Chapter 4 Dante
DANTE
I have never been a man who bends easily.
I was raised to understand power as something taken, not given.
Loyalty is demanded, obedience enforced.
Mercy is a luxury for men who don’t intend to survive very long.
I didn’t rebuild what was left of my family by indulging weakness.
Not for enemies, not for family, and certainly not for a woman who walked out of my life, leaving the wreckage of her betrayal behind her.
And yet here I am, brought to a halt by the sound of her voice breaking when she says my name.
I hate that it still affects me.
That a single plea, that single crack in her voice, can cut through years of discipline and restraint like they were never there at all.
I should be immune to this by now.
I’ve rebuilt myself to be, and yet the moment she begs for the child, her child, something ugly tightens in my chest.
The boy she had while she was gone, while she was hiding and building a life that didn’t include me. A life that included another man.
I don’t know his name. I don’t need to. I know, with absolute certainty, that he was unworthy of her in every way that matters. The idea of his hands on her skin, of her choosing him, of her trusting him enough to give him a child, twists viciously inside me.
I tell myself the boy means nothing to me.
He’s nothing more than an unforeseen complication, collateral damage in a war half of his bloodline started and will eventually end with.
He is a variable I didn’t account for, nothing more than that. That’s the version of the truth I repeat to myself until it almost sounds convincing.
Because the alternative is far worse.
The alternative is admitting that I care.
That my anger isn’t just about betrayal or the need to seek vengeance.
That it’s something darker and much more personal.
That I’m furious not because she ran, not even because she lied to me by promising she could never stomach being with another, but because she loved someone else enough to stay and build something real. Enough to carry his child inside her.
If I care, then this is no longer just about getting what is owed to me. It will no longer be just business.
It will be the unbearable knowledge that while I was burying my brother and father and holding my empire together with bloodied hands, she was out there learning how to live without me.
That truth is poison, a cancer that will keep growing the longer I allow it to fester.
I meet her eyes again and watch hope flicker there despite her fear. Something in me hardens, not out of cruelty but resolve.
All of this changes nothing. Not the truth of what her father did nor the debt her blood owes mine, and certainly not the reckoning that still waits at the end of this road. Mercy does not erase consequence. Love does not absolve betrayal.
But…
I am also not a monster.
Not to her. I could never be.
No matter how much pain is in my heart, no matter how cold I’ve learned to be, there are lines I will not cross. And whatever else she is—a liar, a traitor by association—she is still Elena.
“You can see him. Briefly,” I say.
The relief that moves across her face is immediate and devastating.
It’s so raw and unguarded, it nearly knocks the breath from my lungs.
Her shoulders sag like she’s been holding herself together by sheer force of will and for one disloyal second, I hate myself for being the one who put that fear there in the first place.
I open the door and nod once to the enforcers stationed outside.
They move quickly and efficiently. When they return, dragging the child with them, the sound of his crying slices through the room.
It’s high-pitched and panicked. The sound echoes off the walls and floor, filling the space entirely.
Strangely, it tugs at something deep in my chest, at a part of me I didn’t know was still there.
Elena slips off the bed immediately, ignoring her injuries. Her eyes dart frantically between her child and me as if she’s afraid this small mercy will vanish if she looks away too long.
“Mama!” the boy sobs.
My attention locks onto him without thought.
His body trembles with every broken breath. His hair, a mousey brown, sticks up in uneven tufts, clinging to his forehead and damp with sweat. His cheeks are flushed, streaked with tears. His eyes are wide with confusion, focused only on his mother. Grey-green and—
The room tilts suddenly.
I’ve seen those eyes before.
In the mirror staring back at me after sleepless nights soaked in death and regret.
In my mother’s old photographs tucked away in drawers no one opens anymore.
Images of me as a boy, solemn and too observant for my age, already learning how cruel this world could be even though I’d barely lived in it.
I see myself at that age—small hands, rigid posture, watching men argue in low voices while my mother smooths my hair and tells me not to be afraid.
I remember how helpless with fear I felt back then.
How absolute my father’s authority was. Over the men, over the house, over us.
The memory hits so hard, my chest tightens.
What are the chances…?
