Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Dante
The Uber driver doesn't speak.
I'm not in the mood for conversation either way.
I watch the city slide past the window. Denver at night looks different from Chicago—cleaner somehow, newer, like it hasn't had time to accumulate the same layers of blood and history. The mountains are invisible in the darkness, but I know they're there. Watching. Waiting.
Like Alejandro.
I run through the facts again. The things I know for certain.
One: Alejandro Mendoza killed my family twenty-four years ago.
Two: Giuseppe lied to me. Used my pain to eliminate a rival.
Three: Alejandro has been watching. Waiting. Planning.
Four: He wants me.
That last part is the clearest thing in this whole mess. The surveillance photos, the elaborate trap with Webb, the threats against Marina's parents and the Sartori women—all of it points to one conclusion.
He wants me.
Not the family. Not Lorenzo or Bruno or Nico. Me.
If he wanted me dead, there are easier ways. They could have killed me that night. Somehow their plan went wrong and he got lucky enough to leave.
But they didn't kill me.
Which means death isn't the point. At least, not quick death.
I think about what that means. What Alejandro might want from me before the end. Answers? Revenge? Something else entirely?
The Uber turns onto an industrial street. Warehouses line both sides, their windows dark and empty. This part of Denver looks abandoned. Forgotten. The kind of place where screams don't carry.
I think about her face when I left. The way her hands shook. The way she said come back to me like it was a prayer and a command all at once.
I've never had someone waiting for me before. Not like that. Not someone who looked at me like my survival mattered more than anything else in the world.
It's terrifying.
It's also the only reason I'm doing this.
If I don't show up, Alejandro kills her parents. Kills Vittoria. Kills Aria. Four innocent people dead because I was too cowardly to face the man who murdered my family.
I can't live with that.
I probably won't live at all after tonight, but at least I'll die knowing I tried. Knowing I gave Marina a chance. Knowing the people I love are safe.
The car slows. Stops.
"This is it," the driver says. First words he's spoken the entire ride.
I look out the window. The building is massive—an old manufacturing plant, maybe, or a distribution center. The kind of place that used to employ hundreds of people before the jobs moved overseas. Now it's just another skeleton on the industrial landscape.
A single light burns above the entrance.
A man stands beneath it.
I open the door and step out. The night air is cold. Sharp. It cuts through my jacket and settles into my bones.
For now.
The Uber pulls away. I don't watch it go. My eyes are fixed on the man at the entrance.
He's big. Broad shoulders, thick neck, hands that look like they've broken bones before. Cartel muscle. The kind of man who follows orders without asking questions.
He doesn't reach for a weapon as I approach. Doesn't move at all, actually. Just stands there. Waiting.
When I'm ten feet away, he speaks.
"Castellani."
Not a question. A confirmation.
"That's me."
He nods once. Turns. Opens the door.
Well. At least I get to walk in on my own two feet.
I've seen men dragged into places like this. Bound and gagged, thrown over shoulders like sacks of meat. There's a certain dignity in walking through the door yourself. A certain defiance.
Look at me, it says. I'm not afraid of you.
Even if that's a lie.
I step through the entrance. The man falls into step behind me—close enough to grab me if I run, far enough to give me the illusion of freedom. Professional. Alejandro trained his people well.
The interior of the building is exactly what I expected. Concrete floors stained with decades of industrial use. Metal beams stretching up to a ceiling lost in shadow. The smell of rust and oil and something else. Something organic.
Blood, maybe. Old blood.
Or maybe that's just my imagination.
The man guides me through a maze of corridors. Left. Right. Left again. I memorize the route automatically—. Not that it matters. I'm not planning to escape.
The man stops me at a metal door. Rusted hinges. No window.
"Arms up."
I comply. He pats down my chest, my sides, my back. Checks my waistband. My ankles. Finds the knife in my boot and removes it without comment.
No guns. I left them at the penthouse.
Showing up armed would have been suicide. Alejandro's men would have shot me before I made it through the door. This way, at least I get to have a conversation.
The man steps back. Nods once.
"Clean."
He opens the door.
The room beyond is large. Industrial.
And there, in the center, seated in a metal chair like it's a throne—
Alejandro Mendoza.
His eyes show a man who is always alert.
My body moves before my brain catches up. Every muscle screams at me to close the distance. To wrap my hands around his throat. To squeeze until the light leaves those predatory eyes and he joins my family in whatever hell awaits men like us.
