Chapter 279

The first thing Adrian noticed was the screen.

It hung on the wall behind Dante’s desk, large enough to command the entire room. The image was grainy around the edges, but there was nothing unclear about what it showed.

Emilia.

She sat in a chair in a room, with her wrists secured behind her back. Ethan stood beside her, one hand gripping her shoulder, and the other holding a gun against the side of her face.

The barrel pressed into her skin.

Emilia’s face was pale. Her eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the camera, and although she was trying desperately to keep herself composed, Adrian could see the tension in her jaw.

He knew that expression.

This was Emilia trying not to give the man threatening her the satisfaction of seeing her afraid.

Adrian’s fingers curled slowly at his sides.

Across the room, Dante watched him take it in. "Impressive, isn’t it?"

Adrian didn’t answer.

"The technology is a little outdated, I’ll admit. Ethan insists on keeping things simple. Apparently, simple is reliable." Dante gestured toward the screen. "Though I suppose you don’t particularly care about the equipment."

Adrian looked at the gun pressed against Emilia’s face. "No," he said quietly. "I don’t."

Dante smiled.

"Let her go," Adrian said.

Dante’s smile faded by a fraction. "You’re in no position to make demands."

"Neither are you."

"Am I not?"

Dante turned his head toward the screen.

Ethan shifted his grip on Emilia’s shoulder. She flinched when the gun moved against her skin.

Adrian took one step forward.

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to cross the room, put Dante on the floor, and find a way to get Emilia out. His men were positioned around the building. The property was surrounded. The entrances were covered, and every vehicle leaving the grounds would be intercepted.

He had enough people outside to dismantle Dante’s operation before sunrise. But none of that mattered while Emilia was on that screen.

Dante had made certain of it.

"Careful," Dante murmured. "I would hate for you to do something impulsive. You’ve always been so proud of your ability to think several steps ahead."

Adrian stopped.

Dante’s eyes gleamed.

"Tell me what you want."

"Straight to business." Dante gave a small, approving nod. "I knew there was a reason I always found you tolerable, Adrian. You understand that everything has a price."

"Everyone has a price," Adrian replied. "The question is whether you can afford yours."

For the first time, Dante’s expression hardened. Then he laughed. Not loudly. Not because Adrian had amused him.

He laughed as if he had been waiting years to hear those words from the man standing opposite him.

"Still arrogant. Even now."

"Still wasting time."

"Then let’s not waste any more." Dante walked toward the desk.

It was a broad, dark piece of furniture, its polished surface almost entirely bare except for a leather folder, a glass of water, and a pen positioned neatly beside a stack of documents.

The arrangement looked deliberate.

Adrian noticed that immediately.

Dante had not brought him here to talk.

He had prepared for this.

He had prepared for it so thoroughly that Adrian suspected the meeting had been the point of everything that had happened that evening.

The missing necklace. Selena’s abduction. Emilia’s arrival. Ethan’s betrayal. All of it had led here.

To this room, to this desk, and to a stack of papers that Dante expected Adrian to sign.

Dante pulled out the chair behind his desk but did not sit. Instead, he rested one hand on its back and studied Adrian.

"Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?"

"I imagine you’re about to tell me."

"Years."

Dante’s gaze drifted toward the screen again.

"I waited years for this. I just never thought my daughter would be the one to bring you to me."

Something inside Adrian went cold.

Dante said it with a strange sort of fondness, as if Emilia had done something wonderful for him. As if her fear, her mother’s captivity, and the gun pressed to her face were merely the final arrangements for a long-awaited reunion.

Adrian kept his expression still. "Don’t talk about her as if she’s an object you delivered to me."

Dante’s eyes returned to his.

"Isn’t that precisely what she is in this room? The reason you came. The reason you’re standing there trying to decide whether you can afford to defy me."

Adrian said nothing.

"Don’t look so offended. You and I both know how this works. If she were an ordinary woman to you, you wouldn’t have brought an army to my doorstep."

