I read every word of his new beginning, and I let it sharpen me, and I did not look away.

Chapter 7 — The Laundromat

On the laptop between us, Roman’s empire glowed in rows of numbers, and the numbers told a story he did not know anyone was reading.

Offshore transfers.

Vendors that did not exist.

Contracts inflated to three times their honest value.

Charitable donations that left the company as tax-deductible virtue and landed, days later, in accounts quietly linked to Larissa’s brother.

My father had built Ashby Medical Logistics with his own hands and his whole life, to move medicine and equipment to hospitals that needed them — an honest business doing an honest, necessary thing.