Kenji stared at Adam as if the words themselves had gone mad.
"How can we do that?" he asked. "That would hurt us badly."
"Only if your goal right now is profit," Adam replied.
"If we try to earn from the first conversation, we stay trapped where we are," he added. "A free trial is not charity. It's controlled bait. You set the amount, the timeline, the support, and the review. You let them test you without asking them to gamble blind."
"Give them a small batch. Stay close to the result. Put follow-up on the table before they ask for it. Make the first step easy enough that refusing feels less comfortable than trying."
"Once they test you once, the next conversation stops being imaginary. It becomes real work."
No one answered, so he continued.
"Our goal right now is not profit. Our goal is to stand up as a business. If you want that, then stop asking what earns today and start asking what builds tomorrow. Do whatever is necessary to make the market remember your name in the right way."
This time no one interrupted him.
Adam kept going, and the harder truth in his voice slowly forced them to listen.
"Kenji, you were chosen because you can carry operations when they finally begin moving. Shinju, you were chosen because you see structure, risk, and legal holes faster than the rest. Davin, you were chosen because you can step into a room and keep talking after another man starts losing ground. Sera, you were chosen because even when this place was half-formed, you started treating it like a real office."
"None of that disappears just because four doors closed," Adam said. "If anything, now I know more clearly why my father chose you."
Sera straightened a little at that. Davin looked less defeated. Even Kenji's shoulders lost some of the collapse that had been sitting in them since morning.
The words did not fix everything, but they gave the room some air again.
Kenji looked down for several seconds before speaking again.
"If we do this," he said quietly, "then we really need to believe it works."
"Then believe it because the alternative is already failing," Adam said.
That line pulled a faint, tired breath from Davin that almost counted as a laugh.
Shinju leaned back and said, "A controlled free trial offer with conditions, sample limits, and written follow-up terms... yes. It can be done."
Sera added, "And if they accept, we finally get the first real client proof we need."
Now the room was thinking forward again.
For the first time that day, the office felt like it had direction again.
Before leaving, Adam took out the card, wrote a number on a slip, and placed it on the desk.
"Emergency only," he said. "This is my father's number."
Kenji took it carefully.
Adam left a short while later.
He had barely gone long enough for the office to settle into its new energy when the next disruption arrived.
The front door opened hard.
Bruno stepped in with Rafi and Toma behind him.
He did not look patient or sane.
"Kenji!" he shouted.
The whole office froze.
Kenji stepped out from the inner side and stared at him. "Who are you?"
Bruno smiled without humor. "Call the old man. I know you and him are connected."
Kenji frowned. "What old man?"
The slap landed so hard it turned his face sideways.
Before he could recover, Rafi and Toma moved in behind Bruno. Bruno drew a gun and jammed it up toward Kenji's head.
"Don't act stupid," he said. "Call him."
Now the others came out too.
Davin took one step forward before Rafi shoved him back with a forearm. Sera froze by the desk, both hands locked around the edge hard enough.
"What are you doing?" Shinju shouted.
Bruno swung the gun toward her for one second. "Shut up. I know this is the old man's company."
Something in that line struck her wrong.
And before she could stop herself, the name slipped out.
"Wil..."
Bruno's eyes flashed at once.
"Wil?" he repeated. "So that's the name. You people probably don't even understand what kind of men stand behind that old bastard."
"You all thought this was just business?" Bruno went on. "You have no idea what kind of game you're standing in."
Kenji's mind raced.
He remembered the warning.
My name must not appear anywhere.
For one second another thought rose with it.
Had Wil trapped him?
But right behind that came something else. Opportunity. Trust. The door that old man had opened for him when no one else had.
Could he really betray that now just because fear had finally reached his own throat?
Kenji looked straight at Bruno and said, "There is no old man here. You came to the wrong place."
Bruno punched him in the stomach.
Kenji doubled over, and Rafi and Toma grabbed his arms.
Then Bruno pressed the gun toward Shinju's head.
"Call him," he said, "or this girl dies first."
Shinju shut her eyes for one second.
She knew how to fight in court.
This was not court.
Davin tried to edge sideways again, searching for even one opening, but the gun ended that thought before it could become movement.
Elsewhere, Adam was already moving again.
He needed more money beyond the sixteen million. If the free-trial strategy worked, then the burn rate would only rise. He was still thinking through the next funding move when the keypad phone in his pocket started ringing.
Adam froze for one fraction of a second.
He had told them to use that number only in an emergency.
He pulled the phone out and saw Kenji's office line linked to the call.
At once he answered.
But the voice on the other end was not Kenji's.
"Wil," Bruno said. Then his tone sharpened with satisfaction. "Old man, I've been looking for you for a long time. Come to your office. Right now."
Adam's eyes widened.