Chapter 47 Gavino's Insurance

Chapter 47 Gavino's Insurance
Dante's POV

Marco arrived in person forty minutes later.

He came with a laptop and three printed pages and the particular focused energy he got when he'd found something worth finding, the kind that made him forget to be casual about it. He spread the pages on the kitchen table without preamble and sat down and pulled the laptop open and started talking before anyone had asked him to.

Dante stood. Rocco leaned against the counter. Aria had gone to the guest room earlier, which meant she was either sleeping or thinking, and either way he wasn't going to interrupt it.

"Start with the skimming," Dante said.

Marco pulled one of the printed pages forward. Columns of numbers with dates running down the left side. "Ten years. Small withdrawals from operational accounts. Different accounts each time, rotating through about fourteen different ones, never the same account twice in a row." He pointed at a figure. "The largest single withdrawal is four thousand euros. Most are under two. The total over the decade is somewhere around three hundred thousand."

"Enough to be significant," Rocco said. "Not enough to be noticed easily."

"Exactly the right amount to be invisible if you're not looking for it," Marco said. "But if you are looking, the pattern is clear. Same withdrawal rhythm. Same careful spacing. This isn't random, it's methodical. Gavino has been doing this with the specific intention of it not being found."

"And Bruno hasn't found it," Dante said.

"Bruno's financial people are good but they're looking for external threats. Someone skimming from inside using this level of patience and care, they wouldn't catch it unless they had reason to specifically audit Gavino's access." Marco closed that page. "Bruno trusts Gavino completely. Which is exactly why Gavino can do this."

"Smart man," Dante said.

"Very." Marco opened the laptop. "Now the records are more interesting than the skimming. The money is personal protection, cash he can access if he needs to disappear. The records are different. The records are leveraged."

Rocco straightened slightly. "How extensive."

"Based on what I can see in the emails referencing them, extensive. Gavino has been documenting operations going back at least fifteen years. Specific operations. Names, dates, instructions received from Bruno, confirmation of completion." Marco looked at Dante. "Written in Gavino's own hand. Stored physically. Not backed up digitally anywhere I can find, which tells you he understands that digital can be found and physical can be hidden."

The kitchen was quiet except for the sound of Rome outside.

Dante thought about Gavino. Had thought about him a great deal over twenty years without having a face to put to the name for most of that time. Ex-military, efficient, loyal to Bruno in the way that came from decades of shared history rather than ideology. The kind of man who understood that loyalty was a transaction and had protected himself accordingly.

Smart. Patient. Self-preserving.

Exactly the kind of man who would keep records.

"Where are they," Dante said.

Marco pulled the third printed page forward. An address. A street in Prati, the residential neighborhood on the west side of the river. Not Bruno's estate. Not any property that connected to Bruno's name or companies.

"Private apartment," Marco said. "Registered to a woman named Elena Ferretti. Seventy-one years old. No criminal record, no connections to anyone in Bruno's world." He paused. "Gavino's aunt. On his mother's side. She's been in a care facility in Bologna for three years. The apartment is technically hers but she hasn't been in it since she moved to the facility and Gavino has had a key the whole time."

"He's using his aunt's empty apartment as a storage facility," Rocco said.

"Which nobody would ever think to look for unless they followed a very specific chain of emails on a server Gavino thought was private." Marco closed the laptop. "The records are there. I'm confident of it based on the email references. Gavino checks on the apartment once a month, always on a Tuesday, always between ten and noon. My last visit was six days ago."

"So the next visit is in three weeks," Rocco said.

"Give or take. But the press coverage changes the calculation." Dante looked at the address. "If Gavino sees what Bruno is doing, sees that Romano's investigation is real and building, he might decide his records need moving sooner."

"Or he might decide they need destroying," Rocco said.

"No." Dante shook his head. "Those records are his life insurance. You don't destroy your life insurance when things get dangerous. You make sure it's somewhere safe." He picked up the page with the address. "Which means he might move them. Which means we need to get there first."

"Security on the building?" Rocco asked Marco.

"Standard residential. Intercom entry, no dedicated cameras in the stairwell, one camera in the lobby that covers the front door. The apartment itself, no indication of any alarm system registered to that address." Marco paused. "Gavino trusts the obscurity of the location more than physical security. Which is reasonable. It's a good hiding place."

"Until it isn't," Dante said.

Rocco was already doing the calculation and he could see it in his face. Entry points, timing, how many people, how long inside.

"Tonight," Rocco said. "Before Gavino has time to react to the press coverage."

"Tonight," Dante agreed. He looked at Marco. "I need the building layout. Apartment number. Any information on the neighboring units."

Marco was already opening the laptop again.

The plan came together in the particular way good plans did, not all at once but in pieces that connected logically, each decision leading to the next without gaps. Two people inside. Leone on the street. Marco runs interference on the building's camera system remotely. In and out in under thirty minutes, photographs of everything, original files left in place so Gavino wouldn't know they'd been accessed.

Romano got copies through anonymous channels.

Gavino never knew his insurance had been found.

Bruno never knew what was coming.

Rocco was writing notes on his phone when he stopped and looked up. Dante followed his gaze.

Aria stood in the kitchen doorway.

She was in the oversized sweater again, hair slightly disheveled from what might have been an attempt at sleep, and she looked between the three of them and the printed pages on the table with the calm assessment of someone who'd walked into operating theatres mid-crisis her entire career and knew how to read a room quickly.

Her eyes went to the address page. To the laptop. To Rocco's notes.

Then to Dante.

"You're planning something," she said. Not a question. "Tell me."

Dante looked at her across the kitchen.

Rocco and Marco were both very carefully looking at other things.

"Gavino's records," Dante said. "We know where they are."

"Where."

"An apartment in Prati. His aunt's place. He's been storing things there for years."

"And you're going to get them."

"Tonight. Before he has a chance to move them."

Aria looked at the table. At the pages. At the organized evidence of a plan already in motion. She didn't look alarmed. She looked like a person running calculations.

"What do you need from me," she said.

Dante looked at her for a moment.

"Nothing tonight," he said. "Tonight I need you to be somewhere that isn't involved in this."

She held his gaze steadily. "And if something goes wrong."

"Nothing's going to go wrong."

"That's not an answer."

"Nothing is going to go wrong," he said again. "Marco has the building's systems. Leone has the street. Rocco is coordinating from here. It's a straightforward retrieval."

Aria looked at Rocco. Rocco nodded once, which was as close to reassurance as Rocco got.

She looked back at Dante. Something working behind her eyes.

"Come back," she said.

Two words. The weight of them was considerably more than two words.

"Yes," he said.

She held his gaze one more moment. Then she turned and went back to the guest room and closed the door quietly behind her.

Marco let out a breath.

Rocco said nothing but his expression said several things.

Dante picked up the address page and looked at it.

Prati. His aunt's apartment. Thirty years of Gavino's careful self-preservation sitting in paper files in an empty flat.

Tonight they'd have it.

And Bruno Salvini's carefully constructed public narrative would have considerably less time remaining than he thought.