26. Dante
DANTE
I duck beneath the broken roll-up door of the warehouse in Nuova Speranza’s western shipping block and follow the noise of voices through a row of stacked crates.
Two of our men are inside already, standing over a desk littered with outdated routing slips, three burner phones without SIM cards, and a ledger coded in shorthand only old Rossi-trained runners would still recognize.
It is the third location in as many hours, each one leading to the next like a scavenger hunt designed to keep me just behind the truth.
Nico turns when I enter.
His hands are clean and he looks disgruntled.
"Nothing here but bones," he says. "Whoever cleaned this place out knew we were coming."
I study the wall beyond the desk.
There's a faint print of something where a document used to hang, a square lighter than the surrounding grime.
A small nail protrudes from the center. I move closer.
There are faint numbers scratched into the wood beneath it, too rough to be from a pen.
I lean down.
They look like a date and an access code.
Underneath, the last three letters are clearer than the rest: UMB .
I step back as the implication lands on me and makes my head swim.
My hands curl before I can stop them.
I turn toward Nico.
"This was one of the fallback sites from Operation Umber. Old Rossi trade safehouses.
They used to cycle documents through dead drop courier channels. There were only six."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"Because I’ve seen the files. And because I’ve been sleeping in the same house as the woman whose family wrote the blueprint."
Tomas brings over a black book they found tucked in the floorboards.
No title.
No binding.
Just stapled parchment sealed in plastic wrap.
The first page bears a list of names.
The second, a crude map of trade hubs and false relay points marked across the southern coast.
One of them is circled twice.
Naples, dock sixteen.
I flip to the third page and stop.
The name there belongs to the old Rossi butler.
I know because I’ve seen his face and heard him be called Renato a few too many times to be wrong.
Full name.
Date of last contact.
And in a different hand, the word "active".
The book slides from my hand and hits the floor with a sound too loud for paper.
I am already moving.
Outside, the car is still running.
I pull the door shut and slam my hand against the dash as Tomas climbs in beside me.
"Renato," I say.
"Who is he?"
"He was the Rossi butler before her father died. Oversaw secure logistics. Had access to the old record rooms. The men who wrote the Umber files answered to him long after they stopped answering to anyone else. If Rafa is staging a full consolidation, it’s not just new men he’s using.
He’s reactivating the ones buried with her father. "
Tomas swears under his breath and grips the dash as I swing the car back onto the main road, tires screeching as we cut through the western district toward the estate.
The ache building in the center of my chest is not fear.
It’s something sharper.
I should have made the connection sooner.
The way the doors opened too easily.
The access string that matched the old Rossi protocols.
The fact that someone managed to slip poison into my own dining hall.
The gatehouse at the estate is at high alert when I arrive.
I do not wait for clearance.
The moment the car jerks to a stop, I am already out, storming past the posted guards and up the main path.
Marco meets me halfway down the stairs.
"She’s not here," he says, and the words strike like a bullet behind the ribs.
"What?"
"She left the south wing twenty minutes ago. Told the guards she was walking in the garden. No one questioned it. She wasn’t alone."
My hands grip the edge of the banister.
"Who was with her?"
There is a silence before he answers.
"The old butler from her home…said his name was Renato and he had known her since she was a baby."
The name drops like a stone into water.
"Where?" I ask.
"They were headed toward the old iron gate on the southern perimeter."
I don’t wait to hear the rest.
I shove past him and head for the perimeter path, racing through the side hall at full speed.
My boots hammer the tile, echoing up the corridor like cannon fire.
One of the guards stationed near the greenhouse tries to flag me down, but I do not stop.
The garden is ahead, the low curve of the fig tree visible just beyond the final hedge.
The gate is open.
Two guards are already there, weapons drawn, searching the hedgerow.
Gianna is nowhere.
There is a deep disturbance in the gravel, not wide, but fresh.
A scuffle.
Footprints too small for the men who patrol this wing.
My voice cracks through the still air before I can control it.
"Where is she?"
The guard nearest me swallows hard, adjusting his grip on the stock of his weapon.
"She was with him. We thought he had clearance."
I turn, alerting more men on the way, commanding that they meet me in the war room.
Marco is already calling for the dogs, the surveillance backups, the drone sweeps.
Once he’s finished, he joins me and the others.
The map is already on the table, its borders marked in red and silver pins: last known locations of the car, where Renato was last seen, Gianna’s whereabouts over the last few days.
The estate guards are mobilizing along the old perimeter lines.
The search teams have begun combing the outer orchards and the maintenance road leading to the drainage aqueduct.
