Chapter 4 - THE MAN BENEATH THE NAME
The bullet had not entered Dante’s shoulder. It had cut a deep channel across the muscle before burying itself in the wall behind him. Camila pushed him onto the procedure table while Leo secured the building and Elena ushered Marisol and Sofia through the protected rear exit.
“I can walk,” Dante said.
“You can also bleed while lying down.”
Camila cut his shirt away from the wound. Dante did not flinch when the antiseptic reached exposed tissue, but his breathing changed when she injected local anesthetic.
Beneath the expensive suit and the name that frightened half the city, he was a thirty-eight-year-old man with an old surgical scar beneath his ribs, another pale line crossing his abdomen, and no apparent expectation that anyone would be gentle.
“Who knew you were here?” Camila asked.
“Leo. Victor. Gabriel Moretti, one of my captains.”
“So one of three men knew where to position the shooter.”
Dante looked toward the ceiling. “Leo has stood beside me for fourteen years.”
“And Victor helped raise you. Betrayal doesn’t become impossible because the suspect feels like family.”
His eyes found hers. “Is that how you approach every patient?”
“I approach evidence that way.”
She closed the wound with twelve precise sutures. When she finished, Dante reached for his torn shirt.
“You aren’t leaving yet.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“It was medical advice. You’re free to ignore it and tear the sutures open like an idiot.”
He remained on the table.
Leo returned carrying a clear evidence bag. Inside was a brass cartridge casing recovered near the alley entrance. The head stamp identified a restricted batch purchased for Costa warehouse security. Victor’s office controlled its distribution.
“Could have been stolen,” Leo said.
“Or issued,” Camila replied. “The police need it.”
Dante’s resistance lasted only a moment.
“Call Lim.”
It was the second time he had permitted evidence to leave his control.
While they waited, he noticed the small gold medal resting against Camila’s blouse. The chain had slipped free when she leaned over him.
“Saint Agatha,” he said.
“My grandfather’s.”
“The patron saint of nurses, breast disease, fire, and difficult Sicilians.”
Camila glanced at him. “You remembered the important category.”
“My grandmother wore one. She came from a village outside Catania.”
“So did my grandfather.”
“That explains the dialect.”
“It doesn’t explain why you smiled.”
Dante was silent long enough that she assumed he would not answer. Then he said, “My grandmother used that insult whenever my father frightened someone weaker than he was. She would wait until he turned away, then tell me, ‘A man who needs fear to prove his strength has none.’”
Camila secured the bandage. “Did you believe her?”
“When I was a boy.”
“What happened?”
“I became my father’s son.”
There was no self-pity in the statement. That made it heavier.
Dante’s mother had died when he was eleven after being caught in violence intended for his father. A terrified private physician delayed calling an ambulance because he feared police attention. By the time she reached a hospital, the internal bleeding could not be stopped. Dante’s grandmother raised him afterward and died when he was nineteen.
“You hate doctors because one failed her,” Camila said.
“I hate cowardice.”
“Yet you ask doctors to risk prison so your men can avoid questions.”
His gaze remained on her. “You’re determined to make every conversation unpleasant.”
“You’re determined to deserve it.”
A knock interrupted them.
Victor Sarto entered before anyone invited him.
He was fifty-six, silver-haired, and dressed in a dark overcoat over formal evening clothes. Concern arranged itself naturally across his face when he saw Dante’s bandage.
“God in heaven. Leo told me there was a shooting.” Victor approached the table. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been better.”
Victor looked around the damaged procedure room. His attention paused on the evidence refrigerator, then on the empty space where Paolo’s waste containers had been.
“At least they didn’t get the blood tube,” he said.
The room became silent.
Camila had not told Victor about the blood sample.
Neither had Dante or Leo.
Victor saw the change in Dante’s expression and corrected himself too quickly.
“I assumed that was what the intruder wanted. Leo said they searched the medical freezer.”
“He told you that?” Camila asked.
Victor smiled at her without warmth. “You must be Dr. Rossi.”
“You already knew my name.”
“It appeared on the disbursement.”
“The one you countersigned?”
The smile held, but his eyes did not.
Detective Lim entered through the damaged reception area with two officers. Victor turned toward the sound, and Camila saw his hand close involuntarily around the gold-and-black lion ring on his little finger.
Matteo’s ring matched it exactly.
Dante said nothing until Victor had left. Then he looked at Camila.
“You were right.”
“About what?”
“Faith isn’t evidence.”
He reached for his jacket, stopped when the sutures pulled, and let it fall again.
“Get me evidence.”
Camila met his eyes. “No. We get it legally, or we become the reason he walks free.”
May you like
For perhaps the first time in his adult life, Dante Costa allowed someone else to choose how his enemy would fall.
He nodded.
