Chapter 2 - The Truth in the Mud
The rain drove down like needles against the raw skin of my face, washing the mud and Dante Moretti’s warm, sticky blood down my forearms.
My knees were sank two inches into the saturated clay of the embankment. Thirty feet below us, the twisted carcass of his seven-hundred-thousand-dollar armored sedan was already groaning under the weight of the ravine’s rushing creek, swallowed by the black belly of the mountain. If I had hesitated for three seconds—if I had listened to him when he snarled at me to let him die—we would have been crushed together in that metal tomb.
Now, twelve submachine guns were leveled at the center of my skull.
The men in the black tactical gear looked like wraiths beneath the glare of the halogen floodlights mounted to the lead SUV. Their boots tore into the wet shoulder of the road above, rifles held at high-ready, waiting for a single twitch of Dante’s finger to turn me into mist.
"Hold!"
A man with a shaved head and a brutal, jagged scar splitting his left eyebrow slid down the muddy incline, his combat boots digging into the muck. He had a Glock drawn, his knuckles white around the grip.
"Don Dante," the scarred man shouted over the howling wind. "Step away from her. We don't know who she's with."
Dante didn't step away. He couldn't. His right arm was dislocated at the shoulder, hanging at an unnatural angle, and every breath he drew produced a wet, rattling hiss that signaled shattered ribs. Yet, despite being battered, bleeding from a split scalp, and soaked to the bone, the man radiated a presence so terrifying that the surrounding forest felt smaller just for containing him.
His grip around my wrist didn't slacken. If anything, his long, calloused fingers tightened, anchoring me to his chest. His thumb pressed against my frantic pulse point.
"I asked you a question, waitress," Dante said. His voice was not loud, but it cut through the thunderstorm like a razor through silk. "How did you know my car was going to lose its brakes?"
My teeth were chattering so hard I thought they would crack. "Bellini’s," I gasped, wiping rain from my eyes with my free hand. "Booth four. Behind the mahogany partition."
Dante’s gray eyes narrowed, the silver in his irises flashing in the headlights. "Go on."
"Your wife," I said, the words spilling out before fear could choke them back. "Vanessa. She was sitting with a man. He had a signet ring with a gold falcon on his pinky, and a thin scar running down his wrist. He told her it was done. He said the brake lines were cut just enough to give out on the mountain descent."
A dead, suffocating silence fell over the slope.
Even the rain seemed to lose its sound.
The scarred lieutenant who had slid down the bank stopped dead in his tracks. His weapon lowered by a fraction of an inch, his eyes widening in shock. "Mother of God... Julian."
Dante didn't curse. He didn't yell. The fury inside him did not explode outward; it imploded, turning him into a block of absolute, arctic permafrost. His jaw clenched with such force that a muscle jumped beneath his blood-streaked skin.
"Julian Rossi," Dante murmured, his voice deadly and quiet. "My underboss. And my wife."
"She laughed," I whispered, the memory making my stomach twist in disgust. "She said by midnight, she’d be a grieving widow. He said you were leaving in ten minutes. I tried to reach you in the parking lot, but your car was already gone. So I grabbed my keys and I drove."
Dante stared at me. He wasn't looking at my dirty sneakers, my torn black uniform apron, or the cheap nametag pinned crookedly to my collar that read CARA. He looked directly into my pupils, searching for hesitation, for deceit, for the practiced tremor of an actress.
He found nothing but the raw, unvarnished truth of a woman who had ruined her shoes and nearly broken her spine pulling an empire’s master out of a wreck.
"Marco," Dante commanded, his voice slicing through the freeze.
"Yes, Boss?" the scarred lieutenant answered immediately.
"Get her up the hill. Put her in my car. If a single raindrop falls on her from this moment forward, I will take your hands."
"Understood, Don Dante."
Marco reached down, his scarred face grim, and took my elbow with surprising gentleness, hauling me up the slick slope toward the pavement. Behind us, three men threw a harness around Dante, bracing his broken frame as they brought him up the mountain. He refused the stretcher. Even broken, concussed, and bleeding through his custom Italian wool, Dante Moretti walked up the asphalt on his own two feet.
They bundled me into the warm, dry interior of a heavy Mercedes Maybach. The heat blasted against my shivering limbs, smelling of rich leather, clean cedar, and cigar smoke.
A second later, the rear door opened, and Dante slid onto the bench seat beside me.
A team medic tried to lean into the vehicle with a trauma kit, but Dante shoved the man’s hands away with his good arm. "Pop the shoulder first. Do it now."
The medic didn't argue. He braced Dante’s torso, took the dislocated arm, and with a swift, brutal torque, slammed the joint back into the socket.
A sickening pop echoed in the leather cabin.
Dante didn't scream. He didn't even close his eyes. He merely exhaled a sharp hiss through his teeth, his gray eyes locked onto mine the entire time, burning with an unholy intensity.
"Listen to me, Cara," Dante said, leaning toward me until his dark, rain-soaked hair brushed my forehead. "The moment that car left the road, Dante Moretti died."
I blinked, my mind struggling to keep up with the adrenaline coursing through my veins. "What?"
"If Vanessa and Julian think I am alive, they will scatter into the wind. They will burn the bank accounts, flee the country, or strike again before I can purge the ranks," Dante explained, his voice low, intimate, and chillingly precise. "The car burned at the bottom of that ravine. Marco will report to the council that my body was incinerated."
"And... and me?" I whispered, my voice trembling as the reality of my situation finally closed around my throat. "I have a shift tomorrow at eleven. I have rent due on Tuesday."
May you like
Dante offered a faint, humorless smile that sent a shiver straight down my spine.
"Cara," he said softly, reaching out with his bloodstained hand to trace the curve of my bruised cheekbone, "you don't work at Bellini's anymore. You just saved the life of the East Coast Don. You belong to my house now. And until I hang my wife and my underboss from the rafters of the city harbor, you don't leave my sight."
