Elena Writes the Rules

Chapter 07 - Elena Writes the Rules

The certificates were not in a vault.

They were inside a cookbook.

Sofia had hidden them between two laminated pages of a battered Puerto Rican cookbook Miguel gave her on their tenth anniversary. The book had sat for fourteen years on a kitchen shelf beside newer, prettier cookbooks nobody used.

The fire had blackened the cover.

The pages survived.

Elena stared at the documents spread across a hotel table.

Forty percent of a company worth hundreds of millions.

Paper thin enough to tear with two fingers.

“I hate rich people,” she said.

Dante, standing by the window, glanced over.

“You are technically one now.”

“I hate you specifically.”

“That feels more familiar.”

Sofia was asleep in the adjoining room under the watch of two female security officers she had approved herself.

That last detail mattered.

Dante had asked.

Elena noticed every time he asked now.

“Daniel wants my mother and these certificates,” she said.

“Yes.”

“We cannot give him my mother.”

“No.”

“We can give him copies.”

“He will know.”

“Then what?”

Dante looked at her.

“We wait for him to call.”

“I hate waiting.”

“I know.”

“You barely know me.”

“I know you reorganized a charity’s procurement system in six weeks when three consultants failed for a year.”

Elena frowned.

“How do you know that?”

“I read your employment file.”

“That is deeply unattractive.”

“I’ll recover.”

She looked down at the certificates.

“What else did you read?”

“Everything public. Some things not public.”

“Also unattractive.”

Dante’s expression changed slightly.

“I was looking for Miguel’s daughter.”

“And found what?”

“A woman who had survived being publicly lied about without becoming cruel.”

Elena’s eyes lifted.

The room became too quiet.

Dante looked away first.

Good.

She was not ready for whatever that silence wanted to become.

On the table beside her lay the diamond ring from the wedding.

Dante had returned it after the bank.

“I don’t want it.”

“You don’t have to wear it.”

“Then why is it here?”

“Because it belonged to my grandmother.”

Elena stared.

“You put your grandmother’s ring on a stranger as a publicity stunt?”

“When you say it that way, it sounds poorly considered.”

“It was poorly considered.”

“Yes.”

She picked it up.

The stone was old, slightly warm from the room.

“Why this ring?”

“My grandmother was the first person in my family to leave a Salvatore man.”

Elena looked at him.

“That is unexpectedly encouraging.”

“She took three children, eighty dollars and a cast-iron pan.”

“Did she hit him with the pan?”

“Once.”

Elena smiled despite herself.

Dante watched the smile for half a second too long.

She set the ring down.

“If we are going to pretend publicly that I am under your protection, I make the rules.”

His gaze sharpened.

“Pretend?”

“The wedding photographs are everywhere already. Enzo thinks I am connected to you. Daniel does too. We can use that.”

Dante said nothing.

Elena continued.

“Not engagement.”

“Fine.”

“No statements that imply you own me, protect me, claim me or decide for me.”

A faint grimace.

“You used the word ‘claim’ at the ballroom.”

“I did not.”

“Your face did.”

“That seems difficult to regulate.”

“Try.”

He nodded.

“What else?”

“No surveillance without telling me.”

“That one is unreasonable.”

“It is not.”

“If there is an active threat—”

“You tell me there is an active threat, and we decide together.”

Dante’s jaw tightened.

He hated it.

“Fine.”

“No tracking my phone.”

“Fine.”

“No contacting my employer.”

“You don’t currently have one.”

“That is not the point.”

“Fine.”

“No killing anyone.”

Dante stared.

“Elena.”

“No killing anyone.”

“If someone is shooting at you, I reserve the right to be practical.”

She considered it.

“Self-defense only.”

“Accepted.”

“And if we use the ring again, you ask me first.”

Dante looked at it.

“Why would we use it again?”

“Because people saw it.”

“That was not an engagement.”

“Tell the internet.”

He almost smiled.

Her phone buzzed.

A news article.

MAFIA HEIR DANTE SALVATORE PUTS RING ON DISGRACED VALE FOUNDATION EXEC AT SOCIETY WEDDING.

Elena held up the screen.

“See?”

Dante read the headline.

“I dislike ‘mafia heir.’”

“I dislike ‘disgraced.’ We all have problems.”

He laughed.

Actually laughed.

Low and surprised, as if the sound had escaped him.

Elena looked at him differently for one dangerous second.

Then the hotel phone rang.

Dante answered on speaker.

A distorted voice.

“Ms. Reyes.”

Daniel Mercer.

Elena leaned toward the phone.

“Where is Marcus?”

“Alive.”

“Proof.”

A video came to her phone.

Marcus sat in a chair.

Blood at his temple.

He looked directly into the camera.

“Elena, don’t give them anything.”

Someone struck him from behind.

The video ended.

Elena’s stomach clenched.

Daniel spoke again.

“I want Sofia and the certificates.”

“You are not getting my mother.”

“Then Marcus dies.”

Elena looked at Vivien.

She had entered from the hall and heard everything.

Her face went white.

Elena said, “You spent a year ruining my life. Why would you think I care enough about Marcus to trade my mother for him?”

Silence.

Then Daniel laughed softly.

“Because I know what you’re like.”

The sentence unsettled her.

“What am I like?”

“You care even when you should hate people.”

Dante’s face changed.

Daniel continued.

“That is why you are useful.”

Elena felt something cold settle inside her.

She had spent years believing kindness was strength.

Men like Daniel treated it as leverage.

“No.”

“What?”

“No deal.”

Vivien inhaled sharply.

Elena did not look at her.

“You can threaten Marcus. You can threaten me. You do not get my mother.”

Daniel’s voice cooled.

“Then he dies.”

“No.”

Elena leaned closer to the phone.

“You want those shares because Enzo will kill you without them. You cannot kill Marcus until you have the recording. You don’t know where he put it.”

Silence.

Dante looked at her.

She continued.

“So let us stop pretending you have all the power.”

Another pause.

Then Daniel said, “Midnight tomorrow. Old Salvatore pier seventeen.”

The line went dead.

Dante stared at Elena.

“You bluffed.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know Daniel doesn’t have the recording?”

“I didn’t.”

Vivien sat down.

“You risked Marcus’s life.”

Elena turned toward her.

“Yes.”

Vivien looked shocked.

Elena’s voice remained calm.

“That is what decisions look like when nobody gives you a good one.”

The words belonged partly to her mother.

Partly to herself.

Dante picked up the ring.

“Elena.”

She looked at him.

He held it out.

“May I?”

Not a command.

Not a performance.

A question.

Elena looked at the ring, then at him.

“What exactly are you asking?”

“To give Enzo and Daniel something to focus on besides Sofia.”

She understood.

Make herself visible.

Make herself seem valuable to Dante.

Make herself bait again.

Only this time, by choice.

Elena extended her left hand.

“Yes.”

Dante slid the ring on slowly.

His fingers were warm.

Neither of them spoke.

Then Vivien’s phone buzzed.

A message from Marcus’s number.

Three words.

DON’T TRUST DANTE.

Elena looked up.

Dante had seen it.

The softness vanished from the room.

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And beneath the message appeared a photograph from fourteen years earlier.

Dante Salvatore standing beside Miguel Reyes’s body.