Chapter 448: A Seat At The Table

"Then we move before that." Dimitri’s voice was level. "Tomorrow night."

"That’s fast."

"It has to be." Dimitri looked at each of them in turn. "Mike, I need the label and the seal by noon tomorrow. Marco, the van, the men, the room. Eve...."

"I’ll stay out of the way," Eve said, "and think of what you’ve forgotten."

"That’s exactly what I was going to say."

"I know."

The corner of his mouth moved again.

His phone buzzed on the desk. He glanced at the screen and went still.

"Excuse me," he said.

He picked it up. "Yes?"

A thin, careful voice. "Signor Valentino. I am calling on behalf of your father."

Dimitri recognized it. The aide. He kept his face blank.

"Go on."

"Signor Antonio wishes to know whether you have reached a decision."

"I’m still thinking."

"He asked me to remind you that the offer stands for forty-eight hours."

"I heard him the first time."

"He also asked me to say," the aide went on, very quietly, "that he hopes you will think carefully, and that he does not enjoy being kept waiting."

"Tell him I’m aware." Dimitri paused. "Tell him I’ll answer when I’m ready."

"Of course, Signore."

Dimitri ended the call and put the phone down. Nobody in the room had spoken. Eve was watching him. Marco’s face was still. On the screen, Mike had gone quiet.

"Forty-eight hours," Dimitri said. "He’s given us two days."

"We only need one," Marco said.

"Then we’re ahead."

He looked at the four of them, gathered around a desk in a quiet study in Rome, with a laptop and a coffee gone cold and a plan that would end in either a war or an end to one.

"Tomorrow night," he said.

Under the desk, Eve found his hand and held it.

...

MARCO’S POV

By eight that evening, Marco had been parked across from the facility for two hours.

The cold storage unit sat at the end of a gravel road on the edge of Frascati, a low concrete building with a loading dock, a chain-link fence and a single floodlight over the gate. He had borrowed a florist’s delivery van from a man who owed him a favor and asked no questions, and he sat low in the front seat with a thermos and a long lens.

Two guards. One at the gate, a heavy man in a dark jacket who checked his phone every few minutes. One walking the perimeter with a dog, a gray-muzzled German shepherd that stopped at every corner and sniffed the wind.

Marco wrote it down. Dog. Drug it.

Four cameras, mounted on the corners of the roof. Newer than the building. Mike would handle those.

At nine, a refrigerated van arrived with a delivery. The gate guard waved it through without checking the paperwork. Marco photographed the plate. At ten, the guards changed. The new one was thinner and younger, and he walked his rounds with a flashlight and no dog. The dog went inside.

Marco timed him. Eleven minutes between his last pass of the loading dock and his first return. Twelve if he lingered at the far fence to smoke. He lingered twice.

Twelve minutes would be enough. It would have to be.

At ten past eleven, headlights came up the gravel road, slow and unhurried, and stopped at the gate. Marco lowered the lens.

A thin, careful man in a dark coat stepped out of the car.

Marco knew him. He had seen him twice, at the estate, a step behind Antonio. Antonio’s aide.

The gate guard straightened and opened the gate without a word. The aide walked across the yard with a flat leather case under one arm, unlocked the side door with his own key, and went inside. A light came on in a window near the back. Marco counted. Eight minutes. Nine. Ten.

The aide came out and locked the door behind him. He was carrying nothing but the case he had arrived with. He spoke briefly to the guard, got in his car and drove away.

Marco sat very still.

Whatever he had come to check, he had left it where it was.

He picked up his phone and typed a message to Dimitri.

His aide inspected the cold room at 11:10. Ten minutes inside, left empty-handed. Whatever he checked is still there. Looks like he counts it, doesn’t take it. Eve may be right.

The reply came within a minute.

Good. Come home.

Marco put the phone away, started the van, and drove back toward the city with the lights off until the gravel turned to road.

***

POV: ENZO

Enzo Valentino had a rule about the back office of the club: nobody came in without knocking.

It was a small room above the main floor, with a steel desk, a wall of monitors, and a window that looked down on the dance floor through one-way glass. The bass came up through the floorboards like a second pulse. He had worked in it every night for three weeks, and he had never once been interrupted.

So when the door opened at ten past eight without a sound, he did not look up at first. He assumed it was Paolo with the figures.

"Put them on the desk," he said.

"I’d rather put them in your hand."

Enzo’s head came up.

Dimitri stood in the doorway in a dark coat, with Marco a step behind him. He looked tired, but his eyes were clear and sharp, and he held himself the way he always did, as though the room had been arranged around him. The door closed behind him with a soft click.

"You didn’t call," Enzo said.

"No."

"I would have cleared the floor."

"I didn’t want it cleared." Dimitri crossed the room and looked at the monitors. "I wanted to see what you do when no one is watching."

Enzo got to his feet "You took your time," He said.

"I did."

"Three weeks I’ve been working this. You haven’t asked once."