But I can't.
Not yet.
So I stop. Force my hands to stay at my sides. Force my breathing to stay even.
Alejandro watches me. A small smile plays at the corner of his mouth.
He knows exactly what I'm thinking. What I'm feeling. He's probably seen that look a thousand times before—the look of a man who wants to kill but can't.
He gestures to a chair across from him. Empty. Waiting.
I don't move.
"I need to check in every ten minutes," I say. My voice comes out steady. Controlled. "If I don't, people start dying. Your people."
Alejandro's smile widens slightly. He nods.
"Of course. I would expect nothing less from Lorenzo's consigliere."
The way he says it—Lorenzo's consigliere—makes it sound like an insult. Like I'm a dog on a leash. A weapon pointed at whoever my master chooses.
Maybe he's right.
I walk to the chair. Sit down.
Alejandro studies me. His eyes move across my face like he's cataloging every feature. Comparing me to something. Someone.
"You look like your father," he says finally.
"Don't," I say. The word comes out harder than I intended. "Don't talk about him."
Alejandro tilts his head. "Why not? He's the reason we're both here."
"He's the reason you murdered my family."
"He's the reason I was hired to murder your family." Alejandro leans back in his chair. "There's a difference."
"Not to me."
"No. I suppose not."
Silence stretches between us. The hanging light flickers once. Twice. Somewhere in the building, a door slams.
I check my phone. Send the text to Marina. Still alive.
I pocket the phone and look at Alejandro.
"What do you want?"
He raises an eyebrow. "Straight to business. I appreciate that."
"You didn't bring me here to reminisce about my dead family. You didn't set up this elaborate trap just to kill me—you could have done that a dozen times over the past three months. So what the hell do you want?"
Alejandro's smile fades. For the first time, I see something real in his eyes. Something cold and hard and utterly without mercy.
"You're right," he says. "I don't want you dead. Not yet, anyway."
"Then what?"
He leans forward. His hands rest on his knees. Casual. Relaxed. Like we're two old friends having a conversation over coffee.
"I want you to kill the Sartoris."
The words hang in the air between us.
For a moment, I'm certain I misheard him. Certain my brain is playing tricks on me, filling in words that weren't actually spoken.
But no.
He said it.
Kill the Sartoris.
Marina
I'm sitting on a couch in an apartment three floors below the penthouse. Different unit. Different layout. Same building. Dante's men moved me here twelve minutes after he left—two of them appearing at the penthouse door with instructions to relocate me immediately.
Part of the plan, they said.
For your safety, they said.
I didn't argue. I followed them down the stairwell, through a service corridor, into this apartment. No furniture except the couch I'm sitting on and a folding table in the corner. Safe house. Backup location.
This is insane.
This whole thing it's completely, utterly insane.
And Dante's plan is... what, exactly?
Check in every ten minutes.
Buy time.
That's it. That's the whole plan.
I press my palm against the cold glass of the window. My right hand. It trembles against the surface, and I can't tell if it's the nerve damage or the fear.
Both, probably.
I replay Dante's words in my head. I'll come back. I have something to come back to now.
Bullshit.
Complete and utter bullshit.
He walked into that building knowing he probably won't walk out. He kissed me goodbye like a man saying farewell, not see you later. He looked at me like he was memorizing my face.
Because he was.
Because he knows.
And I was stupid enough to let him go. Stupid enough to believe the plan would work. Stupid enough to sit here in this empty apartment, clutching my phone, waiting for the next text that proves he's still breathing.
What happens when the texts stop?
I know the answer. I've known it since he showed me those photos.
When the texts stop, someone comes through that door. Someone with a gun. Someone who doesn't care about check-ins or plans or the fact that I'm just a nonprofit worker from Chicago who got pulled into this nightmare because her best friend married a mafia boss.
The cartel has eyes on me.
They have to.
If Alejandro is smart enough to set this whole trap then he's smart enough to know where I am right now.
Moving me three floors down doesn't change anything. It's the same building. The same forty-two stories of glass and steel that might as well be a cage.
I'm not hidden.
I'm contained.
Silence.
Dante's men are supposed to be in the hallway. Two of them, he said. Armed and ready.
I don't hear anything.
That could mean they're being quiet. Professional. Doing their jobs.
Or it could mean they're already dead.
I step back from the door. My heart is pounding now. That familiar rhythm of panic that I've been trying to suppress since the attack at my apartment.
Think, Marina. Think.