SOFIA POV
She does not drink the wine.
Instead she sets the empty glass down on the tray with deliberate care and waits for him to speak. He doesn't immediately. He leans back in the medical chair like they're having a business meeting and he's the one who called it. His fingers steeple together. His eyes never leave her face.
"Tell me about Enzo," he says.
The interrogation lasts an hour and forty minutes.
He asks questions in an order that suggests he's already done significant research and is testing what she'll volunteer versus what she'll withhold. How many times did she meet him. Where. What did he say. How did he know about Marco. Did he threaten her directly or did he simply show her the photographs and let her imagination do the threatening.
Sofia answers everything. Standing, because he didn't offer her a chair and she won't ask for one. Her voice steady because steadiness is the only control she has left.
She tells him about the first folder at the hospital. The approach at the pharmacy. The way Enzo never raised his voice, never made threats twice.
Then he asks the question she wasn't prepared for.
"Why did you say yes?"
Sofia's throat tightens. She should give him the clinical answer. For Marco. For survival. For the money. For all the reasons that make sense.
Instead her chest overflows.
"Because he was eight and he couldn't breathe properly during soccer practice and the doctors said the experimental treatment could fix it and it costs more than I'll ever earn and my mother already works two jobs and I was running out of time and out of options and—" She stops. Swallows. "He asked me to help him pick out trading cards from the hospital gift shop. He's eight. He should be worried about which card has the best holographic effect, not whether his heart is going to fail."
Dante doesn't react to Marco's name with sympathy. He doesn't react with contempt either. He simply files it away like she just gave him a piece of information to catalog and move past. That absence of response is somehow more disturbing than either extreme.
"Enzo knew about the trading cards?" he asks.
"No. I—" Sofia realizes what she just did. "I just told you things he didn't need to know."
"Yes," Dante says. "You did."
He stands. The movement is fluid, controlled. He walks to the window that overlooks the medical wing gardens, keeping his back to her in a way that somehow feels more present than facing her directly.
"Here is what happens next," he says to the window. "You stay. You continue administering the IV sessions on schedule. You do not alert Enzo that the plan is compromised. And you give me everything you remember about the compound, the contact chain, and any identifying details from your meetings with him."
Sofia's hands curl into fists. "What do I get in exchange?"
He turns. "I do not hand you to the authorities. I do not remove your access to your brother's situation. And I ensure you have clean credentials when this is finished."
"And if Enzo wants proof? If he wants verification that you're actually declining?"
Dante moves back to the medical chair. He sits with the same relaxed control. "You tell him I have been fatigued. Mild symptoms. Nothing alarming yet. That is exactly what someone would say after a first successful administration. That is what he expects to hear."
"And if he escalates before you have what you need?"
"Then we escalate back." His voice is flat. Matter-of-fact. "I have been doing this longer than Enzo, Doctor Reyes. I have survived three attempts in two years. This one is better planned than the others but the architecture is the same. Someone with inside access gave Enzo the angle. Someone with knowledge of my medical history, my location patterns, my vulnerabilities."
Sofia is quiet for a moment.
"You think the mole is already here," she says.
Dante looks at her steadily. He neither confirms nor denies it. Which is its own answer. The answer written in the way his jaw tightens. The way his eyes have gone colder than before.
Someone in this mansion is working against him. Someone he trusts, or trusted. Someone close enough to access his private medical files. Someone inside his world.
"I need to know if you're telling me the truth about the compound," Sofia says. "If you already knew I was coming, if you knew Enzo sent me, then you knew exactly what the injection would contain. You know what it's supposed to do. So why let me administer it?"
"Because I need to understand if you knew what it would actually do," he says quietly. "There is a difference between what you were told and what you were given. I need to know if you understand that difference yet."
The words hit her wrong. Sofia opens her mouth. Closes it.
"What do you mean?"
Dante does not answer. Instead he stands again and walks to the medical equipment on the counter. He picks up the empty syringe she left there. The one with residual compound clinging to the needle.
"When you ran the compound through any analysis," he says, "did you check its complete molecular structure or did you check only the components Enzo described to you?"
Sofia's stomach drops.
She checked the components Enzo described. She verified the slow-acting suppressant. She confirmed the mimic pattern. She did not run a full spectroscopy because she was terrified and desperate and not thinking like a scientist. She was thinking like someone trying not to fail.
"I didn't run a full analysis," she admits.
Dante sets the syringe down. "Then we have more work to do than I thought. You are going to take this compound to the analysis suite in the medical wing. You are going to run every test available. And you are going to tell me exactly what you find."
"Why?"
"Because I think someone in this house modified what Enzo gave you. Because I think your compound is not what you were told it was. And because if I am right, then the person who hired you and the person who modified your weapon are not working together. Which means there are two separate conspiracies happening inside my walls."
Sofia feels the room tilt slightly.
Two enemies. Two different plans. One poison that might be more lethal than anyone realized.
"Do not sign anything," Dante says suddenly. "No contracts. No agreements. No legal documents. The deal between us exists in the air. It exists because we both have everything to lose and nowhere else to go. That is binding enough."
He pauses at the door. He turns back to look at her with an expression that is impossible to read because it contains too many things at once.
"Welcome to my investigation, Doctor Reyes," he says. "Try not to die before we finish it."
He leaves.
Sofia stands alone in the medical wing with the empty syringe in her hand and the realization that she just became someone's partner instead of someone's victim. She's not sure which is more dangerous.
She picks up the wine glass he left on the tray. The one meant for her. The one he proved was safe by drinking from it himself. She walks into the corridor and finds it empty at 10:47 AM on a Thursday morning.
She drinks the wine standing against the wall.
It's expensive. Complex. The kind of wine that tastes like it's been aging while other wines just exist. It slides down her throat warm and bitter and honest. When she finishes, her hands are still completely steady.
She's furious at herself for that.
Because steady hands right now mean she's either very brave or very stupid, and she cannot figure out which is which anymore. She came to this mansion to poison a man. She just agreed to investigate the poison with him instead. She's playing both sides of a war she didn't start and she's losing ground in both directions.
The most dangerous thing in this situation isn't Enzo.
It isn't the compound.
It's the way Dante looked at her when he asked why she said yes. Like he was seeing inside her chest. Like he understood exactly what it costs to love someone more than you love yourself. Like he recognized that same cost in his own reflection.
The most dangerous thing is already starting to take shape between them.
And Sofia has absolutely no idea how to survive it.