Chapter 14 - A Dinner with the Devil
The silence that followed the gunfight was heavier than the gunfire itself.
The smell of cordite mixed sickeningly with the sweet scent of blooming lemon blossoms. Down in the grove, three men lay dead on the gravel; two others had fled back toward their boats the moment Dante’s bullets began tearing through their cover with military precision.
The local carabinieri wouldn't arrive for at least forty minutes—Amalfi roads were narrow, and Marco had already dialed a specific number in Naples to ensure the local captain took the scenic route.
Marco was on the lower terrace, directing two trusted local dockworkers he kept on retainer to clean up the blood and tow the wrecked golf carts into a concealed shed.
Inside the villa, the afternoon sun spilled across the ruined dining room.
I stood in the kitchen, washing my hands under cold running water. The soap smelled of lavender, but no matter how hard I scrubbed, my skin felt hot, vibrating with the aftershocks of adrenaline. My shoulder ached from the shotgun’s kick.
Footsteps echoed softly on the terra-cotta tiles behind me.
"You didn't flinch," Dante said.
I turned around, drying my hands on a linen towel. He had taken off his coat; his white dress shirt was dusted with stone powder, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing the dark ink of his family crest and the scars that ran like rivers down his skin.
"Did you expect me to faint, Dante?" I asked coldly. "You forget where I spent my childhood. My father ran loan books out of an auto shop in Queens. I heard gunfire before I learned long division."
"Your father kept you clean of it," Dante replied, stepping over to the marble island. He pulled a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino from my wine rack, found a corkscrew without asking, and deftly opened it. "He died to keep you clean. And then I dragged you right back into the mud."
"You didn't drag me. I chose you." I took the wineglass he poured and set it on the counter without drinking. "And then I chose to leave when you forgot that loyalty is a two-way street."
"I never forgot." Dante poured himself a glass, leaning his hips against the island, staring at me with an intensity that made the small kitchen feel claustrophobic. "You think I enjoyed watching you leave? You think I slept in that penthouse after you took your things?"
"You had your empire to keep you warm."
"My empire is made of concrete and dead men, Elena," he said, his voice dropping into a harsh rasp. "It doesn't talk. It doesn't laugh. It doesn't look at me like I’m a human being instead of a monster with a checkbook."
"You are a monster with a checkbook," I fired back, stepping right into his space, my chest nearly brushing his. "You let Silvio corner me. You let your mother tell the entire table that my blood was dirty. That I was a parasite trying to secure an inheritance."
"And where is Silvio now?" Dante’s eyes flashed with sudden, terrifying fury. "He’s rotting in a cellar in New Jersey while his remaining crew dies on your driveway! My mother is confined to her estate in upstate New York with two guards at the gate who report only to me! She has no phone. She has no council. She has nothing!"
I stared at him, my breath catching in my throat. "You locked up your own mother?"
"She tried to destroy the only thing that kept me tethered to this earth," Dante said, his voice dropping so low it was almost a growl. "I warned her when I put that ring on your finger. I told her if anyone in the family breathed in your direction without respect, I would bury them. She thought I was bluffing because she gave birth to me."
He reached out, his hand finally closing over my wrist. His grip wasn't tight, but it was absolute. His thumb brushed over the sensitive skin of my inner pulse, feeling how fast my heart was racing.
"I don't bluff, Elena. Not with my family. And never with you."
"Then why did you wait four months to come?" I whispered, my voice breaking slightly. "Why let me spend four months thinking you believed them?"
"Because you needed to build this," he said, gesturing toward the sunlit terrace, the harbor below, the life I had carved out with my own sweat. "If I came after you the next day, you would have been my captive. You would have been the Don's woman who got rescued. I needed you to remember who you were without me."
"I know who I am without you," I said, trying to pull my wrist back, but he didn't let go. Instead, he pulled me one inch closer.
May you like
"I know you do," Dante murmured, his eyes dropping to my lips before rising back to mine. "You're a queen without a kingdom. And I came here to give you mine."
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