Chapter 18
DANTE
I wake to the sound of rain hitting the windows outside my study.
At first, it’s only that—the soft, insistent patter against the terrace doors. Normally, it calms me. White noise for a mind that never truly shuts off. The kind of sound I let bleed into my thoughts when frustration knots too tightly and slowly begins to steal the sanity from me.
Tonight, strangely, it doesn’t.
I shift on the couch and force myself to sit up, immediately regretting it.
Pain lances through my shoulder, radiating down my arm in a slow, punishing throb.
I hiss quietly through my teeth, breath catching for just a moment before I school it back into the same mask I always hide behind.
It’s an unfortunate reminder of the self-inflicted punishment I’ve decided to cast onto myself.
A penance, of sorts, one I didn’t bother to avoid.
Rolling my shoulder once, I grit my teeth until the pain dulls into something a little more manageable. It doesn’t disappear entirely but remains as a physical echo of choices I’ve made. It’s a consequence I’ve accepted.
Sleeping in my study isn’t exactly new.
What’s different is the why.
After my conversation with Elena, I made the decision to give her space.
Not because I wanted to. I simply felt it was necessary.
I had just upended her entire world with news no mother should ever have to hear.
There was no version of me that could soften that blow, no amount of reassurance that wouldn’t sound hollow in the face of a bounty placed on our son’s life no matter how much I wanted to believe otherwise.
At the time, I thought promising to protect our son would pacify her. Now I see that that had been a hubristic thought. Anything I said in those moments would have been for me, not for her.
So I stepped back.
While I spent the last few days tearing through leads, tracking Enzo across continents and shell companies and dead ends, Elena had spent every waking second with Luca.
Which is exactly where she belongs. As much as I hated being separated from her and felt the absence of her like a phantom limb, I understood it.
This wasn’t about my comfort. It wasn’t even about my guilt.
It was about Luca.
He barely knows me. I have no right to wedge myself between a mother and her child simply because I miss her, because the quiet on my side of the house has started to feel unbearable.
So I didn’t.
Instead, I did what I’ve always done when I can’t fix something. I buried myself in work.
I’ve worked until dawn blurred into night and back again.
Until coffee went cold and untouched and reports stacked higher on my desk than they ever have before.
I chased paper trails and financial reports, forced confessions out of men who thought silence would save them, and followed Enzo’s shadow until it dissolved into nothing and then doubled back again.
Somewhere out there is the man who ordered my brother’s execution. The man who thought he could hide behind borrowed loyalty from my father and believed I would never find out what really happened because my grief would prevent me from looking any deeper into the truth.
Until I find him, sleep will remain optional, pain will remain earned, and comfort will remain something I don’t allow myself to indulge in.
I glance at the clock on the far wall.
3:17 a.m.
I sigh.
Lightning flashes outside. Shadows leap across the room and the half-finished glass of whiskey I never bothered to clean up from last night. The reflection in the glass catches my eye—my own face hard and hollowed out, eyes nearly sunken in from what little rest I’ve been able to get.
I rise slowly, joints protesting as I push myself upright. The rain streaks down the windows in erratic lines that distort the world beyond it. The terrace lights glow faintly, blurred by water, and are soon swallowed entirely by the darkness.
I move closer to the windows, drawn there without quite understanding why.
Storms have always done this to me, recognizing something restless in my bones and answering in kind.
Nights when I’d stand just like this with my face pressed to cold glass, watching lightning split across the sky and wondering if the violence outside was less dangerous than the violence trapped behind the windows.
My brother used to find me there far past my bedtime. He’d never scolded me, never asked why. He’d just lean against the wall beside me, arms crossed, his eyes tracking the storm like it was something we could outlast together.
“Can’t sleep?” he’d ask, already knowing the answer.
Sometimes, he’d stay. Sometimes, he’d ruffle my hair and tell me to get back to bed soon before leaving me to my thoughts again. But he always made sure I knew I wasn’t alone.
The memory tightens something in my chest.
I rest my hand against the glass now, fingers splayed, feeling the cold seep into my skin. I register it then, the absence of something I can’t yet name. I have the strangest sensation that something is wrong. Not imminently, just… wrong.
