Chapter 139: Boss...I Found Something

About the organization that injected her.

About the partnership that made it all possible.

About revenge that had been waiting twenty-four years to be claimed.

Marco picked up his phone and called Dimitri.

It rang three times.

"Marco." Dimitri’s voice was controlled, but Marco heard the edge underneath. "It’s late. This better be important."

"Boss." Marco’s voice was rough from exhaustion. "I found something. About the pharmaceutical angle. And..." He stopped, chose his words carefully. "About your mother’s case."

Silence.

Long, heavy silence.

Then Dimitri’s voice, very quiet: "What about my mother’s case?"

"I need to show you everything. The records. The connections. All of it. Can I come to you?"

"No." Dimitri’s voice was hard. "Send everything to me, I want to go through it myself."

"Boss, this is... this is big. Your father....."

"I know what my father is," Dimitri interrupted, his voice turning cold. "Just send me everything. Now."

"Sending it now. You should have it in five minutes."

"Good."

The line went dead.

Marco sat in his office, staring at his screen, feeling the weight of what he’d just done.

He’d just told Dimitri Valentino that his father’s illegal pharmaceutical company had partnered with the organization that killed his mother.

That his father’s business dealings had led directly to his mother’s murder.

That the virus that killed her came from research his father had helped fund.

Marco sent the encrypted files.

All of it.

And then he waited.

Because he knew what was coming.

Dimitri was going to process this information.

Was going to see the evidence.

Was going to realize that his mother’s death wasn’t just random violence.

It was consequence.

Blowback from his fahtehr’s choice to partner with monsters.

And then....

Then Dimitri was going to have to decide what to do about it.

How to get revenge on The Covenant.

How to access their organization.

How to make them pay for what they’d done to his mother.

And the only path to that revenge ran straight through Antonio Valentino.

Which meant war.

Father against son.

Don against heir.

The old empire against the new.

Marco closed his eyes, felt exhaustion finally catching up to him.

He’d just lit a fuse that would burn down everything.

And there was no putting it out now.

***

POV: DIMITRI

Dimitri sat in his office, his laptop open in front of him, waiting for Marco’s files to download.

Eve was asleep in their bedroom, three doors down.

The penthouse was quiet except for the hum of the city forty floors below.

The files finished downloading, Dimitri entered the password and opened the folder and started reading.

PROMETHEUS LABORATORIES.

He read the company overview. The registration in the Cayman Islands. The shell companies hiding ownership.

The trail leading back to Antonio Valentino.

His father owned an illegal pharmaceutical company.

Dimitri’s expression didn’t change.

He’d suspected Antonio operated in gray areas. Had assumed there were businesses Dimitri didn’t know about.

But confirmation was different from suspicion.

He kept reading.

The production inventory made his jaw tighten.

Methamphetamine. Opioids. Neurotoxins. Cardiac arrest inducers.

Substances designed to addict, to control, to kill.

He found the record showing that Isabella’s medication had come from this company.

An experimental, banned substance designed to create dependency. ℴ

Antonio had been poisoning Lorenzo Russo’s daughter for eight years with a drug from his own illegal lab.

Dimitri filed that information away, kept reading.

Then he reached the research files.

Viral Development Program.

Human Test Subjects.

Biological Weapons.

Dimitri went very still.

He read through the documentation with the same clinical detachment the researchers had used when writing it.

Prisoners injected with experimental viruses. Monitored as they deteriorated. Autopsied when they died.

Pages and pages of human suffering reduced to data points.

His father had funded this.

Had built the facilities where this happened.

Had profited from weapons designed to kill thousands.

Dimitri’s hands were steady on the keyboard.

But inside, something cold and terrible was taking shape.

He clicked through more files.

Found the partnership agreement.

Prometheus Laboratories + The Covenant.

Joint Research Collaboration.

Viral Weapons Development.

Duration: 2008-2010.

The Covenant.

The organization that had kidnapped his mother.

Antonio had been partners with them.

Dimitri read the transaction records. The research agreements. The facility sharing arrangements.

For two years, Antonio and The Covenant had worked together.

Building biological weapons.

Testing them on human subjects.

Selling them to anyone with enough money.

A mutually profitable arrangement.

Until it wasn’t.

Dimitri found the communications from August 2010.

The partnership collapsing.

Antonio trying to cut out The Covenant.

Their threats of retaliation.

Dimitri sat very still, staring at the timeline.

His mother hadn’t been killed randomly.

Hadn’t been collateral damage in someone else’s war.

She’d been murdered deliberately.

Retaliation for Antonio ending the partnership.

A message written in his mother’s blood: This is what happens when you betray us.

And the virus they’d used to kill her....

The virus that had made her suffer for six days while Dimitri sat beside her bed naming birds....

Dimitri closed his eyes.

Saw his mother’s face. Pale, fevered and dying.

Heard her voice, weak and breaking: "Tell me about the birds, sweetheart. I love hearing you name them."

Remembered holding her hand. Watching her fade. Blaming himself for not being able to save her.

And all along...

All along, it had been his father’s fault.

Dimitri opened his eyes.

Read more files.

Current intelligence on The Covenant showed them still operational.

Still one of the largest criminal organizations in Europe.

They’d been responsible for outbreaks in some major countries that led to the death of thousand of people.

And all these traced back to The Covenant’s weapons program.

And they were untouchable because no one could get to them.

Except....

Except someone with deep enough connections to access their organization.

Someone who’d partnered with them before.

Someone like his father.

Dimitri sat back, the pieces clicking into place.

The only way to get to them, to make them pay.....was through his father’s connections.

Which meant Dimitri needed his father’s position.