CHAPTER 59: DANTE IN THE SHADOWS

CHAPTER 59: DANTE IN THE SHADOWS
The hotel room was on the fourteenth floor of a midtown building that Dante had paid for in cash under a name that didn't belong to anyone living. He had chosen it because it had two exits, a service stairwell that opened onto a side street, and a direct line of sight from the window to the entrance of the building across the road where two of his men were positioned. He had been in New York for eleven days now, and he had made sure not to sleep in the same location twice.
His contact arrived twelve minutes late, which was already a problem he found difficult to ignore. The man's name was Ferris, and he worked as a private security contractor whose legitimate clients provided excellent cover for the less legitimate work he did on the side. He was efficient, discreet, and punctual, which was the entire reason Dante had used him three times before. The twelve minutes of lateness were therefore not a small thing.
Dante was standing at the window when Ferris knocked. He ignored him at first, letting the knock sit for a moment before he opened the door and stepped back to let Ferris in without greeting him.
Ferris came in with the slightly elevated energy of a man who knew he was late and had a prepared explanation ready, and he immediately opened his mouth to deliver it.
"I had to change the route because there was a police checkpoint on Lex and I didn't want to risk the documents I was carrying being seen, so I came the long way around through the park which added about ten minutes and then the elevator here was slow so that was the other two, all told it was unavoidable and I don't think it caused any real problem with the timeline."
Dante hit him with a hard and clean strike across the left side of his face, sending Ferris stumbling into the wall which he quickly grabbed with both hands to keep himself from going down.
The room went very quiet after that as Ferris straightened himself slowly, with one hand pressed to his cheek, while he looked at Dante with the careful and controlled expression of a man who understood that reacting badly to what had just happened would make his situation even worse.
"Twelve minutes," Dante said with cold fury. "In this business, twelve minutes is the difference between walking away and not walking away. If you cannot manage your route well enough to arrive when you are supposed to arrive, then you are not as useful to me as I thought you were. I may have to find someone competent if this nonsense should repeat itself ever again."
"Understood, sir," Ferris said quietly.
"I'm glad we have an understanding," Dante hissed as he straightened his jacket and moved to the small table near the window where he had set out two folders and a glass of water he had no intention of drinking. "Sit down."
Ferris sat, still holding his cheek while Dante opened the first folder.
"The device is working," Ferris said, pulling himself back into professional mode with visible effort. "The audio is clear, although the visual range is limited by the curtain position but we're getting consistent coverage of approximately sixty percent of the room."
"And what has it picked up so far?" Dante asked with an unimpressed glare.
"Routine movement mostly,” Ferris muttered. “She talks to herself occasionally which is quite useful. Two days ago she mentioned a security rotation change in the east wing, something about Luca telling her about it."
Dante was quiet for a moment. "Luca told her about a security rotation?"
"That's what she said, sir," Ferris confirmed timidly, half expecting another roar or slap.
Dante tapped his finger on the folder impatiently, not sure whether to believe it or not. Isabella was smart enough to know what a surveillance device looked like if she found one, and probably even smart enough to use it against him if she did. But she was also a woman who had spent two years as an art dealer in Rome, not an intelligence operative, and the chances that she had found and identified a device that his best technician had placed were low enough that he was willing to proceed on the assumption that the information was genuine.
"Get it to the verification team," he said. "I want to know if there's any record of a rotation change in that wing."
"Already sent," Ferris said.
"And Sofia?"
Ferris shifted slightly. "She's been careful so far, but she hasn't been able to get close enough for direct conversation without it looking forced, but she's been able to confirm the daily movement patterns and the appointment schedule."
"I don't need movement patterns," Dante said. "I need pressure. Isabella is beginning to settle in, and that is not a part of my plans. I need her unsettled immediately, so tell Sofia to escalate."
Ferris frowned carefully. "Escalate how?"
"Small things," Dante said with a mischievous grin. "She could start with misplaced items, maybe a comment dropped in the wrong ear about something Isabella said, but nothing that can be traced back directly to her. I just want Isabella to feel like the house is not as safe as she thinks it is, without her also being able to point to a specific cause."
