Chapter 245: Did he believe you?

The line went dead.

Dimitri stood there, phone still pressed to his ear, feeling the weight of what had just happened settle on his shoulders.

His father was suspicious. He didn’t have proof, but he had instinct, and Antonio Valentino’s instincts had built an empire from nothing.

He’d start digging. Pulling threads. Using the networks he’d spent thirty years building.

And sooner or later, he’d find the truth.

Which meant Dimitri had to move faster.

The overthrow had always been a long-game strategy...careful, patient, methodical. Letting Antonio age himself out of relevance while Dimitri built quietly.

But the call had changed the calculation.

His father is already suspecting that he has started moving against him.

And the mention of Eve at the end....that was a threat wrapped in silk.

Dimitri went back inside, slid into bed behind Eve, and pulled her against him.

She stirred, turned in his arms, her eyes still heavy with sleep.

"Dimitri?"

"Sleep," he said quietly. "Everything’s fine."

"Who called?"

"My father."

Eve was fully awake now. She turned to look at his face, reading every line of it with those hazel eyes that always saw too much.

"What did he want?"

"To ask about the facility."

She absorbed that. "What did you tell him?"

"That I didn’t know anything about it."

"Did he believe you?"

"No."

Eve was quiet for a moment, her hand coming up to rest against his chest.

"What happens now?" she asked.

"Now I move faster." Dimitri pulled her closer, his chin resting on top of her head. "I’ve been patient. Strategic. Waiting for the right conditions." His voice hardened. "The conditions just changed."

"Because of me," Eve said, and it wasn’t a question. "He mentioned me, didn’t he?"

Dimitri didn’t answer immediately.

"Dimitri." Her voice was serious. "He threatened me."

"Not yet."

"But he will."

He pressed a kiss into her hair. "He won’t get the chance."

Eve pulled back to look at him properly. "I don’t want you to rush something that takes time because you’re scared for me. That’s how mistakes get made."

"Eve...."

"I mean it." Her eyes were fierce. "Promise me you won’t let fear for me make you reckless. That you’ll be smart. Strategic. The way you always are."

He stared at her. This woman who’d walked into his darkness voluntarily and somehow made him stronger inside it.

"I promise," he said.

"Good." She settled back against his chest. "Then what do you need right now?"

"This," he said simply. "Just this."

They lay there in the early morning quiet, the city waking up outside their windows.

And Dimitri started planning.

Not with fear. Not with desperation.

With absolute cold precision.

Antonio had spent thirty years building an empire.

His son was about to dismantle it piece by piece.

And this time, nothing was going to stop him.

***

POV: ANTONIO

In Rome, Antonio Valentino poured two fingers of whiskey despite the early hour and stood at his study window.

He’d spent twelve years preparing to destroy The Covenant.

Twelve years of patience and intelligence gathering and waiting.

And Dimitri had gotten there first.

He should have been angry.

Instead, what he felt was complicated.

His son had walked into the facility that murdered his mother, and he’d burned it to the ground with the kind of clean, professional precision that Antonio recognized as his own training reflected back at him.

The student becomes the teacher, he thought.

Then his jaw tightened.

The student was also planning something else. Antonio could feel it the way he felt weather changes in his bones, a low-pressure shift, something building under the surface.

Dimitri was moving toward him.

He reached for his phone. Made a call.

"I need updated information on everything you have on my son’s new amusement," he said when it answered. "Movement patterns. Routines. The people around her. Who she trusts." A pause. "And I need to know exactly how far my son will go for her."

Because that was the real question.

Not whether Dimitri had destroyed The Covenant.

Not whether he was planning an overthrow.

But how much he loved that woman.

Because love was the only leverage that ever truly worked.

Antonio had learned that the hard way.

He finished his whiskey and picked up a photograph from his desk.

Claire. Young, beautiful, laughing at something outside the frame.

He’d loved her the same way Dimitri loved Eve.

And it had destroyed him when he lost her.

He set the photograph face down on the desk.

Sentiment was weakness.

He’d told Dimitri that his whole life.

Now he was about to prove it.

***

POV: ISABELLA

The apartment was ready.

Candles lit on the dining table. A bottle of Barolo breathing on the counter. Her hair down the way he liked it, her dress simple, black, fitted at the waist.

Isabella stood at the window of her Rome apartment, watching the street below with the practiced patience of someone who’d spent her whole life waiting for things that never quite arrived.

He would be here by eight.

He was always punctual. She’d give him that.

She didn’t know much else about him....his full name, where exactly he lived, what his family business was. He’d been deliberately vague about all of it and she’d never pushed. She’d told herself it was because she understood the need for discretion in their world.

Now, standing here in the candlelight, she wondered if she’d simply not wanted to know.

The knock came at 7:40.

Early.

She crossed the apartment, unlocked the door, pulled it open with a small smile already forming on her face.

And froze.

Enzo.

Not the man she’d been expecting. Not the tall, dark figure who moved through her apartment like he owned it.

Enzo stood in her doorway, travel-worn, his jaw set, his dark eyes reading her face with an intensity that made her breath catch.

"Enzo." Her voice came out wrong. Too high. Too startled. "What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting...."

"I know you weren’t." He stepped inside without being invited.