Chapter 449: He’s My Father Too....

"I know." Dimitri turned from the screens. "I’m asking now."

Marco stayed by the door with his hands folded. Enzo glanced at him, then back, and some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders.

"Sit," he said. "Please. I’ll show you."

...

He showed him everything.

BioAdvance Research Solutions, in the EUR district, behind a security gate and a stand of trees. A low gray building with a second level underground, and a logo that appeared on no corporate registry Enzo could find. He had mapped the delivery schedule, the guard rotation, the cars that came and went. He had put a man in a parked van two hundred meters from the gate and kept him there for nineteen days.

"Dr. Castellano," Enzo said, and put a photograph on the desk. A middle-aged man in a gray overcoat, a grave face, a briefcase. "Italian Ministry of Health. He has visited the building eleven times. He stays between one and two hours. He leaves in a car with government plates."

"And tonight?"

"Tonight he went in at seven-forty." Enzo checked the screen. "He hasn’t come out."

"Who does he meet?"

"I don’t know yet. A man in a gray suit meets him at the gate every time. I haven’t gotten a face." Enzo straightened. "But I will."

Dimitri studied the photograph for a long moment. Then he set it down.

"You were right," he said.

Enzo blinked. "About what?"

"All of it." Dimitri’s voice was level. "The building. The doctor. The underground level. I have a source who had reason to talk, and everything he told me matched what you found. To the word."

"Who?"

"Not yet."

Enzo’s mouth tightened. He let it go. "A source inside their money."

"Close enough."

"It matched?"

"The address. The floor. The man who handles their accounts." Dimitri looked at him directly. "You did this in three weeks, with a van and a handful of men, and you never asked for help. It’s good work, Enzo. I should have said so before."

The room was very quiet. Through the glass, the dance floor pulsed with colored light.

Enzo found that he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He put them on the desk.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don’t thank me. Just keep doing it."

"I will."

"Good." Dimitri leaned back. "Because after tomorrow night, that building is the next thing we move on."

...

"What’s tomorrow night?" Enzo asked.

Dimitri did not answer immediately. He turned his head and looked at Marco, and Marco gave him a small nod.

"I need something from you," Dimitri said.

"Anything."

"Don’t say that until you’ve heard it."

"I’m saying it anyway."

Dimitri almost smiled. "Father holds dinners at the estate. Family dinners. You attend."

"When I’m told to."

"Tomorrow night, I want you to arrange one. For nine o’clock. I want Father at the table from nine until midnight, and I want him not to leave."

Enzo frowned. "He doesn’t like dinners at short notice."

"He will if you say I’m coming."

"You?"

"I owe him an answer. He gave me forty-eight hours. I’ll bring it to the table." Dimitri’s voice was very even. "It’s the one invitation he won’t refuse."

"What answer?"

"That’s mine to keep."

Enzo sat back in the chair. He studied his half-brother’s face and found nothing in it, which was a kind of answer in itself.

"You’re using the dinner as cover," he said slowly. "For something else."

"Yes."

"What?"

"I can’t tell you."

"Dimitri."

"I can tell you this." Dimitri leaned forward. "Father is hiding something. It is hurting someone who doesn’t deserve it. Tomorrow night I’m going to fix part of that. I need him at the table while I do."

"Hurting who?"

"A woman. She’s very sick. She doesn’t know why."

Enzo was quiet for a while.

"Isabella," he said.

Dimitri’s eyes didn’t move. "I’ll tell you all of it after tomorrow night."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the one I’m giving."

"Is it Father?"

The question dropped into the room like a stone.

Enzo hadn’t known he was going to ask it until it was out. He sat very still. In the corner, Marco shifted his weight, once, and was still again.

Dimitri looked at him.

He did not look away. He did not soften his face. He had never lied to Enzo, not once, in all the years they had known each other, and Enzo saw that he wasn’t going to start.

"Yes," Dimitri said.

...

Enzo got up and walked to the window.

He stood with his back to the room and his hands in his pockets, looking down through the one-way glass at the crowd below. The music thudded against the soles of his shoes. A girl in a silver dress threw her head back and laughed. A man at the bar raised a glass.

"He’s my father too," Enzo said.

"I know."

"He raised me. He gave me this city. I run Rome because he let me."

"I know that as well."

"You’re asking me to help you go against him."

"I’m asking you to put a table between him and a door," Dimitri said. "Nothing more. You’ll host a dinner. You’ll pour wine. You’ll be a son at his father’s side. That’s all."

"And afterward?"

"Afterward, you’ll know."

Enzo turned around. Dimitri was sitting very still, with his hands loose on his knees. He looked, for the first time since Enzo had known him, a little unsure. It was a small thing, a tightness at the corner of the eye. But Enzo noticed.

"You’ve never asked me for anything like this before," Enzo said.

"No."

"Not once."

"No."

"Why now?"

"Because I trust you," Dimitri said. "And I don’t have many people I can say that about."

Enzo looked at him for a long moment. He thought of the nineteen days in the van, the three weeks of nights, the silence that had followed every report he sent. He had wondered, sometimes, whether anyone was reading them.

Someone had been.

"I’ll host it," he said.