Chapter 29
Dante
I turn to my men.
“New mission. We find Conti’s second-in-command and kill him. Tonight.”
No one hesitates because hesitation gets men buried in our world.
We’ve been in Chicago for a week now, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. But this is even better, because it takes care of the man who harmed Birdie. And that’s all that matters now.
Within the hour, we have Cesaro’s location pinned down.
He’s at a private poker tournament in one of the old hotels downtown, the kind of place that launders vice through crystal chandeliers and tuxedos.
He has a room booked upstairs, and more importantly, he’s only brought a skeleton detail.
He thinks he’s safe because he’s operating in Conti’s territory.
He thinks no one will be stupid enough to make a move this deep in the lion’s den.
He has always underestimated men smarter than him.
I sit in the back of the SUV while one of my men spreads the blueprints across the seat. We map out everything. Freight entrance. Kitchen corridor. Service elevators. Two stairwells. Ballroom on the fourth floor. Private gaming suite above it.
“He’ll have men here and here,” my man says, tapping the corners. “Likely another two upstairs outside the room.”
“Likely?”
He looks up. “We’ve confirmed four. The rest is projection.”
I nod once. “Then we move like there are eight.”
He folds the plans shut. No one asks me if I’m sure.
If Conti was too blind to see what was under his own roof, then I will handle the correction myself.
We go in through the service entrance. The hotel kitchen is all heat and shouting and silver trays. Men in white coats barely glance at us before my people peel off and silence the two guards posted near the corridor. Only the soft pop of the guns sounds out of place.
Then we start moving up. Every second feels sharpened.
My pulse is steady, but there’s something else underneath it tonight. Rage is too hot a word for this. What I feel is colder. Cleaner. More lethal. This isn’t about proving a point to Conti. It isn’t even about the war he thinks he wants with me.
It’s about Birdie being harmed. More than that, it’s about her being used as as a pawn right under Conti’s nose. It’s about the fact that while all of us men have been circling her like wolves, Cesaro had already been inside the fold.
No more.
The first shot goes off before we hit the suite level.
So much for quiet.
One of Cesaro’s men rounds the corner too fast, sees us, reaches—and one of my men puts him down before he can get the warning out properly. But the sound explodes down the corridor anyway, and after that everything goes to hell.
Gunfire shatters the hush of the hotel.
Men shout.
Someone crashes through a table inside one of the outer rooms.
I move fast, low, firing as I advance. Marble chips from the wall beside my head. One of my men goes down with a curse and rolls behind a service cart, blood already soaking his sleeve. Another returns fire from one knee, controlled and merciless.
The corridor fills with smoke and noise and the ugly strobe of muzzle flashes.
This is what these lives always become in the end. Not power or honor. Hallways full of men trying not to die.
I push forward with two others at my back, cutting toward Cesaro’s room. The door at the far end is reinforced, but one of the side suite doors bursts open and two of his men pour out. The first one falls. The second one almost gets me, but my shot catches him high and spins him into the wall.
“Move!” I bark.
We hit the room entry hard.
Inside, it’s chaos—overturned chairs, cards all over the carpet, a bottle shattered near the bar. One terrified civilian in an expensive jacket is flat on the floor, hands over his head, while another man bleeds quietly beside the poker table and won’t be getting up.
Fuck. Cesaro isn’t here.
“He’s running,” one of my men curses.
I already know.
The adjoining door to the bedroom suite hangs open. We go through.
Another burst of gunfire tears into the room from the balcony entrance, driving us back. Glass blows inward. One of my men screams and goes down clutching his face. I fire twice toward the muzzle flare and hear someone fall.
Then I see him.
Cesaro.
He looks straight at me. There’s no panic in his face. Only calculation.
“Russo,” he says, almost conversationally. “My boss is going to be so happy when I bring him your head.”
I step over the shattered remains of a side table. “You should’ve stayed harder to find.”
A faint smile ghosts across his mouth. “And miss this?”
He fires.
I dive behind the edge of the bedroom wall as bullets chew through plaster. Some of my men answer from the other side, forcing Cesaro to shift. Another one of my men tries to angle through the dressing room and gets hit for the effort.
The suite is too open. Too fucking exposed. And Cesaro knows it. He’s using the balcony and the broken sightlines to bleed us slow.
“Cut him off,” I bark.
One of my trusted men signals two men left. They move but Cesaro drops one before he clears the doorway.
I come up and fire in the same second, driving Cesaro back toward the balcony doors. This time I’m the one moving on him, step by step, shot by shot, anger turning each pull of the trigger into something personal.
