Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Marina
The basement air still clings to my skin as we gather in the study. I find a spot near the window, needing distance from the horror we just witnessed.
I never thought I would hear such a story.
To be honest, I thought these things only happen in movies. The kind of twisted family secrets that screenwriters dream up for shock value. But apparently, I'm going to face much more being around these people. The Sartoris don't live in a movie. They live in a nightmare that keeps unfolding.
Dante stands near the fireplace, his face carved from stone.
The others settle into chairs and sofas—Bruno rigid with barely contained rage, Lorenzo with Sophia tucked against his side, Nico leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
Vittoria sits beside Dmitri, her laptop already open on her knees.
"The week after my meeting with Alejandro," Dante begins, his voice flat and controlled, "gave me time to think. To plan."
I watch him speak, and suddenly pieces click into place. The distant looks. The way he'd stare at nothing for hours. How he'd hold me at night but feel a thousand miles away.
I shake my head slowly. "I was wondering what was going on with you."
Dante's eyes meet mine for a brief moment.
"Alejandro had Webb," he continues, turning back to the room. "The tech entrepreneur I went to collect from in Denver."
Lorenzo shifts forward. "The one who set you up."
"Webb was too valuable to Alejandro to risk in a firefight. He's one of the most intelligent people in coding. Was." Dante pauses. "Alejandro had him working on something specific. Breaking through Vittoria's security systems."
Vittoria's head snaps up from her laptop. Her jaw tightens, but she nods once. "He did."
The admission costs her something. I can see it in the way her fingers curl against the keyboard.
"Webb had access to every single Sartori member," Dante says.
"Every phone. Every computer. Every camera in every property.
Even the staff. Alejandro paid him millions to do what he did.
Webb built surveillance into the foundation of your digital infrastructure.
He knew where everyone was, what everyone said, who everyone talked to. "
Bruno's fist slams against the arm of his chair. "How the fuck did we not know?"
"Because Webb made his own system." Vittoria's voice is tight. "It wasn't a hack. It wasn't malware I could detect. He created something from scratch—a parallel architecture that piggybacked on our existing networks. Completely invisible. Completely untraceable."
She looks up at her brothers, and I see something I've never seen on her face before. Shame.
"I couldn't know," she says quietly. "Because there was nothing to find. No signature. No footprint. Nothing."
Lorenzo reaches across Sophia to squeeze Vittoria's shoulder. "This isn't on you."
"The moment I arrived at the compound," Dante continues, "I found a moment where I was alone with Lorenzo."
I remember that first day. Dante disappearing for an hour while I unpacked. Coming back with that same distant look in his eyes.
"I put music on in Lorenzo's office. Loud enough to cover our voices from any listening devices." Dante's gaze shifts to Lorenzo. "I whispered everything. What Alejandro told me. What he wanted me to do. The surveillance. All of it."
Lorenzo nods slowly. "The next morning, I went to Vittoria. Did the same thing. Music playing, voices low."
"We couldn't risk any digital communication," Vittoria adds. "No phones. No texts. No emails. Everything had to be face-to-face, in spaces we could control acoustically."
I stare at them. At the elaborate dance they performed right under my nose. Under everyone's noses.
"Webb is dead," Dante says, and his voice drops to something colder. "That night in Denver. When his men shot me. I shot him back. Throat wound. He bled out before I left the building."
"But Lorenzo said the office was cleaned," I hear myself say. "No bodies. No blood."
"Alejandro's people," Nico answers. "They sanitized the scene. Took Webb's body. Probably thought they could save him." He shrugs. "They couldn't."
"Webb dying was the first crack in Alejandro's plan," Dante explains. "Without Webb, the surveillance system started degrading. Vittoria noticed anomalies three days after we arrived in Chicago. Small glitches. Gaps in coverage. She couldn't trace the source, but she knew something was wrong."
Vittoria pulls up something on her laptop screen. "By the time of Lorenzo's 'funeral,' the system was operating at maybe sixty percent capacity. Alejandro was getting incomplete information. He saw what we wanted him to see."
I keep looking at them. At this family that orchestrated an elaborate deception while I cried myself to sleep thinking Lorenzo was dead. While Sophia screamed herself hoarse with grief.
Unbelievable.
Dante
"Dmitri's men were already in position in Denver," I explain, watching the room process each piece of information.
Dmitri shifts in his seat, his arm draped protectively over Vittoria's shoulders. "My team took three days to map every corner of Alejandro's property. Entry points. Guard rotations. Blind spots in his security."
"Alejandro had eyes on everything the Sartoris did," I continue. "Every movement. Every conversation he could capture. But he was so focused on watching this family that he never thought to look at the Baganovs."
