Chapter 10 Dante
DANTE
The ledger refuses to leave me.
After an hour—or maybe several, time has lost all meaning at this point—I finally drag myself up off the floor.
I move on instinct alone, stooping to gather the scattered pages one by one.
I don’t read them again. Instead, I keep my gaze fixed elsewhere and shove the pages roughly into the ruined binding, locking all of it in one of the drawers in my desk.
Out of sight, out of mind. That has always been my method.
And yet, nothing changes.
Over the course of the next few days, the drawer stays shut, but the knowledge inside it prowls relentlessly in my thoughts.
I try to drown it out the only way I know how.
By working. By burying myself in meetings over the next few days that run long into the night, mediating territorial disputes and issuing punishments with cold calculus.
I remind myself over and over who I am, what this family requires of me.
What Sicily expects from someone in my position.
A Don cannot afford self-doubt.
I tell myself I’ve buried worse things than this. I’ve compartmentalized much darker truths. This should be no different. Whatever Elena placed in my hands and whatever poison of doubt it carried can be sealed away just like everything else.
But at night when the villa goes quiet, that drawer becomes impossible to ignore.
I find myself alone in my study staring at the place where it is hidden. Sometimes, my eyes trace the grain of the wood, my thoughts circling dangerously close to reaching out and opening it and leafing through the pages until all of this can make sense again.
Every time I get close to it, though, that’s when I hear him.
Matteo.
Not as he was at the end—broken, bleeding, struggling to form the words for whatever he was so desperate to get out in those final moments before he took his last breath in my arms—but as he used to be.
His voice slips into my mind with cruel clarity, light and infectious, carrying that familiar warmth.
But then just as quickly, it fades into disappointment.
You never questioned it? Why not?
My jaw tightens.
I tell myself it’s guilt, grief. I know it is. I know how the mind works when it’s been wounded this deeply and how it invents new ways to torture you day after day, year after year. I’ve lived with that truth since the night my world split apart.
But nonetheless, the echo of his voice persists. It is unforgiving in its gentleness just as he always was.
You trusted them, Dante. There is no shame in that. We all did.
A pause.
But didn’t you ever wonder why they moved on so quickly?
I don’t have an answer for that. And worse, I don’t have answers for the questions that have begun surfacing since Elena shoved that damned book in my face.
Why wasn’t I killed too? Why only Matteo?
Was it guilt over my father’s death? Fear of rocking the boat too far by taking us all out at the same time?
A miscalculation? If my father’s most trusted men were the ones truly responsible, and if Elena’s theory is true, then why in the world would they allow me to live?
Why place me on the throne, even if by circumstance, instead of eliminating the last remaining heir?
The questions stack one on top of another until the weight of them becomes unbearable.
And then, as if summoned by my unrest, the world around me begins to unravel too.
It starts quietly with a delayed shipment, a missed check-in that stretches a few hours too long before the delivery window comes and goes.
I chalk it up to outside circumstances, the kind of disruptions that happen often enough in this life because of incompetence from another port’s crew or simply bad luck.
I should know better than that by now when it comes to the Bellanti syndicate. They’ve never been subtle when they want something. When they move, they do it with the intent to bleed their enemies dry and force a response regardless of the outcome.
I don’t think they’ve ever cared whether their actions could ignite a turf war or destroy them before they can get their hands on whatever they wanted in the first place. Either outcome suits them just fine if it means disrupting the status quo.
The first real report comes in just before dawn, three days after that initial disturbance.
I’m already awake when the phone rings, sitting in my study with a cup of untouched coffee growing cold on the desk.
I know something is wrong the second I hear the tension in my captain’s voice after answering.
Two of our cargo trucks are ambushed along the coastal road outside Palermo, Carlo Toselli’s territory.
The drivers never stood a chance. Spiked barricades had been dragged across the road at a narrow bend along the coast, forcing the convoy to slow to a crawl with nowhere to turn or backtrack.
Gunfire erupted the moment the engines dropped speed, shredding the windows of the cabs before either man could even reach for their own weapons.
By the time my men arrived to investigate the delay, the damage had already been done.
The trucks were smoldering husks pulled half onto the narrow shoulder, smoke curling into the early morning air like a signal fire. Crates had been split open and emptied with surgical efficiency with nothing actually being taken. This wasn’t a robbery fueled by greed. It was a statement.
Someone wanted me to know exactly how exposed I’d become and had proved as much with this little stunt.
Another hijacking occurs only a day later, and this one never even makes it to the port.
I’ve trained with most of them myself, watched them rise from boys into soldiers alongside me.
I know their names, their families. Seeing them laid out in twisted, blood-soaked positions hits harder than I expect when I arrive on the scene, and a cold fury settles deep in my chest.
But it’s what is carved into their flesh that turns my blood to ice.
The Bellanti family crest.
The cuts are deep, etched into their skin like a brand. Not one of them looks hurried or sloppy, meant to be a clear message written confidently and with absolutely no remorse.
It’s a clear sign the Bellantis believe the Cosenza empire is vulnerable.
They sense weakness. In me, in my syndicate, and whether what started it all were the whispers about Elena’s return with our child or something else, I haven’t yet figured out, but it doesn’t matter.
In this world, perception is reality. If I appear unstable and with it my authority looks compromised for even a moment, then every rival with a set of balls and a grudge will come crawling out of the shadows to take their turn at carving a piece of my empire away for themselves.
I’ve built this syndicate back from ashes once already. I bled for it, buried my father and my brother for it. I clawed my way into the Don’s chair with my teeth clenched around my grief. Now they think I’ll let it fall because of a woman. Because of a child who looks strangely like me.
The irony would be almost amusing if the consequences weren’t so deadly.
While they may have mistaken my silence for hesitation and my restraint for weakness, they will soon learn that is the most dangerous mistake they could have ever made.