He hurt Birdie and I want him alive long enough to hear her name before he dies.
He retreats onto the balcony.
Wind slams into the room through the open doors, cold and violent and full of the city far below. My shoes crunch over broken glass as I follow.
Cesaro is bleeding now. Shoulder, maybe side. Hard to tell in the dark and the gun smoke and the flashing hotel lights behind us.
But he’s smiling.
“Did you really think you’d very away with this?” I ask.
He laughs outright this time. “I already have.””
I shoot the balcony railing inches from his hand.
“You’re going to die for what you did to Birdie.”
His expression changes.
“Ah,” he says. “So that’s where your loyalty ended up.”
“You touched her.”
“I did.”
I move before reason tells me to slow down. One step. Two. Gun leveled at his chest.
“When you die, know this is because Birdie beat you. She remembers everything, you bastard.”
Cesaro’s eyes flicker past me. It’s a mistake or a warning. I don’t have time to decide which before more gunfire erupts from inside the suite. Not his men this time.
It’s different rhythm and different angles. Heavier weapons.
Conti.
Lorenzo and his men hit the room like a second storm, and for one fragmented instant the entire world becomes muzzle flash and broken glass and shouted orders in two languages.
Cesaro’s remaining shooters fire toward the new threat.
Conti’s men answer. One crashes through the balcony door. Another drops near the bed.
The whole suite is suddenly a war zone.
And in the center of it, Cesaro moves.
I see it too late.
He’s not retreating.
He’s choosing. Not Conti or escape.
No, he’s coming after one thing. Me. Maybe because I’m closest.
Maybe because he knows exactly what this will do.
Our eyes lock for one split second. Then his gun comes up.
I fire first.
So does he.
The impact hits like a sledgehammer to the ribs.
For one stunned moment, I don’t understand what happened. The world jerks sideways. The balcony lights smear. Sound turns hollow and far away. Then the pain arrives and I stagger back against the broken doorframe.
Inside the suite, Conti is shouting something. Men are still firing. Someone is screaming my name.
Cesaro takes my shot too—I see it in the way he reels, see the dark stain spreading across his shirt—but he’s still standing.
Then Lorenzo appears in the doorway. He sees me. Sees Cesaro.
Sees the blood. And something in his face goes dead.
“Boss—” Cesaro starts. “He tried to hurt Miss Miller.”
Lorenzo shoots him.
Once.
Twice.
A third time after Cesaro is already falling.
The sound of the body hitting the balcony floor barely registers over the rushing in my ears.
I try to straighten.
Can’t.
My hand comes away from my side wet and dark. I can’t breathe right. Every inhale feels thin and wrong.
Across the room, Lorenzo is moving toward me now, his own men spreading, clearing, shouting that the suite is secure. He stops a few feet away, looking down at me with a face I can’t read anymore.
Maybe because my vision is going.
“Did she call you?” I manage.
My voice sounds like hell.
His jaw tightens. “Yes.”
I nod once or try to. “You know. He took her.”
“I know.”
Of course he does now. The irony would almost be funny if I could feel enough for that.
I look past him at Cesaro’s body sprawled in a widening stain of blood and shadow, and some ugly knot inside me loosens.
At least that bastard dies tonight. It means my death won’t be in vain.
Lorenzo crouches. It should feel like a victory to make him kneel in front of me. Instead it just feels exhausting.
I look at Lorenzo. At the man who has ruined Birdie and been ruined by her right back. At the man I wanted to kill not an hour ago. At the man whose child she carries.
Christ. What a mess.
“She chose safety,” I say, the words scraping out of me. “That was all. Do you understand?”
His expression flickers. I keep going because there may not be time for him to understand.
“She didn’t love me,” I tell him. “She was surviving.”
Something terrible moves through his face at that.
“She called me because she was afraid,” I whisper. “Don’t make her regret it.”
The room is dimming at the edges now.
Someone is shouting for medics.
Someone is swearing.
Lorenzo says something I don’t catch.
I force my eyes open wider.
“One more thing.”
His gaze locks on mine.
I smile or try to. “If you break her worse than you already have…” My breath catches hard. “I’ll come back and haunt you.”
For the first time all night, something like grim understanding touches his face.
Then the strength goes out of me at once.
All of it starts slipping.
My last clear thought is not of war.
Not of Cesaro or Lorenzo.
Not even of my own death.
It’s of Birdie walking toward me in that white wedding gown that made her look like an angel. My angel. We would have been happy. I know that. But now she has a chance at happiness and love.
Good, I think.
Then everything falls away.