SOFIA POV
Wednesday night, Sofia memorizes the compound until she can recite it backwards.
She walks through the chemical sequence in the dark, eyes closed, until it stops being something foreign and becomes something her hands understand without her brain. Just chemistry. Just molecules arranged to accelerate a heart's natural decline.
She checks the dosage three times. Checks her hands in the mirror. By 2 AM she's checked everything so many times that checking becomes prayer.
By 3 AM she gives up on sleep.
Thursday arrives grey and clinical. The medical wing is pristine. High-end equipment. Private hospital quality. Sofia arrives ten minutes early because arriving late would suggest anxiety, and she cannot afford anxiety.
She sets up the IV line with mechanical precision. Every movement rehearsed a hundred times. Her hands do not shake because she's spent twelve hours teaching them not to.
At 9 AM exactly, Dante walks in.
He moves through the room like he owns it, which is technically true, but it's something more than ownership. It's the kind of certainty that comes from never questioning your right to occupy space. He wears dark trousers and a grey shirt with the sleeves rolled. His hair is still wet from a shower. He looks like someone who exists in a different category of human than the rest of the world.
Sofia's throat tightens.
He sits without hesitation, without the wariness most people bring to medical settings. He rolls up his sleeve before she asks, exposing his forearm. The skin is unmarked. The vein beneath is prominent. The kind of vein that makes a pharmacologist's job easy.
He watches her prepare the line.
Not casually. With the kind of attention usually reserved for things people intend to remember forever. His eyes track every movement. Every adjustment. She's hyper-aware of her own hands, suddenly certain that every motion is either too fast or too slow or wrong in ways she can't define.
She forces her voice steady.
"I'll be connecting the primary line now," she says, running through her standard clinical patter. "The supplement is the weekly IV you've been receiving. Standard protocol."
She connects the line. The supplement flows in smoothly. This part is normal. This part she can do with her eyes closed.
Her hand reaches for the secondary syringe.
The one with the compound.
She can feel him watching as she draws the liquid into the needle. He does not look away. His eyes do not blink. It's the kind of observation that makes her skin feel tight, like she's being seen in ways that have nothing to do with seeing.
She inserts the syringe into the line.
One smooth push. The compound enters his bloodstream. The poison he's supposed to be unaware of, flowing directly into his body. She's almost done when he speaks.
"The dosage you just administered was 0.3 milligrams above the formula my previous consultant used."
Sofia's hands stop moving. Just for a fraction of a second. Long enough that if he's paying attention, he knows she knows he's noticed.
She caps the syringe. Sets it down. Turns to face him.
His expression is not readable because it's layers. Calm underneath. Assessment underneath that. Something else underneath everything else.
She gives him the explanation she rehearsed. Absorption rates based on his bloodwork. Technical language that sounds authoritative. She uses his actual test results so nothing is lies, just carefully curated truth.
He listens without interrupting. When she finishes, he looks at her for a moment that stretches longer than it should.
Then he stands.
He's close enough that she has to tilt her head to maintain eye contact. He's taller than she realized. Broader through the shoulders. The kind of physically present that makes the room feel smaller.
He walks to the corner table. There's a bottle of red wine there and two glasses. She's been in this room four times and never noticed them. Either they were always there and she missed them, or he placed them specifically for this moment.
He pours both glasses with movements so controlled they suggest someone who has learned to do everything deliberately.
He holds one out to her.
"I know what you are doing, Doctor Reyes."
The room stops existing.
"I have known since the referral came through channels that Enzo Sarto specializes in. You can drink the wine. It is not poisoned. I checked."
Sofia's legs feel like water. The glass is right there in his hand, steady as stone. Everything about him is steady while she's coming apart in her own skin.
"Whoever sent you wants me dead," he continues, and his voice has dropped lower, more intimate somehow. "I want to know who. I want to know everything they told you to do. I want to know what they promised in exchange for your cooperation."
He sets the wine glass down on the tray in front of her. The sound it makes is too loud.
"So here is what happens next," he says.
Sofia opens her mouth. No words come out.
"You are going to keep doing exactly what you were hired to do." He says this like he's explaining something simple. Like he's not asking her to continue poisoning him. "You will administer the injections as scheduled. You will tell me everything you remember about your contact with Enzo Sarto. Everything. Names, numbers, locations, words. All of it."
He steps closer.
"And I am going to keep breathing. And eventually, between the two of us, we are going to find out who inside my organization has the access and the motivation to help an outsider kill me."
Sofia stares at the wine glass. Then at his face. His eyes are dark grey, the kind of dark that has depth, that suggests things she doesn't have names for.
"What happens to my brother?" The question comes out broken.
"That depends on whether you can be useful to me," he says, and there's something in his voice that is not cruel, not kind. Something in between. "But I want you to understand something first. The compound you just administered. I want you to remember its exact composition. Every element. We are going to need that information very soon."
He picks up the wine glass that was meant for her.
He drinks from it himself.
The message is clear. Not poisoned. Safe. He's asking her to trust him in a mansion full of reasons not to.
He sets the glass down empty and looks at her with an expression that suggests he's seeing all of her at once. Every desperate choice. Every reason she walked through his gates. Every thing she was willing to do for her brother.
"Welcome to the Ferri estate," he says quietly. "We have much to discuss."
He leaves her standing in the medical wing with an empty wine glass and the realization that she was never hunting prey.
She's been hunted by someone who was always three moves ahead.
And the worst part is she has no idea why he's letting her live.