Chapter 452: She Will Get Worse Before She Gets Better

He spoke for exactly five minutes. He said nothing of any importance. He told a story about the first time his father had taken him to the port, and Antonio listened with his face unreadable. When the five minutes were up, Antonio turned over the phone, read the screen again, and set it down.

"A false alarm," he said.

"Good," Enzo said.

He sat down. His hands were shaking under the table. He pressed them against his knees until they stopped.

...

DIMITRI’S POV

At eleven fifty-three, Dimitri’s phone vibrated once against his thigh.

He did not reach for it. He finished the sentence he was saying, something about the weather, and waited until the steward had refilled his glass. Then he lowered his hand beneath the edge of the table and turned the screen toward his knee.

Done. Case in hand. Cold. Clean.

He read it twice. Then he put the phone away.

His father was speaking. Dimitri didn’t hear a word. For the first time in an hour, something in his chest had unclenched, slowly, like a hand that has held a rope too long. In a bedroom somewhere to the south, a woman was lying in the dark with her fingers curled against her chest. Tomorrow, if all went well, she would be a day closer to being free of it.

He looked up and met Enzo’s eyes across the table.

Enzo gave the smallest of nods.

Dimitri raised his glass an inch. He did not say thank you. He did not need to.

"Father," he said, turning. "I’ll give you my answer tomorrow."

Antonio studied him. His expression had not changed all night. But his eyes were sharp, and there was something in the line of his mouth that hadn’t been there at the start of the evening.

"Noon," Antonio said.

"Noon."

"Do not be late."

"I won’t be."

Dimitri set down his napkin and rose. At the door, he stopped and turned back. His father sat motionless at the head of the table with the phone beside his plate and the candles guttering around him.

"Goodnight, Father."

"Goodnight."

He walked out into the cold, clear dark, and Marco’s car was waiting.

***

The doctor examined the case at seven in the morning, in a back room of the penthouse, with Marco standing at the door and Dimitri at the table.

He was a lean, gray-haired man with a patient face, and he worked without talking. He cut the tape on the carrier, checked the gauge, lifted the lid, and stood for a long time with the cold air curling up around his wrists. Then he took out an ampoule, held it to the light, and turned it slowly.

"Twelve in the case," he said. "Sealed, labeled, still at temperature."

"Is it real?" Dimitri asked.

"I can’t tell you what it is without a laboratory. I can tell you what it behaves like." The doctor set the ampoule down very gently. "It’s a reversal agent. Whoever made it understood exactly what they were reversing. The structure is deliberate. The formulation is clean."

"Will it work?"

"If it does what I think it does, it will strip the dependence in about a day. Not weeks." He looked up. "It will not be gentle."

"How bad?"

"She will get worse before she gets better. Fever, vomiting, shaking. Her body will fight it, and then it will let go. Twelve hours, perhaps a little more. Someone must stay with her the entire time." He paused. "I can’t be there. I’ll guide the first dose by telephone, as before."

"And afterward?"

"Afterward, if she’s lucky, she’ll feel better than she has in eight years."

Dimitri nodded slowly. He looked at the case on the table. Twelve small ampoules lay in their cold foam.

"Pack it," he said.

...

He called Dante at nine.

It rang twice. Dante answered without a greeting.

"Valentino."

"I have something for her."

A pause. "What?"

"A reversal compound. The counter to what she’s been taking. It came out of the same stock as the first supply."

Silence on the line. Dimitri waited.

"The same stock," Dante said at last.

"Yes."

"You said that source was finished. You said it had no more use for it."

"It didn’t. I found this afterward."

"Where?"

"I won’t say."

"That’s twice you’ve said that."

"And she’s still alive." Dimitri kept his voice level. "My doctor has examined it. He believes it’s genuine. It will bring her off in a day instead of weeks. It will be a hard day."

"How hard?"

"Fever. Sickness. Shaking. She’ll want to stop. You won’t let her."

Dante said nothing.

"You’re asking me to give her something I can’t trace," he said slowly. "After everything she’s already been given."

"You gave her the pills."

"Those were a poison."

"They were also the only thing keeping her breathing." Dimitri’s voice did not rise. "This is the other half. You’ve done this once already. The doctor will walk you through every step. If anything seems wrong, you call him. If it still seems wrong, you stop."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then she stays on the taper for weeks, and I won’t blame you for it."

Another silence. Longer.

Dimitri could hear him thinking. He could hear the small, careful way Dante weighed every word before he spoke it, the way a man weighs a loaded thing in his hand.

"Send it," Dante said.

"Luca will have a location within the hour."

"And Valentino."

"Yes?"

"I’m not stupid." Dante’s voice was very quiet. "I know you’re not telling me everything."

"No."

"One day, you will."

"One day," Dimitri agreed.

The line went dead.

...

ISABELLA’S POV

It began a little after seven that evening, with a sound like a small, sharp click behind her eyes.

She was lying on the bed with Dante beside her. He had given her the first dose twenty minutes before, with the doctor’s voice crackling on speaker from the nightstand, calm and unhurried. The needle had hurt less than she expected. He had pressed a cotton ball to the spot and held it there, and she had watched his hands, steady and careful, and thought: he has never done this before.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"Strange."

"Strange how?"