Chapter 55: The Plan

Aria's POV

Rocco was on the couch when she got back to Dante's apartment, which had started to feel like a place she came back to rather than a place she visited, and she wasn't sure when that had happened but she'd stopped questioning it.

He had his laptop open and a printed map on the cushion beside him and the focused look of someone who'd been working through a problem for a while and had most of the pieces in the right places.

Dante was at the kitchen table with his phone and a coffee.

Both of them looked up when she came in.

"Bruno was waiting outside Romano's building," she said. Didn't soften it. "He knew I was there."

Dante's expression didn't change but something behind it did. "He's watching the building."

"That's what he said." She dropped her bag on the chair. "He also told me to ask you what Isabetta wants from you. What she made you promise."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Dante looked at her steadily. "She wants Bruno dead. Not arrested. Dead. I told her that wasn't the plan and she threatened to tell you everything if I didn't agree." He paused. "I didn't agree. I told her the plan was what it was and she could do what she needed to do."

"So she approached me herself," Aria said.

"Yes."

"And you knew she might."

"I thought she would eventually." He held her gaze. "That's not a secret I was keeping from you. It's a situation I was navigating and hadn't resolved yet."

Aria looked at him for a moment. Filed it. It was consistent with what she knew of Isabetta, with the gun scene Dante had told her about, with the woman who'd shown up at her apartment with evidence and a wire device and fifteen years of accumulated fury.

"Okay," she said.

Rocco had been watching this exchange with the careful neutrality of someone who knew better than to involve themselves in something that wasn't his conversation. He looked back at his laptop when she said okay.

"What are you working on," she said to him.

"The storage facility." Rocco turned the printed map to face her. "Gavino's records. We've confirmed the location and we have the building layout." He pointed at a section of the map. "Here's the issue. The facility has a medical supply warehouse on the ground floor that operates on a separate access system from the storage units above. The storage unit entrance is on the east side. The medical supply entrance is on the north."

Aria looked at the map. "I know this building."

Both of them looked at her.

"Sant'Angelo uses the medical supply warehouse on the ground floor. I've signed for deliveries there twice when the regular receiving staff were short." She looked at Rocco. "My credentials give access to the north entrance."

Rocco looked at Dante.

Dante looked at Aria.

"The north entrance connects to the ground floor only via the main corridor," Rocco said carefully. "But the stairwell at the end of that corridor accesses all levels."

"Including the storage units," Aria said.

"Yes."

She looked at the map for another moment. The layout was clear. The north entrance puts you inside the building legitimately. The corridor took you to the stairwell. The stairwell took you to Gavino's aunt's storage unit on the third floor.

"This is illegal," she said.

"Yes," Rocco said.

"I'm a surgeon. Not a criminal."

"You don't have to do it." Dante's voice, from the kitchen table. Not pushing. Just stating.

She was already thinking through how it would work. What she'd need to say at the entrance. Whether her hospital ID would scan without flagging anything unusual. Whether the timing mattered, whether there were delivery windows when extra people coming and going wouldn't attract attention.

She'd been to that building at seven in the morning once. A delivery that needed a doctor's signature. The reception staff had barely looked at her ID.

"If those records prove what you think they prove," she said.

"Bruno goes to prison," Dante said. "Properly. With evidence that his lawyers can't dismantle on procedural grounds because it won't come from channels they can challenge." He paused. "Romano gets something real. The kind of reality that ends this regardless of how many lawyers he hires or how many press stories he plants."

Aria looked at the map.

At the north entrance marked in blue.

At the stairwell marked in red.

At the storage unit on the third floor that contained thirty years of Gavino's self-preservation in paper files.

"When," she said.

"Tomorrow night," Rocco said. "We can't wait longer. Bruno is moving money and if Gavino sees enough of the press coverage he may decide to move the files or destroy them regardless of what they cost him."

"Tomorrow is Tuesday," Aria said.

"Yes."

"Gavino visits on Tuesdays. Between ten and noon."

"We go in at eight," Rocco said. "Two hours before his window. In and out before he's anywhere near the building."

Aria looked at the map one more time.

"Tell me exactly what you need from me," she said.

Rocco pulled the laptop forward. They spent forty minutes going through it. Her role was specific and limited, which she appreciated because it meant they'd thought about what she could actually do rather than what would be convenient for them. She used her hospital ID to get them through the north entrance during what Rocco had identified as the quietest window of the evening. She went first, alone, as a doctor picking up a delivery. Dante and Leone came through two minutes behind her once she'd confirmed the corridor was clear. Rocco coordinated from outside with Marco on the cameras.

Simple. Contained. Dependent on timing and her keeping her expression exactly as it always looked when she was doing something routine.

She could do that. She did it every day in hospital corridors that contained considerably more at stake than a storage facility entry.

Rocco closed the laptop at some point and said he needed to call Marco and went to the balcony and slid the door closed behind him, which left Aria and Dante alone in the apartment with the map on the coffee table and the evening light coming through the windows.

Dante came from the kitchen table and sat on the couch across from her.

"You don't have to keep doing this," he said.

"I know."

"You've already done more than anyone could ask. Romano has enough from what you've given her to build something solid. You don't have to be in that building tomorrow night."

Aria looked at the map. At the north entrance. At the stairwell. On the third floor.

"So why do you," he said. Quieter. Genuine.

She thought about it honestly because he'd asked honestly and that was the arrangement they had now.

"Because it matters to you," she said. "And you matter to me." She looked up. "It's not complicated."

He looked at her.

The way he looked at her sometimes was still something she was adjusting to. Like she'd said something that required a moment to fully land. Like he was recording it carefully.

"Aria," he said.

"I know it's not small," she said. "I know what I just said." She held his gaze. "I meant it."

He reached across the space between them and took her hand and didn't say anything, which was the right call because there wasn't anything to add to it. She'd said what she'd meant and he'd heard it and that was all it needed to be right now.

They sat like that for a while with the map on the coffee table and Rocco's voice a low murmur from the balcony and Rome going about its evening outside.

Her pager went off.

She looked at it. Cardiac emergency. Her specific skills were requested. She was already standing, already in motion, the shift from one mode to the other as immediate as it always was.

"I have to go," she said.

"I know." He stood when she stood.

She grabbed her bag and her jacket and was at the door when she heard Rocco come back in from the balcony behind her.

She left.

Dante stood at the window and watched the street below, waiting for her to appear on the pavement. She came out of the building moving fast, the particular purposeful walk she had when she was heading toward something that needed her, and she didn't look up but he watched until she turned the corner.

"You're going to marry that woman someday," Rocco said from somewhere behind him.

Dante didn't answer.

Rocco seemed unsurprised by the silence.