The thought slithers in uninvited, poisonous and impossible, until I recoil from it instantly. With a curt flick of my hand, I gesture to the enforcer holding the boy. “Release him.”
The guard hesitates only a fraction of a second before obeying.
The moment his grip loosens, the boy scrambles forward, arms outstretched as his small body moves on pure instinct to run toward his mother.
“Mama!”
Elena drops to her knees instantly, her legs giving out the second she sees him free.
Her arms open wide and he collides into her, burying himself against her chest with a sob.
She wraps him up immediately, crushing him to her, one hand cradling the back of his head with the other wrapped tightly around his small back.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs against his hair. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. Mama’s here.”
She repeats it over and over.
The sight twists something deep and violent inside me the longer I stare at them.
I tell myself it’s anger.
Resentment, even… or disgust.
But deep down, I know it’s none of those things.
For one fleeting, treacherous second, I am no longer Don Cosenza. I am not the man many men fear.
I am not the ruler of an empire seven generations in the making.
Instead, I am a man standing in the shadows of his own childhood, staring at a continuation that should not exist.
The boy’s small chin lifts as he cries, trembling against Elena’s collarbone.
His brows are set in that same too-serious line I had at that age.
His hair curls faintly at the ends where it falls into his eyes, and Elena pushes it back with shaking fingers. The shape of his mouth when he inhales sharply between sobs is so familiar, it makes my vision shake.
Every detail mirrors the baby portraits once displayed in my family’s ancestral home. Portraits my mother loved.
My pulse roars in my ears.
She wouldn’t…
“Elena,” I grit through my teeth. “Who is his father?”
She stills completely like an animal sensing a predator is nearby. When she lifts her head to look at me, her eyes are filled with tears that haven’t yet fallen.
Her hand cups the back of the boy’s head protectively, pressing him closer to her chest.
“Who?” I snap.
She draws in a slow, shaking breath. “Matteo.”
I nearly flinch at the sound of my brother’s name rolling off her tongue.
That’s impossible. It has to be.
I remember Matteo as clearly as if he were standing right beside me. His fair hair had always been light as summer wheat, his deep blue eyes that were always too soft, always earnest and kind in ways I never was.
I remember the photographs of him at that age running through the villa halls, laughing over his shoulder as our mother chased him, breathless and smiling with a camera in her hand to capture it.
This boy looks nothing like him.
The truth presses in on me from every direction, merciless and unrelenting.
If Elena is lying, then her betrayal cuts deeper than I ever imagined.
My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms as rage surges hot and blinding inside me, burning away any reason I had left and whatever restraint and mercy I may have eventually granted her.
I feel it crest in my chest, violent and uncontainable. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Elena.”
She flinches.
I gesture sharply toward the child with my chin, my chest heaving. “You think I don’t recognize myself when I see it?” The words taste like acid in my mouth, but I don’t stop. I can’t. “That boy isn’t his.”
Her head snaps back and forth in denial, frantic. “He is. I—I swear. Matteo and I… the night before he… we—”
I turn on my heel before she can finish. I won’t listen to another lie. I won’t stand here while she rewrites the past to suit her survival. My boots strike the stone floor hard as I head for the door, my pulse roaring as my thoughts tear themselves apart.
I don’t know which possibility is worse—the idea of her sleeping with my brother behind my back, of sharing his bed while she shared mine in secret, or the possibility that she carried my child in her body, fled the country, and kept him from me for years while I buried the only family I had left.
When did she know? Before she helped her father escape? Before or after Matteo was murdered? Before or after she let me stand at my brother and father’s graves alone and believe I had lost everything?
The questions come endlessly, each one carving deeper into my heart.
I’m painfully aware of the irony, of the hypocrisy of my fury.
Jealous over a woman my brother was meant to marry, enraged by a betrayal I am not innocent of either.
I crossed that line first. I was the one who pulled her into my bed knowing exactly whose fiancée she was and refusing to care at the time.
I don’t pretend to be innocent in any of this either.
But knowing I share the blame does nothing to dull the fire in my veins.
If what I suspect is true, if she took my son from me, then there is no forgiveness left in this world.
Only consequences.