“I knew someone inside Romano Holdings was leaking our shipping manifests to the syndicate,” Adrian said. “I’ve known for three weeks.”

I stared at the back of Adrian’s head, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“You’re bluffing,” Marcus said, though his smirk faltered slightly.

“I needed to know how deep the rot went,” Adrian continued, his voice steady and conversational. “I needed to know which board member was signing off on the altered container weights.”

He glanced back at me for a fraction of a second.

“And then Emily brought me the ledger analysis this afternoon,” Adrian said.

My mind raced back to the spreadsheets I had compiled, the tiny three-percent discrepancies in the offshore transport accounts.

“The numbers didn’t lie,” Adrian said, looking back at Julian. “Only three people had the administrative clearance to authorize those specific tax exemptions. You were one of them, Julian.”

Julian’s flashlight beam flickered as his hand trembled slightly.

“I didn’t think you’d spot those,” Julian muttered, his voice losing its confidence.

“I didn’t,” Adrian said. “Emily did. She found the digital signature you tried to scrub from the system.”