DANTE POV
Dante's phone alerts at 2:20 AM.
Not a security breach. The medical wing's access system showing Sofia's keycard being used from the inside, moving toward the main residence. He pulls up the corridor camera feed. She's moving with purpose, not panic. Her hair is down. She's wearing yesterday's clothes. There's something in her hand.
He watches her walk directly to his private office.
She knocks.
He opens the door before she can knock again. She's in his doorway with an encrypted drive in one hand and an expression that could mean a dozen different things. She doesn't ask for permission. She doesn't hesitate.
"I found something," she says. "You need to see it."
Dante steps aside and lets her in.
She sits across from his desk like she's done this a hundred times. Like walking to a crime lord's office at 2:20 AM with evidence is something she does regularly. She's steady, which tells him everything he needs to know about how scared she actually is.
She walks him through the analysis. The base layer. The rider compound. The blood chemistry targeting mechanism. She explains it like a scientist, precise and fast and without editorializing. She references the exact technical terms. She shows him the methodology. She gives him data that is undeniable.
When she finishes, she sets the drive on his desk and waits.
Dante doesn't touch it immediately. He looks at her instead.
"You could have kept this," he says quietly.
Sofia doesn't respond.
"You could have used it as leverage against both of us. You could have renegotiated with Enzo. You could have disappeared." He pauses. "You could have sat on this information and done absolutely nothing."
"Yes," she says.
"Instead you came here in the middle of the night and handed it to me directly."
Sofia looks at her hands. "Someone in this building modified that compound using your private medical data. I wasn't going to be the person who knew that and stayed quiet."
Dante leans back in his chair. She just walked into his world as an assassin. She was compromised from the moment she arrived. And then she discovered something that could have set her free from all of it, and instead of using it to escape, she brought it directly to him.
She chose him.
Over her own safety. Over Enzo's leverage. Over every rational option available to her.
"Get some sleep," he says. "We start in the morning."
She stands. She pauses at the door.
"For what it's worth," she says, "I never intended to let the compound do what it was designed to do. I hadn't figured out how to stop it yet. But I was working on it."
She leaves.
Dante sits in the dark of his office with the encrypted drive on his desk and the complete realization of what just happened. Sofia Reyes walked into this mansion to poison him. She discovered a conspiracy he didn't know about. And instead of using that knowledge to protect herself, she gave it to him like it was the only logical choice.
Which means she doesn't think of herself as separate from him anymore.
Which means she's already starting to see this place as hers instead of as a trap.
Which means the most dangerous thing in this mansion isn't the poison or the traitor.
It's the fact that Sofia is beginning to matter to him in ways that have nothing to do with strategy.
Dante picks up the encrypted drive. He sets it back down.
He doesn't sleep for the rest of the night.
Instead he pulls up the access logs for his private medical files. Seven accounts with access to his complete bloodwork history. Seven people who could have given Enzo the information needed to create a targeted weapon.
Seven suspects.
One traitor.
And a woman who just chose him over her own survival.
Dante runs through the list methodically. Each name. Each access pattern. Each potential motivation. By the time dawn breaks over the estate gardens, he has narrowed it down to four.
By the time Sofia wakes up, he's already decided how to find the mole.
He's already planning how to make sure nobody ever tries to use her against him again.
He's already crossing lines in his mind about what he's willing to do to keep her safe.
That's how he knows she's dangerous.
Not because of the compound or the conspiracy.
Because he's starting to care more about her survival than about the integrity of his own operation.
And that's a vulnerability he cannot afford.