Chapter 430: The Plan

POV: DIMITRI / MARCO

Dawn came gray over Rome.

Dimitri hadn’t slept. He stood at the study window with a cup of coffee that had gone cold in his hand, watching the light move across the rooftops, when Marco knocked once and came in.

"You’re up early," Marco said.

"I haven’t been to bed."

Marco glanced at the untouched whiskey glass on the desk, then at Dimitri’s face. He set the folder he was carrying down beside it. "Something happened."

"Dante called me last night."

Marco went still. "On the private line?"

"On the private line."

"Someone sold it," Marco said.

"Someone did. I want to know who by the end of the day." Dimitri turned from the window. "Sit down."

Marco sat. Dimitri told him all of it: the four days without a dose, the tremors, the pill with two layers, the clinic that didn’t exist, the three changes of delivery address. He told him that Luca had traced the compound as far as it would go and that Dante had finally said the name aloud. He told him what Dante had offered, and what he had answered.

When he finished, Marco was quiet for a while.

"He said Prometheus himself," Marco said at last.

"Luca traced it."

"Then they’re at the door."

"They’re at the wall," Dimitri said. "Nobody has found the door."

"Yet." Marco rubbed his jaw. "Yesterday morning you told me none of this was your business."

"It wasn’t."

"And now?"

"Now there’s a girl in a rented villa who may seize on a bathroom floor, and the one thing she needs is something we can’t hand over without handing over my father’s name." Dimitri set the cold coffee on the desk. "So I’m making it my business."

Marco nodded slowly. He did not say I told you so. He had never once said it in all the years he had worked for Dimitri, and Dimitri valued him for that more than for most of his other talents.

"What does she need?" Marco asked.

"A doctor first. Someone who doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t keep records."

"I have one."

"Good." Dimitri sat down across from him. "And she needs the compound."

Marco frowned. "You want to give her more of it."

"I want her to live long enough to come off it. Cutting it off all at once is what’s putting her on that floor. She needs to be held steady first, and then brought down slowly, by a doctor, over weeks." Dimitri’s voice was even. "It’s the only way she gets out of this alive."

"Weeks," Marco said.

"She’ll survive weeks."

"Where do we get it? We can’t go to the source."

"Armani."

Marco was quiet for a moment. "Armani keeps a reserve," he said slowly. "He told us so himself, the night we found him. Two cartons he hadn’t shipped."

"Still in his possession?"

"As far as I know. I can confirm it within the hour."

"Do it." Dimitri leaned back. "That’s where the supply comes from."

"There’s a problem."

"There are several. Name the first."

"If Dante gets it from Armani, he gets Armani," Marco said. "And Armani will tell him everything. He told us everything in under ten minutes."

"Dante doesn’t get Armani," Dimitri said. "Dante gets the pills."

"Luca will test them."

"Let him. He already knows what’s inside. What he can’t read is where it came from."

"Lot numbers," Marco said. "Packaging. The courier labels." ℯ

"All of it stripped. The pills go into plain bottles at a pharmacy that owes me a favor. They arrive by a courier who knows nothing, to a drop that Dante’s men collect from. No names. No paper." Dimitri paused. "As far as Dante is concerned, the supply has simply been found."

"Found where?"

"That’s the second problem."

Marco folded his arms. "He’ll ask how."

"He’ll ask. And Luca will pull at every thread we give him." Dimitri looked at him. "So we give him a thread. Mike can build a holding company in Malta that closed its accounts two months ago. A paper trail that runs through a pharmacist, an intermediary, a shell, and stops. Long enough that Luca believes the source has gone dark. Not so long that it insults him."

"A false trail," Marco said.

"A short one."

"And Armani’s role in all of it?"

"Armani was a middleman," Dimitri said. "Paid by a company that no longer exists. That’s all Dante is ever told. He’ll never find the clinic, because there’s no clinic to find."

Marco was silent. Dimitri watched him weigh it, the way Marco weighed everything: looking for the crack before it showed.

"It could work," Marco said finally. "For a while."

"For as long as it needs to."

"And when Luca keeps digging?"

"Then Luca finds the dead end Mike builds, and he stops." Dimitri’s mouth tightened slightly. "He’s good, but he’s not stupid. A man who finds a locked door that looks old will usually believe it’s been locked for years."

Marco let out a breath. "That handles Dante. It doesn’t handle your father."

"No."

"Your father’s people have watched you since the day you landed in Rome."

"I know."

"If Dante keeps pulling at Prometheus, Antonio will hear of it within days. Probably sooner." Marco leaned forward. "And once he does, he’ll want to know who helped Dante get as far as he did."

"He’ll want to know," Dimitri agreed. "He won’t ask me."

"You think he’ll know anyway."

"I think my father has never asked a question he didn’t already have an answer to." Dimitri stood and went back to the window. The sun was fully above the rooftops now, pale and cold. "When she’s stable, I’ll go to him. Not before."

"Why not before?"

"If I walk into his study today, with a name in my mouth and a girl on a floor, he’ll tell me whatever he needs me to hear. None of it will be true." Dimitri’s voice was quiet. "I want to go in with her safe and the facts in my hand. Then he can lie to me if he likes. I’ll know what I’m looking at."

Marco was silent a moment. "And if he already knows what Dante’s doing?"

"Then he’ll tell me to stay out of it." Dimitri didn’t turn. "That’s the one thing I won’t do."