Chapter 358: I Guess You Shouldn’t Have Let Him leave, Brother

Dimitri’s jaw tightened as he said it, understanding fully what he was proposing. Not just a vendetta with Dante. But potentially a conflict with an organization that had already proven willing to create bioweapons, to conduct experiments, to operate at a level of ruthlessness that made traditional crime look civilized.

"Okay," Enzo said, "I’ll get back to you in twenty-four hours. I’ll gather the information and have answers for you. I’ll talk to my contacts, follow the money trails, investigate any unusual meetings. Twenty-four hours."

"Good," Dimitri said.

There was a brief silence on the line, then Enzo said. "I heard about what happened to Eve," Enzo finally said. "And I heard that Dante escaped. In Jersey City, when you had him in the warehouse. You let him live."

Dimitri felt Eve’s hand slip into his, squeezing gently. She understood what Enzo was saying. She understood the implication.

"I guess you shouldn’t have let him leave, brother," Enzo continued, his tone measured but cutting. "If you’d finished him off when you had the chance, if you’d put a bullet in his brain when you had him cornered and wounded and trapped in your own operation, you wouldn’t have this issue now. You wouldn’t be worrying about external backing. You wouldn’t be wondering about The Covenant. You’d just have a corpse and a complete victory."

Dimitri understood what Enzo was doing. Not criticizing for the sake of being cruel, but reminding him that mercy had costs. That letting enemies live had consequences. That every enemy who escaped was a potential threat waiting to resurface.

"But you can still kill him," Enzo continued. "He’s in our territory now. He’s in Rome, where I can help. You’ve killed more dangerous men than him before. You’ve faced down organizations bigger than his family. This shouldn’t be hard for you to do."

The words hit like a blade because they were true. Dimitri understood that. He understood that the decision to let Dante escape instead of finishing him off had been a calculated risk that was now paying dividends, but not the kind of dividends he’d hoped for.

"I know," Dimitri said quietly. And he did know. He understood it completely.

"Anyway," Enzo said, and his voice returned to its normal operational tone. "I’ll get you the information within twenty-four hours. Then you can decide what to do with Dante. But brother...." He paused, letting the weight of what he was about to say settle. "Don’t let him slip away again. Not this time. Not if you want this to end."

"He won’t," Dimitri said, and he meant it completely. "Not this time."

The line went dead. ℴ

Dimitri set down his phone and stood there in the early morning light, dripping water on the marble floor, thinking about everything Enzo had said. About the mistakes he’d made in Jersey City. About the decision to let Dante escape instead of finishing him. About the strategic calculus that had seemed so clear at the time but now looked questionable at best.

He’d told himself it was strategy. That keeping Dante alive meant keeping threats distributed. That a wounded enemy was sometimes more useful than a dead one because a dead enemy couldn’t be tracked, couldn’t be managed, couldn’t be used to understand larger patterns.

But the cost of that decision was becoming exponentially clear now. The shipment that got intercepted, it traced back to the moment Dimitri had decided to let him live.

Eve wrapped her arms around him from behind, her warmth cutting through the cold of the marble floor.

"What did Enzo say?" she asked quietly, her voice carefully neutral. She understood without being told that the news wasn’t good.

"He’s going to help," Dimitri said, his voice flat. "He’s going to find out what Dante’s doing. Who’s backing him. What the next move is going to be."

"And then?" Eve asked, the question hanging heavy in the air between them.

Dimitri turned to face her, and she could see the shift in his expression. The moment when the lover transformed into the don. When the man who’d held her in his arms and whispered promises transformed into the predator who understood that mercy was a luxury he could no longer afford.

"And then we end this," Dimitri said.

***

ROME - ENZO’S PENTHOUSE

Enzo set down his phone and sat back in his chair, thinking about the conversation he’d just had with his brother.

Dante was operational. Someone external was backing him. And Dimitri was asking him to find out who and how deep the backing went.

Enzo understood the implications immediately. If The Covenant was involved, if the organization that had built illegal bioweapons facilities and conducted experiments that pushed the boundaries of what was ethically acceptable was now targeting Dimitri, then the game had escalated far beyond what anyone in Rome had anticipated.

The Covenant wasn’t just powerful. They were organized. They had resources that rivaled small nations. They had people trained in deception and infiltration and psychological warfare. They had the kind of reach that made traditional crime families look like regional operations.

If they’d decided to use Dante as a proxy war against Dimitri, if they’d decided to test Dimitri’s defenses by weaponizing a regional crime boss, then this was no longer a personal vendetta. This was something far more dangerous.

Enzo pulled up his mental network of contacts. The people he’d cultivated over the past months in Rome. The Romanellis. The Caruccis. Smaller players in the underworld who saw value in having direct access to a Valentino son rather than going through the elder Valentino.

If Dante was meeting with external contacts, if he was being backed by someone from outside the traditional underworld, then someone in Rome would have noticed. Someone would have seen unusual movements. Someone would have observed Dante’s sudden recovery and the resources being deployed around him.

Enzo made a series of phone calls. Quick calls to people he trusted. People who owed him favors or valued his connection to the Valentino family enough to provide intelligence without requiring too many questions or too much explanation.