Chapter 32
Vittorio sighed, almost fondly.
“You’ve made a mistake,” he said.
He raised one hand.
And the lights went out.
CHAPTER 12 — EVERYTHING BREAKS
The dark was total and immediate.
For one long second nobody moved. Then the room came alive — the scuff of feet, a shout from the loading dock, the clatter of something metal hitting concrete, Matteo’s voice cutting through it all with a single word: “Down.”
Dante had Allesia by the arm before her eyes adjusted.
He pulled her sideways, away from the river windows, behind a stack of old crates that had been there since the building was a rowing club. She hit the floor with him and the satchel under her, and the concrete was cold through her jeans.
A shot.
Then two more, from the dock, and the muzzle flash lit the whole ceiling for a quarter of a second — beams, dust, the shape of a man moving along the far wall.
“Matteo!”
“Clear on the dock,” Matteo called back. “Two of them. Down.”
“Vittorio?”
“Gone.”
Dante swore, softly and comprehensively.
The lights came back on a moment later — someone had found the breaker — and the boathouse resolved around them: the empty chair, the open door on the river side, the two men on the dock being rolled over by Dante’s security, and, on the concrete floor near the window, a single black glove.
Dante crossed the room.
Vittorio had gone out the river door. The door stood open to the water, and there was a boat — a low, dark skiff, engine already running — twenty yards out and pulling away, and a man in a dark coat standing at the stern, looking back.
Vittorio raised one hand.
Not a wave.
A salute.
Then the skiff turned the bend and was gone into the black.
Dante stood in the doorway with the river wind coming in and the lights of the bridges on the water, and for a long moment he did not say anything.
Behind him, Allesia got up slowly, holding the satchel.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, without turning.
“No.”
“Good.”
“What do we do now?”
Dante watched the water.
“We go home,” he said.
They drove back in silence through the dark city, past the towers and the overpasses and the red lights that never seemed to end. Allesia sat with the satchel on her lap and watched Dante’s profile in the passing light, and she could see that he was not angry. He was doing arithmetic.