Chapter 7 - The Scars We Share
Three weeks later.
Winter arrived in the Hudson Valley with a fierce, quiet beauty.
Snow blanketed the sprawling lawns of the Blackwood Estate, turning the heavy pine trees into frosted sentinels overlooking the icy blue waters of the river below. Inside the master suite on the third floor, a massive fire crackled in the hearth, filling the room with the sweet, dry scent of cedar and aged bourbon.
Dante was sitting up in the massive four-poster mahogany bed, propped against heavy goose-down pillows.
The bullet had shattered his scapula and missed his lung by half an inch, but Dr. Rossi had worked a miracle. The wound was healing cleanly, leaving a thick, pink scar that joined the dozen other battle marks crisscrossing his broad, muscular chest.
I sat on the edge of the mattress, wearing an oversized gray cashmere sweater that belonged to him and a pair of leggings. In my hands, I held a porcelain bowl of warm broth and a silver spoon.
"I am the head of a multi-billion-dollar syndicate, Cara," Dante grumbled, eyeing the spoon with profound suspicion. "I do not need to be fed like an infant."
"You have one functioning arm and three broken ribs, Mr. Moretti," I said calmly, blowing on the broth before holding it to his lips. "Open your mouth before I dump this on your silk sheets."
Dante glared at me, his gray eyes flashing with that familiar, dangerous fire.
Then, with an exaggerated sigh of defeat, he opened his mouth and swallowed the broth.
"You are the most insubordinate woman I have ever met in my life," he muttered.
"And you're the worst patient in North America," I countered with a sweet smile, setting the bowl down on the bedside table. "We're even."
A low, rumbling chuckle escaped his chest, quickly cut short by a wince as his ribs protested.
He reached out with his uninjured left hand, his long, calloused fingers closing around my wrist with that same, unbreakable grip he had used on the mountain slope. He pulled me gently toward him until I was leaning across his chest, our faces inches apart.
The playfulness evaporated from the air.
His gray eyes darkened, searching my face with an intensity that made my breath hitch in my throat.
"Vanessa was transferred to a federal penitentiary in upstate New York this morning," Dante said quietly. "Marco handed over her signed confessions and Julian's financial records to the FBI. She will spend the next thirty-five years behind concrete bars for conspiracy to commit murder and interstate racketeering."
I swallowed hard, looking down at his chest. "And the Moretti family?"
"Purged," Dante replied flatly. "Julian’s loyalists are dead or in exile. The Five Families ratified my leadership without a single dissenting vote. The war is over, Cara."
"I'm glad," I whispered.
"Which means," Dante continued, his thumb gently tracing the smooth skin of my cheek, right where the bruises had long since faded, "you are free to go."
My heart stopped.
The warmth in the room seemed to drain away, leaving behind a cold, hollow ache in the center of my chest.
"Free to go?" I repeated, my voice barely audible.
Dante reached to the nightstand and picked up a heavy black leather folder. He placed it in my lap.
"Inside is a certified cashier’s check for ten million dollars," Dante said, his voice steady, but strained with an emotion he was fighting desperately to suppress. "There is also the deed to a four-bedroom brownstone in Boston, fully paid for, and a clean identity with no ties to the Moretti name. You can walk out of these gates today, Cara. You can open that bakery you told me about. You can live in the sun, safe from the blood, the guns, and the monsters of my world."
He dropped his hand from my face, leaning back against the pillows, his jaw clenched as if bracing for a physical blow.
"You saved my life twice," Dante murmured, his eyes looking past me toward the falling snow outside the window. "I will not repay that debt by dragging you into the dark with me. You deserve a life of peace."
I looked at the black folder in my lap.
Ten million dollars. A brownstone in Boston. Freedom from poverty, freedom from twelve-hour shifts, freedom from fear.
Everything I had ever dreamed of since I was a starving teenager in Queens.
Slowly, deliberately, I picked up the leather folder.
I didn't open it.
I tossed it across the room. It landed with a soft thud directly in the center of the roaring fireplace.
The flames eagerly swallowed the leather, the corners curling into ash, ten million dollars incinerating into black smoke in three seconds.
Dante’s head snapped toward me, his eyes wide with absolute, disbelieving shock. "Cara! What did you just do?!"
"I told you once before, Dante Moretti," I said, my voice trembling with fierce, unyielding fury as tears burned behind my eyes. "I am not for sale."
"That was your future!" he roared, struggling to sit upright.
"My future isn't in Boston!" I yelled back, climbing onto the bed, straddling his lap, pressing my hands flat against his warm, scarred chest. "My future is right here, you stubborn, arrogant bastard!"
Dante froze.
"I don't want your clean money," I sobbed, resting my forehead against his. "I don't want a quiet life in the sun if you're not in it. I spent twenty-seven years being invisible, Dante. Nobody looked at me. Nobody cared if I lived or died. But on that mountain, you looked at me. In that ballroom, you took a bullet for me."
I cupped his scarred face in both of my hands, my thumbs wiping away the single tear that slipped from his gray eyes.
"You think you're a monster," I whispered into his lips. "But I know the man beneath the armor. And I am not leaving you in the dark ever again."
Dante let out a broken, ragged groan that tore straight from his soul.
He wrapped his strong left arm around my waist, pulling me flush against his heart, and crushed his mouth against mine.
The kiss was everything we had held back through the rain, the blood, and the gunsmoke. It was wild, desperate, and consuming, filled with a raw, possessive hunger that set my veins on fire. I parted my lips, tasting the sweet burn of his breath, threading my fingers through his dark, thick hair. He kissed me like a dying man finding water in the desert, his hand gripping my hip with an intensity that declared to heaven and earth that I was his.
When he finally pulled back, his breath coming in hot, shallow gasps, his eyes were burning with a fierce, eternal light.
"If you stay, Cara," he swore against my swollen lips, his voice thick with raw devotion, "you take the crown. You take the blood, the empire, and the throne. You become Donna Moretti."
May you like
I smiled through my tears, resting my palm over his thumping heart.
"Then give me the crown, Don Dante," I whispered. "I’ve already proved I can carry the weight."
