Vaarbewijs4all -

On the exam screen, Van der Heijden was stuck on a collision regulation: Power-driven vessel A sees vessel B to starboard. Who gives way?

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. Not the gentle coastal drizzle the locals joked about, but a hard, slanting downpour that turned the IJsselmeer into a slab of hammered lead. Inside the cramped office of Vaarbewijs4all, the world had shrunk to the glow of two monitors and the ticking of a radiator that hadn't worked since the '90s.

His phone buzzed. Unknown number.

And it sounded like a second chance.

Or stop.

“Someone who knows that a man who cheats for a living still has a conscience. Prove me right, captain. Or prove me wrong—but I promise, your son’s school fees won’t be your biggest problem tomorrow.”

Finn grabbed his coat, Lars’s photo, and a thumb drive with every transaction, every client, every backdoor he’d ever built. Outside, the rain had finally stopped. The IJsselmeer was still as glass. Vaarbewijs4all

He looked at the photo on his desk—his son, Lars, eight years old, missing two front teeth, holding a paper boat he’d folded himself. “Vaarbewijs4all,” Lars had written on the side. “Daddy’s boat school.”

She wasn’t looking at the proctors. She was looking up. Directly into the lens.

He didn’t know who he’d just betrayed or saved. But for the first time in three years, he wasn’t whispering answers into a stranger’s ear. On the exam screen, Van der Heijden was

“You’re not here to sail, meneer. You’re here to point at a screen. I’m the captain. You’re the autopilot.”

Then Van der Heijden whispered, “My children.”

“Take the real exam next week,” Finn said. “You might surprise yourself.” Not the gentle coastal drizzle the locals joked