Chapter 12 Ana
“Mrs. Rosetti cannot wear same five dresses forever,” Maria declares, pulling me through the boutique’s glass doors before I can protest. “Is embarrassing for family.”
Day nine of marriage, and I've surrendered to Maria's relentless kindness.
My exhaustion makes fighting pointless anyway.
My limbs feel like they're moving through honey, each blink lasting longer than the last. Two guards follow us inside, trying to look casual while their eyes scan every corner.
One positions himself near the entrance, the other drifts toward the back.
Even shopping requires an armed escort in the Rosetti world.
The boutique smells like expensive leather and roses, all cream marble and soft lighting that makes everything look like a dream.
Or maybe that's just my sleep-deprived brain creating halos around the chandeliers.
Maria chatters in rapid-fire Italglish, her hands waving as she describes every dress that catches her eye.
"This one! Perfect for dinner parties. And this, Mr. Dante will die when he sees you."
"I don't dress for him," I mutter in Italian, but my traitorous fingers linger on a red silk dress anyway. The fabric feels like water, cool and smooth against my skin. Madonna, when did I start thinking about what he'd like?
"English only," Maria scolds, although if they could speak in Italian, it would everything easier. Just another arbitrary rule in the Rosetti household. "And of course you no dress for Mr. Dante," Maria says, her smile knowing. "But try it. For Maria, yes?"
The changing room mirrors reflect a stranger.
The red dress clings in ways my simple clothes never do, transforming me into someone who might actually belong in Dante's world.
I turn, watching the silk move like liquid sin against my body.
The exhaustion makes me honest with myself.
I'm imagining his hands on this fabric, imagining his eyes darkening when he sees me.
My fingers move in the mirror, signing to my reflection: "You're losing yourself."
But I tell Maria to wrap the red dress anyway, along with three others she insists are "essential for proper wife." The boutique adds them to my new accounts. Inheritance I never knew existed, explained in Dante's careful handwriting while I sat in his chair, surrounded by his scent.
The boutique door chimes as we exit onto Michigan Avenue.
My arms full of shopping bags, the exhaustion making them feel like weights.
Then the guards tense, and my body recognizes danger before my tired mind catches up.
Their hands drift toward concealed weapons, bodies shifting to flanking positions.
Three men approach through the afternoon crowd.
My blood freezes, then burns, then freezes again as I recognize the one in front.
Giuseppe. Dio mio, not Giuseppe. The man who taught me to load a gun on my twelfth birthday, who called me 'little warrior' and snuck me chocolates during family meetings.
"Ana Moretti," Giuseppe says, his voice carrying across the sidewalk as he continues in Italian. "Not Rosetti. Never Rosetti."
The words sting. My exhausted mind scrambles for English, fails, stays in Italian: "The marriage is done, Giuseppe. The peace is signed."
His weathered face twists with disgust. "Your father rolls in his grave, knowing his daughter spreads her legs for his killer."
The crude words from this man who bounced me on his knee make bile rise in my throat. Maria gasps beside me. One guard steps forward, but Giuseppe's hand moves to his waistband, revealing the gun tucked there. The other two men flanking him mirror the gesture.
"We don't recognize this false peace," Giuseppe continues, his voice rising. "Romeo Moretti deserves better than a whore daughter who betrays his memory."
Each word lands hard. My hand trembles with the need to reach for my thigh, where Papa's knife should be, but I forgot to strap it on this morning. Maybe I really am forgetting who I am. Three guns against nothing but exhaustion and shame.
"They should've killed you with your father," the second man spits. "Finish what they started that night. At least then you'd have died with honor instead of living as the enemy's plaything."
The threat makes my knees weak, not from fear but from the realization that some of my father's men want me dead for surviving.
The metal of guns gleams in the afternoon sun.
Innocent shoppers pass by, oblivious to the danger coiling around us.
My exhausted body can barely stay upright, let alone fight.
"You betray everything," Giuseppe says, stepping closer. "Everything your father built, everything he died for, you threw away to warm a monster's bed."
Dante appears like smoke given form.
One moment Giuseppe is advancing, the next a hand grips his gun arm. The crack of bone breaking makes my stomach lurch even as something dark and hungry awakens in my chest. Giuseppe's scream cuts short as his gun clatters across the sidewalk.
Three seconds. My heart doesn't even finish its terrified stutter, and three armed men are bleeding on the sidewalk. The silence of his violence steals my breath. This is my husband. This beautiful, terrible thing that destroys for me.
