Chapter 5 Dante
DANTE
Leo is the first to corner me in my room.
He does it the way he always does—without sound and without warning. One moment, I’m alone with my thoughts and a half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting in my lap and the next, the door closes behind me with a soft click that barely disturbs the air.
He doesn’t announce himself. He never has. Leo has always preferred presence over noise, menace over spectacle.
It’s only when I feel him hovering just behind my shoulder, close enough that I catch the faint scent of his body wash, that I realize I’m no longer alone.
The liquor burns its way down my throat as I take another long pull from the bottle, letting the heat settle in my chest. I’m already halfway through it just an hour in. The edges of the room blur just enough to dull the most intrusive thoughts but not enough to quiet them completely.
When my head finally lolls back against the couch, I squint up at him through half-lowered lids.
He’s leaning over me slightly now, arms crossed, one brow raised in familiar disapproval.
There’s an unimpressed frown tugging at his mouth, the same one he’s worn since we were boys and he decided it was his job to keep me from self-destruction.
A horrible self-appointed position, in my opinion.
“You’re going to ruin good liquor over something like this?” he asks mildly.
I scoff and take another drink in answer.
Leo straightens, gaze flicking briefly to the bottle, then back to my face.
He takes in the tension in my jaw, the way my hand tightens around the neck when it drops back into my lap, the fact that I haven’t bothered to turn on more than a single light in the room before settling on the couch permanently.
He’s always been good at reading what I don’t say. As annoying as I’ve found that trait to be over the years, it is very useful in situations like this.
“So,” he continues. “You think the boy is yours.”
I close my eyes.
I don’t bother confirming it. Saying it out loud feels like I’m speaking the words into existence.
Keeping it quiet means I can deny it just a bit longer.
Years I’ve spent wondering—worrying—about Elena.
About where she went and whether or not she was even alive.
All of that dread, all that obsession… only to find her holed up in some miserable apartment in New York scraping by with barely enough food in the pantry and my damn child on her hip.
“So?” he prompts when I don’t answer.
I laugh once, dull and humorless. “So, what?”
“Are you even sure he’s yours?”
A boy with my eyes. With my bone structure. With that same too-serious expression I’ve worn my entire life. None of that is coincidence, no matter how badly Elena wants it to be. She can lie to me but not about this, not when I know her the way I do, which is better than anyone.
She wouldn’t have slept with Matteo. Not when she had me.
She never loved him, not the way she loved me.
Their engagement was a necessity for politics, obligation born into a union and arranged by our families who believed alliances mattered more than true desire.
Ironically, it all went up in flames the second her father decided my family was worth more to him dead than allied.
“Dante,” Leo says again.
I sigh.
“Yes. But I don’t have official proof,” I admit. The word tastes bitter in my mouth. “That’s the problem.”
He exhales slowly, uncrossing his arms to run a hand over the back of his neck. “Then drinking yourself into a stupor isn’t going to help you figure out how to get it.”
I turn my head and meet his gaze. “Perhaps there is a reason I am stalling. Did you ever think of that?”
If the boy is mine, my fury will be justified. She took something from me that I can never get back. First steps, first words, the beginning of a childhood I was never allowed to witness.
And if he isn’t? Then my rage has nowhere to go but inward or straight back to her because the alternative means she took my brother to her bed, betraying what we had. Or worse, some other nameless, faceless man I’d rather kill than reunite them with.
Either way, something irreparable is about to be exposed and I don’t know if I can handle it.
Leo studies me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then without asking, he reaches out and takes the bottle from my hand. He moves around the couch and sets it on the table just out of reach.
“For better or worse, you’re already past that point,” he says.
I don’t argue. There isn’t a point to it.
“Then what do you suggest?” I ask, my voice stripped of its usual bravado.
Leo shrugs, straightening as he turns back to face me. The movement is casual, but his eyes are anything but. “Get ahead of it before anyone else finds out.”
I frown, but he continues.
“Word will eventually travel. You can lock gossip down inside these walls for now, but it won’t stay contained.
