Dante took the sealed envelope from his father's counsel at 6:17 p.m. in a private conference room with no windows.
He did not steal it. He did not need to. He used his name, his position, and a tone that had ended acquisition negotiations across three continents. The lawyer, a narrow man with cautious hands, tried to insist that the document was addressed to Otavio Vasconcelos. Dante asked whether the firm wished to explain in writing how it had accepted biological material from a minor through a fabricated medical service without the mother's consent.
The lawyer stopped insisting.
Now the envelope lay on the passenger seat of Dante's car like a living thing.
He drove himself, refusing the driver, refusing security, refusing the buffer that usually stood between his body and the world