And yet, hours later, nothing has turned up.
She is gone.
And I cannot afford the luxury of rage.
I lean my palms against the edge of the table and stare at the southern coastline, tracing it from Nuova Speranza down to Salerno and further into the quiet ports where Rossi influence used to run deep beneath official trade routes.
The sea used to carry more than cargo.
It carried whispers, debts, weapons.
It carried the names of men no longer listed on ledgers.
Rafa knows every one of them.
When nothing comes except for the tight pull of desperation, I release a groan of pure frustration and push away from the table, leaving the war room in favor of the south wing suite.
The girls are in there with their nanny.
I take her aside for a moment and brief her on the status of things.
She goes tight-lipped, color draining from her face, and gestures toward the girls.
"What do I tell them? They’re sharper than they let on."
Instead of leaving it to her, I lean down and beckon both my daughters into my arms.
They nuzzle into my neck, smelling of oat shampoo and cinnamon cookies.
My throat constricts painfully, but I force the words out. "Girls, there’s something you should know. Mom’s…mom’s not here right now, but she’ll be back soon."
If they guess anything, they don’t show it.
Instead, Alessia touches the stubble on my jaw. "Is she safe?"
I resist the impulse to roar.
"She is," I lie through my teeth. "And I’m working on bringing her back very soon."
Arietta nods with all the conviction of a child who has a mother who would never leave her children.
"Good. Maybe she went to a tea party. She’ll be back soon, Papa, don’t worry."
I’m about to choke out a sob, so before that actually happens, I kiss the tops of their heads briefly, nod at the nanny, and stumble out of the room as fast as my legs will carry me.
Out in the corridor, I shut my eyes.
Think.
Where would they go?
Not to the city.
Il Sangue Nero has already drawn too much attention there.
Not to any of the Rossi estates under surveillance.
Those are already flagged.
If they wanted to hide her, they would need a place with loyal infrastructure, but not someplace obvious.
They would need discretion.
They would need history.
I push off from the table and begin pacing again.
The voices of the past come slowly, fragments at first.
A conversation over wine after the alliance was drafted.
Gianna’s voice ringing out low and soft, Luca’s clipped with suspicion, Valentina’s layered with caution.
"We can’t guarantee control south of the spine," Valentina had said. "The old networks aren’t stable. Too many border conflicts, too many regional fealties."
Rafa had disagreed.
He had leaned back in the chair, swirling his drink like it was all a game he had already won.
"You’re thinking of the Rossi strongholds like they were in Papa’s time. But there are smaller enclaves that never swore themselves to any transition. They’re quiet. But loyal. You just have to know who kept the keys."
And Gianna, half distracted, her gaze on the courtyard while the rest of us studied maps and supply charts.
"You mean the monastery," she had said, almost absently.
That stops me cold.
The word pulls all the threads together.
I turn back to the map and locate it, though it is not marked clearly.
It wouldn’t be.
The monastery isn’t official.
It isn’t a religious site in any modern register.
It was decommissioned decades ago, used later for archival storage, and finally transferred to private hands in a sale that was quietly facilitated by a Rossi legal advisor, whose name I now remember seeing in the margin of that old black ledger in the shipping yard.
A line of inheritance that no one bothered to track, because it did not seem relevant.
Until now.
The location is remote.
Inland from the coast, near the old road between Sant’Elia and Castricella, nestled in a valley once known for vineyards that have long since turned to ruin.
No formal security presence.
No direct surveillance.
Just an empty structure with stone walls, deep cellars, and a legend attached to it that the Rossi have used for leverage whenever they needed quiet recovery.
Not a fortress, but a sanctuary.
The kind of place you take someone when you don’t want them to be found.
I reach for my encrypted phone and call the team on standby.
Marco answers before the first full ring finishes.
"Tell me."
"There’s an old site. Rafa would know it. Gianna too. A monastery in the Sant’Elia valley. It’s not in any of our recent scans. We ignored it during the last sweep because it was tagged as structurally unsound."
"And now?"
"Now it looks like a holding cell."
I hear Marco shifting papers in the background, shouting something to a runner before returning. "How fast do you want to move?"
I stare at the map again.
She is not just leverage.
She is the final thread holding this war back from collapse.
Rafa took her because he thinks I will make peace if he returns her alive.
He is wrong.
I will burn him down for daring to take her in the first place.
I grip the phone tighter. "I want every man we have on the road in the next ten minutes. No flashing lights, no marked convoys. Tell them to come like ghosts."
"And you?"
"I’ll be there first."