Someone will notice she’s back in Sicily and with a child.
When they do, they will try everything to use it against you.
And when it is confirmed the child is yours?
Our enemies will do whatever they can to take him. ”
My hands tighten into fists in my lap.
I hadn’t thought about it. Not properly, at least. Maybe the idea had brushed the edges of my thoughts, buried under the anger and alcohol and the shock of seeing her again, but I hadn’t followed it to its inevitable conclusion.
Leo is right. He always is.
Elena’s return won’t stay secret. It will move quietly at first with whispers among staff, questions among the lower ranks.
Then it will slip into conversations with our contacts, our allies.
From there, it will make its way into the hands of our enemies, presented like a loaded weapon on a silver platter.
They’ll dissect every detail. Why she ran, why she came back, why she has a child that looks suspiciously like me.
And once they connect the dots and realize how deeply personal this is for me, they’ll use it to destabilize me and fracture my already shaky syndicate and finish what was started four years ago.
I can’t let that happen. Not after the three years I’ve spent dragging the Cosenza name back from the brink of extinction.
Every debt repaid in blood, every alliance reforged through sheer force of will, will have all been for nothing if I let that happen.
The thought of it all unraveling because of her and this child makes my jaw clench until it aches.
But what’s the alternative? Keep Elena and her son locked inside the villa for the rest of their lives? The idea flashes through my mind, dark and tempting. I could protect them that way. Control the variables, eliminate the risk.
Except it isn’t realistic.
Elena would never stay quietly caged. Not for long.
I know her too well to delude myself into thinking that.
If she didn’t find a way out through sheer defiance and force of will, she’d do it covertly.
She’d talk, negotiate, beg if she had to.
She’d wear down my staff, find the cracks in their discipline, plant doubt where loyalty should be.
And if that failed and that door stayed locked and every guard stood firm, she’d turn those same tactics on me.
The worst part? They would eventually work. She has always known how to reach me, how to slip past my defenses when no one else could. How to make me hesitate like no one else in this world can.
If by some miracle she did accept imprisonment and agree to stay hidden and silent once I made it abundantly clear nothing she said or did would be able to change my mind, it would only confirm what my enemies already suspect.
That I’m ruled by obsession. That I let emotion cloud my judgment and Elena Vitale is not just a vulnerability but a leash held tight around my neck, ready to yank at a moment’s notice.
I scrub a hand down my face, feeling the weight of inevitability settle in my bones.
Some part of me wishes I never found her.
Life would certainly be easier with her still gone.
Then again, what’s to say madness wouldn’t still creep in?
Either by obsessively wondering where she went or spending the rest of my days trying to find her.
“I need to marry her.”
Leo’s brow shoots up. He stares at me like I’ve finally lost my mind. “What?”
“It’s the only way,” I continue, the decision crystallizing in my mind now. “If the world knows she’s my wife and that the child is ours, no one will dare touch her or the boy unless they want to start a war.”
Leo opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. “I… suppose that’s one way to solve the issue…”
It isn’t a way, it’s the only one. A Don’s wife is untouchable, sacred in the eyes of allies and enemies alike. Any man foolish enough to lay a hand on her signs his own death warrant, and everyone knows it. The rules are old, absolute, and enforced without exception.
The same cannot be said for a woman with no title. A mistress, a former lover, is a liability. Elena as my wife becomes protected by fear and tradition. Elena as anything else becomes a target.
This isn’t about pretending the past never happened. It’s about survival for the both of us and the child she refuses to name as mine.
I lean back against the couch, the weight of the choice pressing heavily over me. “I’ll make it clear to her that this isn’t a request.”
Leo studies me for a long moment, then exhales. “She’s not going to take that well.”
A corner of my mouth lifts, not in humor but in grim acknowledgment. “That’s too bad.”
She will understand in time. She’s the one person who will always understand what’s at stake. If marrying me is the price of keeping her son alive, she will fall to her knees in an instant to pay it.
I have her brought to my study the next morning.