My jaw tightens.
I check the time again, then turn toward the door, already moving as the unease coils tighter in my gut with every step. I don’t stop until I’m outside Luca’s room. I don’t knock, either. For some strange reason, all logic leaves me as I turn the handle and push the door open.
The room is dim, lit only by the faint glow of the nightlight on the dresser. The storm hums distantly through the walls, softened here. For a split second, my mind expects to see two lumps sleeping beneath the blankets.
Instead what I find is the sheets thrown back like someone left in a hurry and the wardrobe across the way thrown open. Luca’s stuffed bear, given to him by one of my staff a few days ago, lies on the floor near the foot of the bed, its glassy eyes staring up at nothing.
Everything in me goes still.
I cross the room in two strides. “Elena?”
Something sharp twists deep inside my chest when all that greets me back is silence.
For a few seconds, I can’t move. My thoughts scatter, refusing to settle. My mind tries—stupidly, desperately—to make this make sense. Maybe Elena took him for a walk. Maybe he had been feeling restless from the storm and needed to work off some of that nervous energy.
Elena running, taking Luca and disappearing into the night like she did all those years ago, has always been a fear that’s lived somewhere in the back of my mind. A possibility I never allowed myself to dwell on too long because I knew I would go crazy if I had to hunt them down again.
My eyes dart to the window.
She wouldn’t leave like this. Not in the middle of a storm.
As my eyes scan the room again, my hand tightens around the bear until the seams strain between my fingers.
“Fuck,” I breathe out.
I turn on my heel and head back toward the door, fury and fear colliding into a singular and lethal weapon. This paralysis, this split second of doubt, is dangerous. If there’s one thing I know about Elena, it’s not to underestimate her.
She is not impulsive. Every choice she makes is calculated through layers of contingency and love, even when she pretends otherwise.
Especially when she pretends otherwise. This could be nothing more than a misunderstanding.
She could be in another wing of the house curled up with Luca in one of the rooms she favors when she’s restless, waiting out the storm while Luca sleeps peacefully in her arms.
The thought tempts me because it offers relief. It would mean I’m wrong and have blown all of this out of proportion.
If that’s the case and I’ve let my imagination run wild, then I’ll endure the humiliation of it. I’ll take the look she’ll give me when I find her and the tight-lipped frustration when she tells me to leave her alone. I would gladly be foolish.
But that possibility is already fraying under the weight of everything else I know about her.
“Get up! Wake everyone now!” I roar down the hall the moment I step out of Luca’s room.
My voice tears through the villa like a gunshot.
The response is immediate.
Doors slam open, boots pound against stone floors, the heavy thud of them echoing through the corridors as men spill out half-dressed and half-armed, adrenaline snapping them awake faster than any alarm ever could. Within minutes, Luca’s room is crowded with men.
“What the hell is happening?” The voice cuts through the noise, rough with sleep and irritation.
I turn and spot Leo pushing his way through the doorway, broad shoulders used to force his way inside the room. His hair sticks up at odd angles, the drawstring at the front of his pants hanging loose, T-shirt half tucked into his waistband from being pulled on in a haste.
His gaze sweeps the room, taking everything in with quick efficiency before snapping back to me.
I don’t waste time.
“I want Elena and Luca located. They are supposed to be sleeping in here. When I came to check on them, they were gone. Things have been moved in a way that suggested they left in a hurry.”
Leo’s brows spring up.
He doesn’t question me out loud, not here in front of everyone because he knows better, but I see it anyway. That familiar flicker behind his eyes as the questions loop endlessly as he runs possibilities through his head faster than most men can blink.
Missing? Taken? Running? How? Why? By whom?
“Lock down the perimeter,” I continue, turning to the rest of the room. “Check every entry point, every camera for the past hour. I want vehicles prepped and teams moving to canvass the area outside.”
They scatter instantly.
Leo steps closer as they shuffle out behind us, lowering his voice just enough to not be heard over the noise. “You think she left on her own?”
“I don’t know.” That’s all I can give him.
I hope like fuck I’m wrong.