"My heat is broken."
"I know."
"And you're telling me to go."
"I'm telling you I can't help you if you won't let me."
Dante Voss offering help means favors and debts and the weight of owing.
"I don't need your help," I say.
"Your hand is shaking."
I look down. He's right. The tremor is back, small and visible. I close my laptop, set it on the cushion beside my phone, and fold my hands.
"You want to talk about what's in your head," I say. "Let's talk about what's in mine."
"Maya—"
"Marco drives a black Escalade. New York plates. He's been on campus six times this academic year. Once publicly, at Senior Night. The other five times he arrived through the east side of campus, near the fieldhouse. No campus camera coverage on that approach. October eleventh, November twenty-ninth, January fifteenth, late February, and two weeks ago. Never stayed more than ninety minutes."
Dante goes still.
It starts in his fingers, where they stop against the arm of the chair, then moves up through his wrists, his shoulders, his jaw. By the time his eyes go still, I keep going.
"Each visit lines up with something. Property transactions timed within days. Donations to the athletic department. A zoning variance for a property on Wickenden Street held by a shell company called Adriatic Holdings. Incorporated in Delaware. Registered agent shares an address with your family's law firm on Federal Hill."
"Stop."
"And the January visit was the day before a federal subpoena was quietly quashed in the District of Rhode Island. Case number 24-CR-0871. The defendant's name is sealed. The attorney of record is from the same firm."
The refrigerator hums.
Dante is on his feet. He stood when I saidAdriatic Holdings.
"How long," he says, low.
"How long, what?"
"How long have you been building a file on my family?"
"Since I was fourteen."
"Since—"
"You called me a parasite when I was fourteen." I keep my voice level. "I was standing in the hallway of Richard's house. I'd been in the house for a year, and you looked at me like I was nothing."
Silence.
His jaw stops working. His eyes go still on my face. Behind them, the math starts. Fourteen. The word he said. The girl who went upstairs afterward.
"So I went upstairs and sat on the floor of the guest room and opened a notebook. The first entry was one line.Dante Voss. Family has money. Source unclear.I didn't know what I was building. I knew I needed to write something down because if I sat there and did nothing, the word would eat me alive."
His hand comes up, presses the bridge of his nose, then drops.
"The real file started two years later, junior year, after I understood the scale of what I was looking at. The shell companies, the property patterns, the timing."
Six years of serious research. Eight years since the first line in a notebook. The pages kept filling.
