”
I nod. Marco steps away from my right side and leaves the corridor without a word.
Dante watches him go, his smile weakening. He understands that refusal did not preserve the source. It only widened the damage.
“You gave her my life,” he says, turning back to me.
“I gave her the truth,” I say.
“You gave her a weapon.”
“Yes.”
“Against your own son.”
“Yes.”
His eyes flash. “I killed him because of her.”
The corridor stills. Evie doesn’t move. Dante looks at her now, really looks, and the hatred in it is old enough to have rehearsed itself in exile.
“Because your father thought he could hand you over and still keep judging me,” he says. “He sat across from me like I was something rotten he had to tolerate for territory. Like I should be grateful to be allowed near his precious daughter.”
