Chapter 65 After the Gala

Chapter 65 After the Gala
Dante's POV

They didn't talk much in the car going back.

Leone drove. Aria sat beside Dante in the back, shoes already off, feet tucked under her, the award resting in her lap with both hands around it. She was looking out the window at Rome going past and he was looking at her and neither of them needed to fill the quiet.

Good quiet. The kind that had things in it.

He'd been thinking about what she'd told him outside the alcove. About Bruno and Camilla and fifteen years ago and a folder found by accident on a Thursday. About a woman who'd chosen to stay and protect her family and three years later had died in a car accident that her husband wouldn't confirm or deny.

He'd known most of it. Had pieced the shape of it together from Isabetta's files and Marco's research and twenty years of understanding how Bruno Salvini operated.

Hearing Aria say it out loud was different.

Hearing her describe the edges of it, the specific place where truth became shape without becoming fact, was different.

He thought about her standing at the edge of the gala after it, award in hand, saying not tonight. I just need an hour of that before everything else comes back.

And then taking his arm and walking back into the room.

Like she'd decided something. Not about him specifically. About herself. About what she was entitled to on an evening where she'd earned something real.

He'd walked beside her and let her have it and thought about what it meant to be chosen as the person someone walked back into a room with.

Even provisionally. Even complicated. Still chosen.

Leone pulled up to the building.

\---

Aria went straight to the living room and sat down on the floor.

Not the couch. The floor. Back against the couch, legs out in front of her, award beside her on the rug.

Dante stood in the doorway and looked at her.

"Why are you on the floor."

"The couch felt too far."

He considered this. Took off his jacket. Hung it over the armchair. Sat down on the floor beside her, back against the couch, the same position.

The apartment was quiet. Rome outside doing its late-night version of itself. Inside just the two of them on the floor of his living room at two in the morning with an award between them.

She leaned her head on his shoulder eventually.

He didn't say anything. Just let her.

They sat like that for a while.

"I thought about what you said," she said. "Before. Weeks ago."

"Which part."

"About after. What comes after all of this." She was looking at the middle distance, at the window and the city beyond it. "You said you wanted an after. That you'd been trying to figure out what came next."

He remembered. He'd said it badly, half finished, more admission than statement.

"And?" he said.

"I want an after." She said it quietly. Like she was still a little surprised by it. "I didn't think I did. I thought I was the kind of person who dealt with things one at a time and didn't make plans for situations that weren't resolved yet." She paused. "But I want one."

He looked at the side of her face. "With me specifically."

She tilted her head up to look at him.

"Surprisingly, yes," she said.

He looked at her.

At this woman who had every reason in the world to want to be as far from Dante Moretti as it was possible to get and was sitting on his floor at two in the morning saying surprisingly yes.

He turned toward her.

Kissed her slowly.

The floor of his apartment. Neither of them caring about that. Just the kiss, which was different from the other times in the specific way that things were different when they weren't performing or proving or working against fear. Just them choosing each other without any of the complicated overlay.

She pulled him closer.

He went.

Her hands in his hair and his hands careful on her face and the award sitting on the rug beside them and Rome outside the window doing what it always did which was continue regardless.

When they came apart they stayed close. Her forehead against his jaw. His hand still at her face.

"Stay tonight," he said.

She pulled back just enough to look at him properly. Something moved through her expression, reading him, deciding.

"Not like that," she said. "Just stay. I don't want to be alone tonight."

"Okay."

"Okay," she said.

\---

She fell asleep in his bed at some point after three.

He'd listened to her breathing even out and then stayed beside her for a while and then got up carefully and went to the window.

Rome below him. The late version. The version he knew best.

He looked at it and thought about Bruno and Camilla and a folder found on a Thursday and a woman who'd chosen to stay.

He thought about Aria on the gala stage with the award in her hands, looking out at the room. About the speech she'd given, something about the body wanting to heal, given the right conditions. About the way she'd said it like she was talking about more than medicine.

He thought about her sitting on his floor saying surprisingly yes.

His phone lit up on the windowsill.

Rocco.

He picked it up. Read the message.

Bruno met with Gavino tonight. Private meeting. After-hours at the estate. Started around midnight. Still ongoing when my man had to pull back.

Dante looked at the screen.

Bruno and Gavino. Together. Tonight of all nights, while Aria was accepting an award and telling him she wanted an after.

Gavino was the man who'd carried out the massacre. The man whose records they'd photographed in the storage unit. The man who had thirty years of documented instructions sitting in a box in his aunt's empty apartment.

Bruno meeting with Gavino privately after-hours at the estate meant one of two things.

Either Bruno had found out about the records.

Or he was preparing to do something that required Gavino's specific skill set.

Neither option was good.

Dante typed back: Find out what was discussed. Everything you can.

Rocco: Already working on it. You should know something else. Gavino's aunt's apartment. Someone accessed the storage facility tonight. Not us.

Dante went very still.

He looked at the bedroom doorway. At the dark beyond it where Aria was sleeping.

When, he typed.

Around ten PM. Before the gala ended. Whoever it was knew exactly where to go.

Which meant Gavino had moved faster than they'd expected.

Or Bruno had found out about the files before tonight and had sent someone to move them.

Either way, the insurance they'd been counting on was potentially gone.

Dante stood at the window and looked at Rome and thought about chess, which was a game he'd played seriously for three years in his twenties specifically to understand the psychology of it. The particular moment when you realised your opponent had been three moves ahead of you the whole time.

He typed one more message to Rocco: Was anything taken or just accessed?

The response took four minutes.

Unknown. Whoever it was didn't trigger the cameras. Professional.

Dante set down his phone.

He thought about noon tomorrow. About the Bruno meeting that was still scheduled. About whether that meeting now meant something completely different than it had meant when they'd arranged it.

He looked at the bedroom doorway again.

She was in there sleeping with an award she'd earned and a surprisingly yes she'd meant and no idea that the thing they'd spent weeks carefully building toward might have just shifted into different territory entirely.

He should wake her.

Should tell her.

He looked at the city.

Thought about not tonight, I just need an hour.

She'd had her hour.

Now it was three in the morning and she was sleeping and the hour was the last good thing before whatever came next.

He let her keep it.

Picked up his phone.

Started making calls.