He did not even sway.

Instead, he grabbed my upper arm, his grip firm but not bruising.

“Let me go,” I whispered, pulling back against his weight.

“If you walk out that door, your father does not leave Rome alive,” Matteo said.

The coldness in his tone stopped the air in my lungs.

I looked past him through the glass to the sunlit gravel driveway.

A black Mercedes sat idling near the gate, its exhaust rising in the morning heat.

“He took your money,” I said, my chest heaving. “He can pay you back.”

“He cannot,” Matteo said. “The interest alone is more than he will earn in three lifetimes.”

“He is my father.”

“And he is a dead man if you run,” Matteo said.

He looked over my shoulder toward the long hallway behind me.

I turned my head slowly.

My father was walking down the corridor, escorted by two men in dark suits.

His head was bowed, his hands jammed deep into his coat pockets.

He did not look at me as he passed the archway.