Chapter 42 #2
But it's not over—not until he's gone, not until there's no chance he can hurt her again, no chance he can sabotage her mother's care or manipulate her or use her or touch her. Not until he's dead.
I grab his head, one hand on his jaw and one on the back of his skull.
Our eyes meet and he sees it—what's coming, what I'm about to do.
"Please—" he chokes out.
I twist.
The crack is loud in the sudden silence.
His body goes limp, eyes still open and staring at nothing, and I let him drop. Adrian Mancini crumples to the concrete, broken and bloodied and dead.
I turn to Bianca and she's staring, her face pale and her eyes wider than I've ever seen them.
"Are you hurt?" My voice sounds strange, too calm for what just happened.
She shakes her head, unable to speak.
"Good." I reach for her and pull her close, quickly checking for injuries with hands that won't stop shaking despite the adrenaline still coursing through me. "You're safe now. He can't hurt you anymore."
"Dante—you killed him—"
"Yes." No apology, no regret, because I'd do it a million times again if I had to. "And I'd do it again."
"How touching."
The voice cuts through the moment like poison.
Caterina stands near the jet stairs, still perfectly composed despite the bodies and blood and chaos surrounding her, still wearing that white coat like she's attending a garden party instead of a war zone.
"The devoted capo, killing for his whore." She smiles with that sick smile I despise more with each passing day. "How very... primitive."
I release Bianca and step toward Caterina. "Walk away while you still can."
"Or what? You'll kill me too?" She laughs, light and mocking. "You can't touch me, Dante. My father—"
"Doesn't know what you've been doing." I pull out my phone and show her the screen. "But he will. I have everything—every threat you made, every person you paid off, every piece of evidence you collected on Bianca. All of it traced back to you."
Her smile falters.
"Your uncle was very helpful. Carlo told me everything—where you keep your files, who you've been working with, how you planned to use the scandal to force me into marriage.
" I take another step. "Did you know he's in the hospital right now?
Broken hand. Shattered ribs. And he's singing to anyone who'll listen, trying to cut a deal with my people before your father finds out what you've done. "
"You're bluffing."
"Am I?" I turn to her guards, the ones still standing. "Ask them. Ask if I'm bluffing. Ask if they want to go down with you when Don Massimo learns his daughter started a war without permission, when he finds out you've been acting on your own, using family resources for a personal vendetta."
The guards shift, uncomfortable, loyalties wavering in real time.
"You think this ends with Adrian dead?" Caterina's voice rises. "The article is already out. Everyone knows what she is, what she did. No amount of threats will make that disappear."
"You're right." I smile, cold as she is. "The article is out. And tomorrow, I'm releasing one of my own. About you."
Her face goes white.
"Sealed court records. Affairs with married men.
Financial irregularities that would interest both the IRS and your father.
Every dirty secret you thought was buried.
" I pull out another phone—not mine, but hers, the one Luca lifted from her apartment two hours ago.
"Including the photos on this device. The ones you were saving for leverage.
The ones your father would kill you for if he knew they existed. "
She lunges for the phone but I hold it out of reach.
"Here's what's going to happen. You're going to call off your campaign, delete every file, retract every statement. And you're going to do it publicly, in front of your guards, in front of witnesses."
"I won't—"
"Or I send everything to your father. And to the press.
And to every family you've ever done business with.
I'll destroy you so completely that the Bellandi name becomes a joke.
Your father will disown you. Your family will exile you.
And you'll spend the rest of your life knowing you lost everything because you couldn't accept that I chose someone else. "
The threat hangs in the air between us.
Caterina looks around—at her guards who won't meet her eyes, at Enzo and Rafe and my men positioned at every exit, at Adrian's body growing cold on the concrete, at Bianca standing beside me, alive and free and mine.
"This isn't over," Caterina whispers.
"Yes," I say. "It is."
She tries to hold my gaze, tries to salvage some dignity from this disaster she created, but we both know the truth. She lost.
One of her guards steps forward, older and more experienced than the others. "Miss Bellandi. We should leave. Now."
She nods, stiff and defeated, and they retreat to the jet. Within minutes they're gone and the warehouse falls silent except for groans from injured guards and the crackle of Enzo's radio.
Rafe approaches. "Clean up?"
"Make it disappear, brother. All of it." I look at Adrian's body. "Especially him."
"Consider it done."
I turn back to Bianca. She's still standing where I left her, shaking but upright, processing everything that just happened.
"It's over," I tell her. "Really over."
"You killed him." Not an accusation—just a fact she's trying to process.
"Yes."
"For me."
"Yes."
"And Caterina—"
"Won't bother us again. I made sure of it."
“How did you find me?”
“Your ring––it has a GPS tracking system in it,” I say.
She looks at me, really looks at me, seeing all of it—the blood on my hands, Adrian's and mine mixed together, the violence I'm capable of when someone threatens what's mine, the darkness that lives under the suits and strategy and careful control, the man I really am underneath everything I show the world.
"You chose me," she whispers. "Against Caterina. Against the scandal. Against your father. Against your position. Against everyone who said I wasn't worth it."
"I'll always choose you." I pull her close, ignore the pain in my ribs where Adrian cut me, ignore the blood soaking through my shirt. "Even if it costs me everything—my position, my reputation, my family name. You're worth more than all of it combined."
She presses her face into my chest and starts crying, but not from fear or pain or trauma or the weight of everything that just happened. From relief. From knowing she's finally, truly safe.
The war isn't over—Caterina will regroup eventually, my father will continue his campaign against us, the article will have consequences we haven't even begun to see.
But this battle is won.
And Bianca is safe, in my arms, where she belongs.
That's all that matters.