"She’s not a bargaining chip."

"No?" Dante leaned forward. "Then prove it." He tapped the folder. "Sit down."

Adrian remained standing.

Dante sighed. "I was hoping we could avoid the theatrics."

"Release Emilia and Selena. Then we can talk."

"No."

The answer came so quickly that Adrian’s jaw tightened.

Dante pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the desk. "Sit."

Adrian looked at the screen once more.

Emilia had turned her face slightly away from the gun. Her eyes moved toward the camera, and for one fleeting second, Adrian thought she was looking directly at him.

He knew she couldn’t see him.

Still, he held her gaze through the screen.

Adrian finally pulled out the chair and sat down.

Dante’s smile returned. "Much better."

"Get to the point."

"Very well." Dante opened the folder and removed the first document. "Belmont Oil." He slid it across the desk.

Adrian glanced at the heading.

The document was a proposed transfer of ownership, drafted in formal legal language and accompanied by several supporting schedules. The names of subsidiary companies appeared across the attached pages, alongside references to assets, accounts, and controlling interests.

Adrian read the first page without touching it. Then the second. By the third, the coldness in his stomach had become something sharper.

Dante wasn’t asking for a portion of the business.

He wanted all of it.

Every trace of Belmont Oil was to be transferred into his name, along with the companies operating beneath it, the associated holdings, and the money attached to those entities.

The proposal reached further than a simple change of ownership. It included the movement of funds between accounts, the transfer of shares, and the assignment of control over the companies’ assets.

It was an attempt to place the entire structure in Dante’s hands. And to put Adrian’s signature beneath it.

Adrian lifted his eyes. "You’re out of your mind."

Dante looked almost disappointed. "That is not a particularly useful opening to a negotiation."

"This isn’t a negotiation."

"Of course it is."

"You want me to transfer an entire business empire to you."

"An empire that has been very comfortable without me."

"Belmont Oil is not yours."

"Not yet."

Adrian pushed the documents away.

Dante did not reach for them. Instead, he folded his hands on the desk and regarded Adrian with patient amusement.

"Your father built Belmont into something extraordinary. He understood the value of a name, the importance of strategic alliances, and the necessity of protecting one’s interests. You inherited all of that, along with a rather inconvenient sense of moral superiority."

"My father would never have handed his business to a man like you."

"Your father is not here."

The words landed with deliberate cruelty.

Adrian’s face did not change, but his fingers pressed against the underside of the desk.

"That struck a nerve."

"You’re confusing restraint with weakness."

"And you’re confusing a dead man’s legacy with a moral obligation."

Dante reached for another document.

"Your father made mistakes. He trusted the wrong people. He allowed certain arrangements to continue because it was easier to preserve his reputation than to examine what was happening beneath it."

"Don’t pretend you knew him." Adrian warned him.

"I knew enough."

"No. You knew what you could take from him."

For a moment, Dante’s expression lost its amusement. Then he placed the second document on top of the first.

"Your father had a talent for collecting things he couldn’t keep. Money, property, and influence." He tapped the page. "You inherited his businesses, but you have spent years pretending you inherited none of his mistakes."

Adrian looked down.

This document concerned the transfer of shares in several companies connected to Belmont’s wider holdings. Some were legitimate businesses. Others had appeared in investigations Adrian’s team had been conducting for months.

The same corporate structures that had surfaced in connection with the Blackwood investigation.

Dante had arranged the paperwork so that the transfers would consolidate control under his name.

If Adrian signed, Dante would gain more than wealth. He would gain access to a network of businesses that could be used to move money, conceal ownership, and distance him from the very transactions Adrian had been investigating.

Dante wanted the keys to the machinery that could protect him. And he wanted Adrian to hand them over willingly.

"You’re trying to erase the trail," Adrian said.

"I’m trying to put my affairs in order."

"By acquiring companies you’ve spent years using to hide stolen money?"