That was the first thing Alessandro Moretti noticed when he stepped into the pressing room and found a three-year-old girl standing on a plastic chair, both tiny hands wrapped around the handle of a steaming iron, desperately trying to flatten the sleeve of his white dress shirt.

By 5:00 AM, the estate had returned to a tense, unnatural quiet. The shattered gates were already being welded shut by a rapid-response maintenance crew, and the blood in the courtyard had been washed clean away.

Down in the subterranean holding cells, the air was damp and smelled of concrete and old iron.

Alessandro walked down the narrow corridor, his boots echoing off the stone walls. He stopped in front of Cell 4.

Dante Vance sat on a metal bench inside, his right shoulder heavily bandaged, his charcoal suit ruined and stained with dried blood. When he saw Alessandro approach, he looked up, a bitter, desperate smirk twisting his pale lips.

"So," Dante chuckled dryly, wincing as the movement pulled his wound. "You handled Marcus. I suppose I underestimated your paranoia, Boss."

"It isn't paranoia when the rats are chewing through the floorboards, Dante," Alessandro said calmly, resting his hands on the cold steel bars.

"What happens now?" Dante asked, staring straight ahead. "A bullet to the back of the head? A shallow grave outside the city limits? We both know how this ends."

"No," Alessandro replied softly. "A bullet is too quick for what you did. You used poison. You preyed on a sick woman and terrorized a child. You broke the fundamental code of this house."

Alessandro pulled a manila folder from under his arm and slid it through the narrow slot at the bottom of the cell door.

Dante glanced down at it suspiciously. "What is this?"

"Federal indictments," Alessandro said evenly. "Financial fraud, racketeering, conspiracy, and attempted murder. Every offshore account you set up to skim from the Moretti syndicate has been traced, frozen, and cross-referenced with federal investigators who happen to owe me several favors."

Dante’s face instantly lost all color. The smug defiance vanished, replaced by sheer panic. "You... you’re turning me over to the Feds? You’ll go down with me, Alessandro! My ledgers implicate your operations too!"

"Your ledgers were audited and rewritten by my legal team three hours ago," Alessandro said with a cold, unyielding smile. "Every illegal transaction has been cleanly severed and redirected to point exclusively at your personal shell corporations. As of sunrise, you aren't my consigliere anymore, Dante. You are an independent corporate criminal who embezzled from his employers and tried to cover his tracks with heavy metal poisoning."

Dante lunged forward, grabbing the steel bars with his good hand, his eyes wide with absolute terror. "No! Alessandro, please! You can't give me to the Feds! They'll lock me away for the rest of my life! Just put a bullet in me, please!"