Chapter 458: I Want Him Found By The End Of The Week

Silence. Antonio waited. He had waited for men to answer harder questions than this. He heard Enzo breathe in, and let it out.

"I knew something was," Enzo said. "I didn’t know what. Dimitri asked me to host the dinner. He said you were hiding something that was hurting someone. He said he’d tell me everything afterward."

"And you agreed."

"I did."

"Against me."

"For a woman who was very sick," Enzo said. His voice cracked, and steadied. "I know who she is, Father. I think I always knew."

Antonio’s grip tightened on the phone.

"I raised you," he said.

"I know."

"I gave you Rome."

"I know that too." Enzo’s voice was very quiet. "I’d like you to tell me it isn’t true. Whatever he said. I’d like you to say it."

The corridor was silent. Somewhere behind the walls, the compressor hummed.

Antonio found, to his own astonishment, that he could not.

"Goodnight, Enzo," he said.

He ended the call before the boy could speak again.

...

His aide was waiting at the end of the corridor.

"Signore?"

"Dante Romano," Antonio said.

"Yes."

"He holds the pills. He holds the analysis. He holds, I think, the real antidote and a woman who has just been cured of years of my work." His voice was perfectly calm. "He has everything he needs to destroy me, and I have been treating him as a nuisance."

"The hunt on the coast....."

"Is not enough." Antonio looked at him. "Every man we have. Every contact. Lorenzo’s men, mine, anyone who can be paid. I want him found by the end of the week."

"And the girl?"

"She is no use to me now." Antonio began to walk. His footsteps echoed in the white corridor, measured and unhurried. "But he is no longer a nuisance. He is a witness."

The aide fell into step beside him.

"And your son?"

"My son," Antonio said, "has made his choice."

He didn’t say anything more. He walked on, through the clean white silence of the place he had built, and the door at the end of the corridor opened for him without a sound.

***

LORENZO’S POV

The call came at four in the afternoon, while Lorenzo stood at the window of his study watching the rain run down the glass.

"We have something," Antonio’s voice said, dry and level on the line. "A rail station south of Frascati. A locker. A man collected a black bag from it yesterday morning at ten past eleven."

Lorenzo’s hand tightened on the phone. "Who?"

"Luca."

The name went through him like a blade. He had been waiting two weeks to hear it.

"You are certain?"

"My men pulled the footage themselves. He drove a dark SUV, plates false, but there are cameras along the coast road, and plate readers on the toll gates." There was a pause. "The vehicle went south. Past Terracina. Past Gaeta. It left the main road near a stretch of private villas."

"Which villa?"

"There are four candidates. One of them, a cliff property, is owned through a shell company that has been inactive for five years."

"Dante."

"It seems likely."

Lorenzo closed his eyes. His heart was beating hard and slow. For two weeks he had sat in this room and listened to reports of shuttered houses and empty fishing huts, and every day his wife had asked him, in a voice that grew smaller each time, whether there was news.

"I will have men there tonight," he said.

"Mine will join yours. We move at dusk."

"Why dusk?"

"Because that’s when a man is least likely to see the road." Antonio’s voice did not change. "Lorenzo. Whatever happens, I want Romano alive."

"I want my daughter alive."

"Of course." A short silence. "That is what I meant."

The line went dead.

Lorenzo stood with the phone in his hand. Behind him, the door opened softly.

"Lorenzo."

He turned. Camilla stood in the doorway in a gray dress, her hair pulled back, her face thin and white. She had not left Isabella’s room in days except to eat what he made her eat. She had a dress of their daughter’s folded over her arm, as though she had forgotten she was carrying it.

"You’ve found her," she said.

"I think so."

"Where?"

"On the coast."

Camilla crossed the room. She did not touch him. She stood very close, with her eyes on his face, and when she spoke her voice was steady.

"Bring her home," she said.

"I will."

"Promise me she’s safe."

"Camilla...."

"Promise me." Her voice cracked on the last word. "I don’t care about the rest of it. I don’t care about Dante, or Dimitri, or the alliance. I want my daughter. I want her in her own bed. I want to look at her and see that she’s alive."

He took her face in both his hands. Her skin was cold. Her eyes were enormous.

"I promise," he said. "I’ll bring her home."

She nodded. She pressed her forehead against his chest and stood there for a long moment, holding the dress.

Then she let him go, and he went out into the rain.

...

DANTE’S POV

Luca came in from the terrace at five, rain-soaked and tight-faced.

"Two cars," he said. "On the coast road, a kilometer south. They’ve been parked there for forty minutes. Nobody’s gotten out."

Dante looked up from the table.

He had been sitting with a map in front of him for an hour, not reading it. In the bedroom beyond the open door, Isabella lay propped against the pillows with a blanket across her knees, reading a book. She had been reading it for most of the afternoon. It was the first thing she had picked up in more than a week.

"And?" he said.

"There’s a drone over the cliff. High, but it’s there. It has been circling for twenty minutes." Luca wiped his face with his sleeve. "Someone found us."

"How?"

"I don’t know."

"The locker."

"I used the toll roads. I should have used the back." Luca’s jaw worked. "I’m sorry, boss."