Anadiplosis

Anadiplosis repeats the last word or phrase of one clause at the start of the next, so each step of a sentence begins where the previous one ended.

The delay cost money. Money the department did not have.

The word that closes the first clause opens the second. The effect is a handhold: the reader is passed from one statement to the next without a gap, and the sequence feels like consequence rather than list.

Extended, it becomes a chain, and the chain reads as a causal argument whether or not the logic is sound:

Fear leads to silence. Silence leads to habit. Habit leads to a department where nobody writes anything down.

Which is worth knowing in both directions. Anadiplosis is persuasive precisely because the linking looks like reasoning, so it is the figure to reach for when a character is building a case, and the figure to distrust when someone is building one on you.

Two working limits. It is conspicuous, so one chain per scene is plenty. And the repeated word has to be worth the repetition — a chain built on thing or situation draws attention to a weak noun and holds it there.

Keep it apart from its neighbours: anaphora repeats at the start of each clause, epistrophe at the end of each, and anadiplosis straddles the join.