Greco Maritime Investments did not want to be found. Amara discovered that before nine o’clock.
The company was registered in Malta. Its directors were nominees, its ownership layered beneath two holding companies and a trust whose public records revealed almost nothing useful. There were legitimate reasons to structure companies that way. Asset protection. Cross-border investment. Tax planning. There were also illegitimate reasons, and the documents themselves rarely volunteered which category they belonged to.
Ordinarily, that kind of opacity irritated her. Tonight it interested her. People did not spend this much money hiding ordinary things.
She worked backward. Greco Maritime had received payments from Adeyemi Port Holdings at irregular intervals for years. Some were described as equipment purchases. Others as advisory fees. Several had descriptions so vague they might as well have said do not ask questions. Amara asked questions.
By 8:37 p.m. she had a name: Dante Greco.
The search results were thin. Italian-Nigerian heritage. Private investments. Shipping interests. Infrastructure. A photograph taken outside a conference in Milan where he appeared to be looking past the camera rather than at it. No interviews. No lifestyle articles. No visible appetite for publicity.
Then another name appeared beneath an archived industry profile.
Matteo Greco.
Amara clicked.
The translated article described the Greco family’s involvement in shipping and construction across West Africa. Matteo had arrived in Nigeria in the late seventies. He had built businesses in Lagos. He had worked closely with Adekunle Adeyemi. He had died in 1994. Amara stopped scrolling.
She searched the date, then the cause.
Robbery.
The word sat on the screen with the dead simplicity of old news. She looked again at the payments between Adeyemi Group and Greco Maritime. A dead business partner. His adult son. Millions moving quietly between two families decades later. That was not enough to form a conclusion.
It was enough to form a question. Amara opened a fresh document and typed at the top:
WHAT HAPPENED TO MATTEO GRECO?
Then she went looking for Kolade. His office was smaller than she expected for the man effectively running the company. A whiteboard covered one wall with project timelines. There were no awards on the shelves, no photographs with politicians, no visible evidence that he needed visitors to understand his importance. The only framed picture was of an unfinished bridge. She knocked once.
Kolade looked up from his laptop. “You’re still here.”
“So are you.”
“Occupational defect.”
“I found something.”
He closed the laptop.
“Greco Maritime Investments.”
His reaction lasted less than a second, but she saw it.
Recognition.
Amara sat without being invited. “You know the name.”
Kolade’s face settled again. “Where did you find it?”
“In your foreign-exchange records.”
“How much?”
“Enough that I stopped treating it as coincidence.”
She placed the notebook on his desk. “Who is Dante Greco?”
Kolade leaned back.
“Matteo Greco’s son.”
“I know that much.”
A silence opened between them.
“Why has Adeyemi Group been sending money to him?”
“I didn’t know we were.”
That answer interested her more than any confession would have.
“You run the company.”
“I run parts of the company.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
He looked toward the dark glass behind her. “My father still controls more than people realise.”
“Tell me about Matteo.”
Kolade was quiet long enough that Amara knew he was deciding how much truth to give.
“What did you find?”
“Business partner. Came to Nigeria in the seventies. Worked with your father. Died in a robbery in 1994.”
Kolade’s expression tightened.
“The robbery story is not the whole story.”
Amara did not move.
“My father and Matteo built the original company together,” he continued. “Something happened between them in the early nineties. According to my father, Matteo left after a financial dispute.”
“He died weeks later.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t believe the robbery.”
Kolade’s eyes met hers. “No.”
“Why?”
He did not answer immediately. Instead he opened the drawer beside him and rested his hand on something inside without taking it out.
“Three years ago, I found records my father had no reason to keep if the story was as simple as he told me.”
“What records?”
“Letters. Payment instructions. Correspondence.”
“With whom?”
Kolade looked at her. Beneath the exhaustion was fear.
“Men my father should never have been corresponding with.”
Amara felt the investigation alter shape.
“About Matteo?”
“Yes.”
She closed her notebook.
“Then I need to see them.”
Kolade’s hand remained inside the drawer.
“You said you wanted an independent audit,” she added. “Independence does not mean you decide which evidence is too dangerous for me.”
He gave a slow nod, as if the sentence had landed somewhere beyond the work.
Finally he took out a small brass key and placed it between them.
“I’ll take you to Apapa tomorrow.”