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Greco made a note.

Demitri stood behind my chair. His hand settled on the back of my chair. The heat of his fingers reached me through the fabric.

“Did your father ever ask you to carry documents for him?” Greco asked.

“No.”

“Did he ever appear nervous to you?”

“Not until the end.”

“When exactly?”

“A few weeks before he died.”

“What changed?”

“He stopped sleeping. He burned so many documents and was always watching the street.” My throat tightened. “I thought he was paranoid. Then he put the rosary around my neck and told me to run if anyone came looking for it.”

Something shifted in Greco’s expression.

“You had no idea what your father was involved in?”

The question caught me off guard, though I understood why she asked it. She was not only measuring my grief. She was deciding whether I belonged on the same side of the table as the men in those files.

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

I looked down at the photograph of my father standing beside the two Coccico men.

“No,” I repeated. The word sounded smaller the second time.

For one sharp moment, I wondered what I had missed. The late nights. The locked drawers. The calls he ended when I entered the room. Perhaps the truth had always been there, hidden inside ordinary moments I had never thought to question.

Silence settled over the table.

Demitri’s hand moved from the back of my chair to my shoulder. His grip was firm, grounding me without offering false comfort.

Greco closed the folder. “You’ve given me enough to prove the trafficking network exists and that the Coccicos financed it. I’m almost afraid to ask what else is on that drive.”

“Enough to damage every institution that protected them,” Atlas replied. “Bank records, shipping manifests, private messages and the names of police officers, judges, government officials and priests.”

Greco held his gaze.

“Damage is not the same as conviction. Cases like this can take years. Appeals, missing witnesses, destroyed evidence. You could spend a decade waiting for these men to reach a courtroom.”

Atlas was thoughtful for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “If we cripple the network, we buy time. We close the routes, freeze the money and force every man connected to them out into the open.”

Greco leaned back. “This is bigger than one cartel and one family. You know that.”

“I know exactly what it could cost.”

A quiet challenge passed between them.

Greco had spent years chasing men protected by money, offices and uniforms. Atlas had spent his life surviving outside the law those men claimed to serve. Neither trusted the other. Yet both understood they needed each other.

“This investigation could end my career,” Greco said. “It will, in all possibility, get me killed.”