Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Before anyone could say another word, Mia called my phone. Her voice was frantic, and I could hear Leo crying in the background. “Elena, you need to come upstairs right now,” she said. “Someone just delivered an envelope addressed to Leo, and there's a photograph inside.” My stomach twisted as she described the picture: Leo standing outside our Zurich apartment, taken only a week before we left for Chicago.
Someone had been watching my son long before we ever boarded the plane. Dante took the phone from my trembling hand and examined the photograph when Mia sent it over. His face hardened as he recognized the black car parked across the street. “That's not one of my men,” he said. “It's the vehicle belonging to the man who threatened your father.” Victoria suddenly covered her mouth, realizing the danger had followed us across an ocean.
Dante grabbed his coat and headed for the door, but I caught his arm. “No more secrets,” I told him, looking straight into his gray eyes. “If you want to protect Leo, you tell me everything, starting now.” He turned back to me, and for the first time in three years, I saw the man I had once loved beneath the feared Mafia boss. “I will,” he promised. “But Elena, there's something about your father's death that you need to know.”
Dante did not pull his arm away from my grasp. He looked down into my eyes with an unbearable weight in his gaze, as if speaking the truth might shatter whatever fragile hope remained between us.
“Your father did not die of sudden heart failure, Elena,” he whispered, his deep voice carrying a tremor of suppressed fury. “His medication was deliberately poisoned by the exact same inner circle traitor who manipulated Victoria into this sham.”
The air rushed out of my lungs, and the room seemed to spin violently around me. My father, the gentle man who had tried so desperately to shield me from the brutality of the syndicates, had been murdered in cold blood.
Victoria pressed both hands against her mouth, a stifled sob tearing from her chest. She sank into the nearest leather armchair, her polished facade collapsing entirely under the weight of the realization that her compliance had cost our father his life.
“Salvatore Vance,” Dante continued, his gray eyes flashing like steel beneath the dim chandeliers. “He was my father’s most trusted advisor, and he spent three decades weaving himself into the marrow of my family’s empire, waiting for the right moment to strike.”
“Salvatore convinced me that Dante would execute our father if I didn't cooperate,” Victoria wept, clutching her trembling knees. “He said Dante only kept Elena alive as a hostage. I believed him, Elena. God help me, I believed his poison.”
I felt the ground shifting beneath my boots, the agonizing pieces of my eight-year puzzle violently slotting into place. Dante had pushed me away to starve Salvatore’s ambition, while Victoria had stepped forward out of a toxic cocktail of envy and dread.
“We don't have time to mourn or debate the past right now,” Dante said, his command returning like iron over velvet. “Mia and Leo are alone upstairs, and Vance’s operatives are already inside this hotel perimeter. We move immediately.”
I didn't wait for him to finish his sentence before darting past the open door. My heart hammered wildly against my ribs as I sprinted down the carpeted hallway toward the elevators, terrified of what waited on the penthouse floor.
Dante was half a step behind me, his weapon drawn and held low against his thigh with practiced lethality. Victoria trailed several paces back, her designer heels abandoned on the runner as she scrambled to keep up with our hurried stride.
We took the concrete service stairwell instead of the elevator, taking the steps three at a time in absolute silence. Every fiber of my being screamed with the instinctual, fierce terror of a mother whose child was in direct, imminent peril.
When we reached room eight-fourteen, the heavy wooden door was cracked open by an inch. A thin sliver of warm hallway light sliced into the darkened suite, revealing overturned luggage, scattered clothing, and a terrifying smear of chalky dust on the carpet.
“Leo!” I screamed, throwing caution to the wind as I crashed through the entrance. The sitting room was completely empty, the balcony curtains thrashing violently in the cold Chicago gale that poured through an open sliding glass pane.
Dante moved with lethal efficiency, sweeping every corner and clearing the adjoining master bedroom in mere seconds. He emerged with a grim expression, lowering his pistol slightly while pointing toward the adjoining bathroom where the light was still blazing.
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Mia stumbled out from behind the heavy shower curtain, clutching a decorative brass lamp like a baseball bat. Her sweater was torn at the shoulder, her knuckles white, and her breathing arrived in jagged, terrified gasps that filled the silence.
—END OF Chapter 3,