"That's quite a delicate line to walk, sir," Ferris said slowly, subconsciously calculating if he was out of reach from another unexpected blow.
"Then make sure Sofia walks it carefully," Dante replied, closing the folder. "She is being paid enough to manage delicate situations."
Ferris nodded smartly and made a note.
Dante stood up and moved back to the window, looking out at the street below. Eleven days in New York and the plan was moving, but not fast enough. Isabella was supposed to be feeding him Moretti intelligence by now, real intelligence and operational details that he could use to begin dismantling Luca's infrastructure from the inside. Instead, all he was getting was secondhand observations from a maid and audio fragments from a bedroom device, and the woman he had placed at the center of this entire operation was going to doctor's appointments and shopping trips and apparently having quiet evenings that his surveillance reported with an infuriating absence of anything useful.
He picked up his phone and dialed Gianna’s number, grumbling to himself as it rang without response. He was about to give up when she finally answered on the fourth ring, which meant she had seen his name and made him wait long enough to remind him that she answered calls on her own schedule.
"Dante," she said slowly, barely hiding her irritation at being disturbed.
"We need to move the timeline forward," he said without any word of greeting.
It was followed by a long and tense pause.
"No," Gianna said.
The outright rejection of his proposal annoyed him beyond anything, but he forced his voice to remain calm. "Listen, Gianna, the situation in Luca's estate is gradually stabilizing, and every day she spends in that house she gets more comfortable. It's going to be difficult to pull her back out if she gets too comfortable, and that would be a serious problem for our plans."
"The window you are describing," Gianna said slowly, "does not exist. You are impatient because you are emotional, and you are emotional because this stopped being about strategy for you a long time ago."
"That's not what this is," Dante said.
"Of course it is," Gianna replied. "You still want the girl, Dante. You have always wanted the girl. The Moretti operation may have been an obsession for you, but now it's just a reason you're giving yourself to justify pursuing her. And now that it seems you're losing ground in your pursuit, you are starting to panic." She paused again. "Panic is how men get killed, Dante."
"I'm not panicking," he hissed, trying to reign in the urge to scream at her.
If she had noticed the bitterness in his tone, she said nothing about it. "We move when I say we move," she replied simply. "My people are not yet in position and El Cuervo has conditions that still need to be met before he commits his resources. If you strike now with what you currently have, Luca will absorb it and respond, and his response will close every door we still have open. Do you understand me?"
"I understand you," Dante said sulkily.
"Good. Then be patient."
"And what if Isabella gives him something before we're ready?" Dante asked. "If she tells him about the arrangement?"
Another pause followed, but shorter this time.
"Then we move immediately regardless of readiness," Gianna said. "But she won't."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because she hasn't yet," Gianna said simply. "She has been inside that house long enough to tell him everything, and she hasn't. Which means she is still deciding. And a woman who is still deciding is still useful to us."
The line went quiet for a moment and Dante stood at the window looking at the street below where ordinary people moved in ordinary directions without knowing anything about the conversation happening fourteen floors above them.
"Don't contact me again until you have something worth reporting," Gianna said, and ended the call.
Dante dropped the phone and stood there for a while. Behind him Ferris was quiet, professional enough to understand that the conversation he had just half heard was not one he should acknowledge or reference in any way.
Dante finally turned from the window and looked at the second folder on the table, the one he hadn't opened in front of Ferris. Inside it were photographs, all of them taken in the past eleven days. Photographs of Isabella leaving the estate, her in the car with Luca, and at the boutique, standing close enough to Luca that their shoulders were touching while a frightened attendant gift wrapped a necklace.
He opened the folder and looked at the photographs for a moment, then closed it again.
"Tell Sofia to move faster," he said to Ferris. "Tell her I want results within the week."
Ferris stood up slowly and collected his things. "And what if she says the risk is too high?"
A murderous look slowly clouded Dante's face as he glared at Ferris.
"Tell her the risk of disappointing me is higher."