He heard the line go dead.
He stood in his study with the phone in his hand and the documents on the desk and Rome outside the window going about its morning with the complete indifference of a city that had never once adjusted itself to the internal states of the people living inside it.
Three seconds.
He gave himself three seconds of standing completely still.
Then he put the phone down on the desk with the careful deliberateness of someone who understood that if they didn’t put it down carefully they were going to do something to it that couldn’t be undone.
Then he picked up everything else on the desk and threw it.
“Sofia…” he growled, the name ripping from his throat like a prayer and a curse at once.
In one violent sweep, his arm cleared the massive oak desk—papers, whiskey gl