Vittoria closes her laptop. "He had eyes on me specifically because I run security. He assumed if he could monitor me, he'd see any countermeasures coming."
"He assumed wrong." Dmitri's voice carries that cold Russian edge. "My men aren't Sartori. They don't show up on Sartori networks. They don't use Sartori communication channels. As far as Alejandro knew, they didn't exist."
I nod. "The moment I walked into Alejandro's house yesterday, Dmitri's team moved. They'd been waiting for my signal. One text to a burner phone that wasn't connected to any Sartori system."
The room falls silent as the full scope of the operation settles over them.
Bruno rises from his chair. His movements are deliberate, controlled. He crosses the room to where Dmitri sits and extends his hand.
Dmitri stands, meeting Bruno's grip.
"Thank you," Bruno says. The words come out rough, like they cost him something. "For your men. For the risk you took."
Dmitri inclines his head. "Family protects family."
I watch the exchange with something close to disbelief. Bruno Sartori, the man who trusted no one outside blood, shaking hands with a Bratva pakhan. Thanking him. Meaning it.
A year ago, this would have been impossible. Bruno have seen Dmitri as a threat, an outsider, someone to be watched and kept at arm's length. But Bruno isn't the same man he was a year ago. None of us are.
People change.
Bruno releases Dmitri's hand and turns toward me. His jaw works for a moment, and I see the struggle playing out behind his eyes. Pride warring with something deeper.
He stops in front of me. Close enough that I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands curl and uncurl at his sides.
"Dante." His voice is low. Rough. "What my father did—"
"Bruno—"
"Let me finish." He holds up a hand. "What Giuseppe did to your family. To your mother. To you." Bruno's throat moves as he swallows. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you carried that alone. I'm sorry you had to learn the truth from that piece of shit in the basement instead of from us."
I shake my head slowly. "You didn't know. None of you knew."
"That doesn't matter." Bruno's eyes are bright with something I've rarely seen from him. Grief. Shame. "He was our father. His sins—"
"Are not yours." I cut him off, my voice firm.
"I know you, Bruno. I know Lorenzo. Nico.
Pietro. I know what kind of men you are.
" I hold his gaze. "None of you would have done what Giuseppe did.
None of you would have ordered a hit on a family with children.
None of you would have—" I stop. The words stick in my throat.
Bruno closes the distance between us. His arms come around me, pulling me into an embrace that catches me off guard.
"You were always our brother," he says, his voice barely above a whisper. "Blood or not. You were always ours."
I stand rigid for a moment.
Bruno's arms tighten around me.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding and return the embrace. Just for a moment. Just long enough to feel the truth of his words settle into my bones.
When we separate, Bruno's eyes are red-rimmed. He clears his throat and steps back, composing himself with visible effort.
Movement catches my attention. Aria rises from her chair, her small frame somehow commanding the entire room. She crosses to where I stand, her dark eyes fixed on my face.
"Dante." Her voice carries the weight of decades.
Of watching me grow from a starving sixteen-year-old into the man I am now.
"I should have seen it. All those years, living under the same roof as Giuseppe, and I never—" She stops, pressing her lips together.
"I didn't know. I swear to you, I didn't know what he was capable of. "
"Aria." I take her hands in mine. They're small, but I know the strength in them. The strength it took to raise six children in this world. To love them fiercely while their father built an empire on blood and secrets. "There's no need for apologies. Not from you."
Her eyes glisten. "But—"
"You took me in," I say quietly. "You fed me. You made sure I had clothes that fit and a bed to sleep in. You treated me like one of your own when you had no reason to." I squeeze her hands gently. "You've done everything for me. More than I ever deserved. And I thank you for that."
A tear slips down Aria's cheek. She reaches up and cups my face in her palm, the way she used to when I was seventeen and still flinching at unexpected touch.
"You deserved all of it," she whispers. "Every bit of it and more."
She pulls me down into a hug, and I let her hold me the way a mother holds a son. The way my own mother held me before everything was taken.
When Aria releases me, I straighten and look around the room. At the family that chose me. That fought for me. That trusted me even when I couldn't tell them the truth.
"Now," I say, my voice steady. "I need to leave for a few hours."
Bruno's brow furrows. "Where are you going?"
I don't answer him. Instead, I turn and cross the room to where Marina sits by the window. She's been watching everything with those blue-green eyes that see too much. That have always seen too much.
I extend my hand to her.
She looks at my palm, then up at my face. A question forms on her lips, but she doesn't ask it. She just places her hand in mine and lets me pull her to her feet.
Her fingers are warm. Steady. Real.
I lead her toward the door.