Chapter 244: Antonio Called Dimitri

POV: DIMITRI

Dimitri woke to the sound of his phone buzzing insistently on the nightstand.

He’d been asleep for maybe an hour, Eve sprawled across his chest, her breathing deep and even. After what had felt like days of needing her, needing to touch her, needing to feel her alive beneath him, exhaustion had finally claimed them both.

The phone continued buzzing.

Dimitri carefully moved Eve’s arm, slid out of bed without waking her, and padded naked to the window to answer.

Unknown number. But the timing....early morning, insistent, after The Covenant situation....meant only one thing.

Antonio.

He answered on the fourth ring.

"Padre." Father.

"I assume you’ve seen the news,

"I have."

"Covenant facility." A pause."Industrial accident, they’re saying. Gas line rupture. Very unfortunate."

"Very," Dimitri agreed neutrally.

A silence stretched between them. Long enough to be deliberate.

Dimitri knew this tactic. He’d been raised by it. Antonio would wait until the other person filled the silence with something incriminating.

So he said nothing.

"Forty-seven people," Antonio said finally. "Burned alive or buried under concrete. The whole facility leveled." Another pause. "What do you know about it?"

"What would I know about a pharmaceutical accident in New Jersey?"

"Don’t do that," Antonio said, and the smoothness cracked slightly at the edges. "Don’t give me a question for a question. I raised you. I know how you operate."

"Then you know I don’t discuss speculation."

"This isn’t speculation." Antonio’s voice dropped."I have contacts. Good ones. People who’ve been watching that facility for years. Waiting for the right moment." He paused. "And then someone got there first."

Dimitri kept his expression neutral even though there was no one to see him.

"I don’t know what you’re referring to," he said.

"Don’t you?" Antonio’s voice was dangerously quiet now. "That facility, Dimitri. You know what was happening inside it. You know what they were building. You know why that place needed to disappear from the face of the earth."

"It was a pharmaceutical company," Dimitri said.

"It was a graveyard," Antonio snapped. "It was the place that murdered your mother. It was the place that turned her into a test subject and let her die while I did nothing. While I was too blind, too stupid, too busy building an empire to know what was happening under my own nose."

Dimitri was silent.

This was unexpected. Antonio never talked about Claire. Not like this. Not with that kind of raw damage in his voice.

"I’ve been building toward destroying that facility for twelve years," Antonio said, and he sounded older suddenly. "Twelve years of patience. Of intelligence gathering. Of waiting for exactly the right moment." His voice went very quiet. "And someone burned it to the ground before I got the chance."

Dimitri looked out over the city, his jaw set.

"Maybe the gas line really did rupture," he said.

"Don’t insult me." Antonio’s composure returned, cold and absolute. "I know my son. I know what you’re capable of. I know you’ve been investigating The Covenant since you were old enough to understand what happened to her." A long pause. "If you did this, if you actually went inside that facility and burned it down, you should have told me, Dimitri. I had a right to know."

"I didn’t do it," Dimitri said.

"You’re lying."

"I’m your son. I don’t lie to my father."

"You lie to me constantly," Antonio said flatly. "About Eve. About your plans. About the way you’ve been consolidating power quietly for the past few months. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid."

"I don’t think you’re stupid," Dimitri said. "I think you’re the most dangerous man in Italy. Which is exactly why I don’t tell you things you don’t need to know."

A silence that felt like the edge of something.

"You’ll tell me," Antonio said, and the pleasantness was completely gone now. "Not today. But eventually. Because sons always confess to their fathers, Dimitri. It’s the nature of the relationship."

"Is that all, padre?" Dimitri asked, his voice utterly even.

"One more thing." Antonio’s voice turned casually lethal. "The woman. Eve, that woman is making you reckless."

"Eve has nothing to do with this conversation."

"She has everything to do with it." Antonio’s voice was almost thoughtful now. "Before her, you were strategic. Careful. You understood the importance of maintaining family loyalty above personal desire. Now you’re making decisions with your dick instead of your brain."

"I’m making decisions with both. And my decisions have strengthened our position, not weakened it."

"Have they?" Antonio asked softly. "Tell me, Dimitri, what happens when I call in my favors? When I activate the networks I’ve spent thirty years building? When I remind people that I’m still the head of this family?"

"Then you’d start a war you can’t win," Dimitri said absolutely. "And we both know it."

Another silence.

Longer this time.

When Antonio spoke again, his voice was different. Almost... proud.

"You’re confident."

"I’m honest."

"You’re planning something." It wasn’t a question. "You’ve been planning something for months. What is it?"

Dimitri looked back at Eve, still sleeping peacefully, completely unaware of this conversation.

"Nothing you need to worry about," he said.

"Liar." But there was no heat in it. "Fine. Keep your secrets. But know this, Dimitri....whatever you’re planning, whatever you think you’re building, understand that the moment you move against me, the moment you try to take what’s mine, I will burn everything you care about. Starting with that girl."

Dimitri’s entire body went rigid.

"Touch her and I will end you," he said, his voice so quiet it was barely a whisper. But the danger in it was absolute. "Family means nothing, father. Blood means nothing. Threats against Eve are threats against my life. And I don’t make threats. I make promises."

"Is that so?" Antonio sounded almost amused now. "You love her that much?"

"I do."

"Then you’re already defeated." Antonio’s voice turned cold again. "A man with something to lose is a man who can be manipulated. And manipulation is something I’m very good at."