Chapter Five – Dante
The trees are thick this far out. Pines—old, dry, crowded too close together. The ground is soft, all needles and rot. No lights. No moon. Just the faint crunch of Fausto’s boots arriving half a minute late.
He never changes. Always just late enough to remind me he doesn’t answer to anyone.
I stay where I am, hands in my coat pockets, eyes fixed ahead.
He steps into the clearing like he owns it.
“We can’t be seen together,” I say. “Don’t waste my time. What do you want?”
He smiles. That smug, careless curve of the mouth I’ve seen a thousand times over a glass of whiskey or a man’s grave.
“Why the hurry, brother?” he says. “We’re partners, aren’t we?”
The word turns my stomach.
I look at him fully now. His coat tailored, but he hasn’t shaved. He smells faintly of tobacco and old oil, like the inside of an engine that still runs on lies.
“Was it you?” I ask. “Who ratted out Oreste to the other families?”
Fausto’s smile deepens. “You’re sharp. Or maybe you’re just a rat yourself too. But yes—you’re right. It was me.” He chuckles. “Don’t look at me like that. This is our plan.”
I step forward once. Not far, just enough to feel my feet settle harder into the earth.
“You had your half-brother killed like a mule.”
“And you,” he says, voice light, “had no issue when I helped you kill my brother’s daughter like a mule—when it suited you.”
My jaw locks. The breath I take is measured. Not because I disagree, but because I don’t like hearing it aloud.
“She was making him weak.”
Giovanna, his lover. A union that my brother found to be a headache. Cassian, bound to one sister, chooses the other, and lets her make him weak.
My brother died a few months after the girl moved in and I knew I had to make my move. Fausto helped me plan the assassination.
He and I had our partnerships. Nothing serious. He was just a man for a dirty job.
“That’s why I summoned you,” Fausto says. He leans against a tree like it’s a bar stool. “My brother’s last daughter. Elaria.”
He says her name like it’s a problem he’s already halfway solved.
“She’s loose,” he continues. “I’ve got a feeling she’ll run to Cassian. If she hasn’t already.”
I let out a short breath. A laugh, more disbelief than anything else. “You believe in blood ties? You think because they were bound as kids, she finds him? They barely know each other. She might not know it but he chose her sister.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“That’s bullshit,” I say. “Cassian wouldn’t let her in. Not with what it means. Not with what it costs.”
Fausto shrugs. “He loved one Fontanesi girl. You think he can resist another?”
“He’s still mourning the first.”
“Exactly,” Fausto says. “He’s cracked.” Fausto’s smile sharpens. “Let me make it worth your time.”
He steps closer, voice lower now.
“I’ll give you half of the Fontanesi distribution.”
That gets my attention.
He sees it.
“My brother,” he says, “built the most efficient smuggling routes in the south. Cleaner than yours. Faster than mine. You help me secure it, and half of it’s yours.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why would you hand that to me?”
He looks at me like I already know.
“Because I know Oreste’s daughter will go to Cassian,” he says. “And when she does—I want you to deliver her to me.”
The wind picks up.
It whistles through the pine. The scent of sap and damp soil coils around us.
I watch him. I know what he is. What I am. We’ve both long since traded blood for margin.
I nod once.
“Deal.”
Fausto lights a cigarette and watches me go, but I don’t look back. The path is narrow, roots like veins under the pine needles. My boots press deep into the earth. The trees stretch taller the farther I walk. The dark thickens.
He thinks I’m doing this for greed.
He’s not wrong. But he’s not right either.
It was my job to protect the family name after my brother died. Not the blood, not the boy—but the name. Rivetti isn’t built on love stories. It’s built on structure. On fear. On remembering what happens when we let our guard down.
Cassian tries. But he’s young. Soft in places he shouldn’t be.
He loved that girl.
Giovanna.
Too much, too publicly.
She made him gentle. She made him quiet. That kind of softness? It spreads. Weakens the foundation. Love like that doesn’t keep a family alive.
So yes.
I let her die.
And when Elaria comes crawling back—wrapped in her father’s legacy, soaked in all that old Fontanesi grief—I’ll hand her right back to Fausto.
Let him finish what he started.
One day, Cassian will understand.
He’ll thank me.
Maybe not with words. Maybe not at all.
But when the house stands firm, and no one dares speak the name Fontanesi in our halls again—he’ll know.
And that will be enough.