Chapter 48 Working Together

Chapter 48 Working Together
Aria's POV

She didn't sleep.

She lay in the guest room with the door closed and listened to the low murmur of voices from the kitchen and the occasional movement of people who were planning something serious with the particular focused quiet that serious planning required and she stared at the ceiling and thought.

About Gavino.

She knew the name from Romano's interrogation room. Bruno's head of security. Ex-military. The man who'd been with her father for decades and done things she was still assembling the full shape of.

The man who'd kept records.

She turned that over in her mind the way she turned a diagnosis over when the presenting symptoms didn't quite add up. Gavino had worked for Bruno for thirty years. Had been involved in things that could destroy Bruno if they became public. And instead of relying on Bruno's protection, instead of trusting that loyalty would be returned, he'd quietly documented everything and stored it somewhere nobody would find it.

That was the behavior of someone who understood exactly what Bruno Salvini was.

Had always understood it.

And had protected himself accordingly.

She heard the front door open and close. Then again. People moving.

Around two in the morning the apartment went quiet.

Aria got up.

Dante was at the kitchen table with the printed pages and his phone and a coffee that had probably gone cold. He looked up when she appeared and didn't seem surprised.

She sat across from him.

"Tell me properly," she said.

He did. All of it. Gavino's skimming, the records, his aunt's apartment in Prati, the Tuesday visits, the press coverage accelerating their timeline. He talked through it clearly and without softening any part of it and she listened the way she listened in surgical briefings, assembling the information into a complete picture before responding.

When he finished she was quiet for a moment.

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

"They connect Bruno directly to specific operations. Paper trail in Gavino's handwriting. Instructions received and confirmed." He held her gaze. "Going back fifteen years minimum."

"And potentially further.

She heard what he wasn't saying. Potentially back far enough to cover the Moretti family. Potentially the thing he'd been building toward for twenty years sitting in an old woman's empty apartment three kilometers away.

"Then get them," she said.

He looked at her for a moment. Like he'd expected more resistance.

"It's straightforward," she said. "If those records exist and they say what Marco thinks they say, Romano needs them. Everything else follows from that. The press narrative Bruno built tonight stops mattering. His lawyers stop mattering." She pulled one of the printed pages toward her. Looked at the address. "What's the building like."

"Standard residential. Marco's handling the cameras."

"Entry points."

"Front door with intercom. Service entrance at the back that Marco can open remotely." Dante's expression had shifted into something attentive. "Why."

"Because I know that street," Aria said. "I had a patient from that building two years ago. Elderly woman, cardiac event, I visited twice during her recovery." She studied the address. "The building has a concierge in the lobby until midnight. After that the desk is empty but the position stays visible on the camera feed. Anyone coming in after midnight needs to look like they belong there."

Dante was very still. "How do you know that."

"Because I visited at midnight. She was having a difficult night and didn't want to call her family and I went." Aria set down the page. "The service entrance is better. It opens into the laundry room on the ground floor. Stairwell from there. No camera in the stairwell."

Rocco appeared from somewhere, leaning in the doorway, and she could feel both of them recalibrating.

"The apartment itself," she said. "Gavino's aunt. If she's been in a care facility for three years the apartment will be clean. No clutter. Things stored in obvious places because nobody's been rearranging them." She looked at Dante. "People who hide things in spaces they don't inhabit regularly hide them near exits. Closets by the front door. Under beds with clear sightlines to the door. Places they can access quickly if they need to leave fast."

Rocco said, very quietly, "She's right."

"I know," Dante said. He was looking at her with an expression she didn't have a name for yet.

"I'm not coming tonight," she said. "Before you say it. I know I'm not coming tonight. I don't have the right training for it and I'd slow you down and potentially compromise the whole thing." She met his eyes. "But I can tell you what I know about that building and you can use it."

"You've already told us the useful parts."

"The concierge finishes at midnight," she said. "But he does a walkthrough of the lobby and the ground floor before he leaves. Takes about ten minutes. If you're going in through the service entrance you need to wait until that walkthrough is finished or you'll cross him in the laundry room." She paused. "He's thorough. I watched him do it once while I was waiting for the elevator. He checks the laundry room last."

Dante looked at her for a long moment.

"You're not scared," he said.

"I'm terrified," she said. "But I'm also a Salvini. Apparently we're good at dangerous decisions."

Something moved across his face. "Your father would argue that's a different kind of dangerous decision."

"My father made his dangerous decisions to protect himself. I'm making mine to end this." She held his gaze. "There's a difference."

Dante reached across the table.

The kiss was brief and intense and tasted like cold coffee and the specific energy of two people in the middle of something serious who were taking thirty seconds to acknowledge that they were in it together.

He pulled back. Looked at her.

"Don't get used to being brave on my behalf," he said.

"Too late," she said.

He almost smiled. Then he picked up his phone and typed something to Marco, incorporating the concierge information, and Aria watched him work and felt the odd clarity of a situation where she understood her role and was in it deliberately rather than accidentally.

Rocco disappeared back toward the living room.

She got up and made fresh coffee because the pot on the counter was from three hours ago and nobody should be operating on three-hour-old coffee. Dante watched her do it without commenting, which meant he was thinking.

She was thinking too.

About Gavino's records going back fifteen years. About what fifteen years of documented instructions looked like in Gavino's handwriting. About what came after Romano had something real enough to stand on in a courtroom.

About what happened to Bruno when the case became undeniable.

Her phone buzzed on the table.

She looked at it. Romano's number.

It was almost three in the morning.

She picked it up. "Detective."

"Dr. Salvini." Romano's voice was alert, no suggestion of someone who'd been sleeping. "I need to meet with you. Tomorrow morning if possible. I have new information about your father."

Aria looked at Dante across the kitchen.

He was watching her, reading her expression.

"What kind of new information," she said.

"The kind that's better discussed in person." A pause. "It's significant. And it changes some of what I told you in the interrogation room."

"Changes it how."

"In person, Dr. Salvini. Tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock."

Aria kept her voice even. "I'll be there."

She hung up.

Dante hadn't moved. "Romano."

"She wants to meet tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock." Aria set down the phone. "She says she has new information about Bruno. Says it changes some of what she told me before."

The kitchen was quiet except for the coffee maker finishing its cycle.

"What did she tell you before," Dante said carefully.

"Most of it was theories," Aria said. "Romano's case as it stood a week ago." She looked at him. "What's changed in the last week."

Dante thought about it. She could see him running through it.

"Gavino's records," she said. "Marco found the references to them. Someone else might have found them too."

"Romano doesn't have Marco's access."

"No. But Romano has eighteen months of investigation and resources Marco doesn't." Aria picked up the fresh coffee and poured two cups. "She found something. And she thinks I need to know before tomorrow night."

She set a cup in front of Dante and kept one for herself.

He looked at it. Then at her.

"Whatever she tells you tomorrow," he said. "I need you to hear it before you react to it. Whatever it is."

"That sounds like a warning."

"It's a request." He held her gaze. "Just hear all of it before you decide what it means."

Aria studied his face. The careful control. The thing underneath it that she was getting better at reading.

"You know what she found," she said.

He didn't answer.

Which was its own answer.

"Okay," she said. "I'll hear all of it."

She drank her coffee and he drank his and outside Rome was doing the things Rome did at three in the morning and neither of them mentioned that he hadn't actually denied knowing.

Some things could wait until nine o'clock.