POV: DIMITRI
The call came at half past ten on a Tuesday morning.
Dimitri was in his office, three floors of city noise below him and silence above, working through the Rotterdam problem with Marco when his personal phone lit up on the desk. Not the business phone. Not the secure line he used for operations.
The personal one.
The number that only seven people in the world had.
He saw the name on the screen and went very still.
Marco, who had spent fifteen years learning to read Dimitri Valentino the way sailors read weather, stopped mid-sentence and stood up without being asked.
"I'll wait outside," he said.
The door closed.
Dimitri looked at the phone for two more seconds....long enough to arrange his face into something that felt nothing, which was the only appropriate expression for this particular caller....and answered.
"Antonio."