The second man swings wildly, but Dante flows under the punch like water, his fist driving up into the attacker's throat.
The wet crunch makes me flinch and clench my thighs simultaneously.
The man drops, gasping, hands clutching his crushed windpipe.
Dante strips his gun in the same motion, the metal disappearing into his jacket.
The third raises his weapon, finger on the trigger. A knife appears in Dante's hand. Where did it come from? It flies in a silver arc. The blade sinks into the gunman's shoulder, spinning him sideways. His gun fires into the concrete as he falls.
The copper scent of blood mixes with Dante's cologne, sandalwood and violence, and my traitorous body responds with wet heat between my thighs.
He positions himself between me and the threats, his body a shield protecting what's his.
Death incarnate in an expensive suit, and Cristo, he's never looked more beautiful than when he's destroying threats to me.
Giuseppe cradles his shattered arm against his chest, bone jutting at an unnatural angle through his sleeve. The sound he makes, part sob, part rage, from this man who taught me strength breaks something in my chest.
Maria whimpers behind us. The shopping bags scatter across the sidewalk, that red dress peeking out like spilled blood. The one I chose imagining his eyes on me. Now he's spilling actual blood, and my body can't decide if I'm horrified or aroused.
Giuseppe struggles to his knees, face twisted with pain and rage. "You don't deserve her loyalty, Rosetti devil."
Dante picks him up one-handed, slamming him against the boutique window hard enough to crack the glass. His other hand moves in quick signs meant for me: "Close your eyes."
I don't. I need to see this, need to understand what I've married.
The crowd of witnesses presses closer, phones raised to capture every moment.
My pulse pounds in my ears as Dante's fingers find specific points on Giuseppe's throat.
Not strangling but pressing deliberately.
Giuseppe's eyes roll back, body convulsing in Dante's grip.
After three seconds, Dante releases him.
Giuseppe crumples, conscious but unable to move, nerves temporarily scrambled.
The crowd has swelled now, at least thirty witnesses with phones recording this very public display. The entire street has stopped to watch this confrontation unfold in broad daylight. Every stranger here will spread the story of what happens next.
Dante turns to me, and my breath catches.
His hands run over my arms, my ribs, checking for injuries.
The touch makes my nipples tighten against the silk dress.
He just destroyed three men for threatening me, and my body interprets his violence as foreplay.
What kind of sick thing am I becoming in his presence?
When his hands frame my face, forcing me to meet his eyes, I see concern crack through his controlled facade. His thumb brushes my cheek, and I realize I'm crying. When did that start?
"You're safe," he signs. "I have you."
"I didn't need…" I start to sign back, but my hands shake too much.
"Yes, you did. And I'll always come."
Always. The word burrows under my skin like a promise I never asked for but suddenly desperately want.
Giuseppe groans from the ground: "Rosetti whore. Your father would…"
Dante's foot presses against Giuseppe's throat, not enough to kill but enough to stop words. His eyes never leave mine as he signs: "Choose now. Your family or mine. Choose your loyalty in front of these witnesses."
The crowd presses even closer, a sea of phones recording everything. This moment will spread through Chicago's underworld by nightfall. Every witness here waiting to hear Ana Moretti pick a side.
The words tear from my throat like confession: "I'm Ana Rosetti."
In front of all these strangers, their phones recording my betrayal, I choose the man who killed my father.
Choose him because he just turned himself into a weapon for me.
Choose him because for the first time since Papa died, I feel protected instead of hunted.
The betrayal feels like safety, and I instantly hate myself for it.
I know I'll want to tear those words out of the universe later on, tonight in bed, but for now they feel right.
Back at the mansion, I pull Dante into our bathroom. His knuckles are split, blood seeping through the torn skin. These hands that just disabled three men now need my tending.
He sits on the tub's edge while I kneel with the first aid kit, the same reversal from when he bandaged my feet. His blood is warm on my hands as I clean each wound, so different from Papa's blood that night. That was ending. This is… Madonna, what is this?
"You didn't have to protect me like that," I say, but the English fails me mid-sentence, exhaustion making the foreign words crumble.
His finger touches my lips gently, stopping more words. The contact sends heat straight to my core. When I look up, his signs are slow, deliberate: "Yes. Always. You're mine to protect."
"From my own family?" My voice cracks, and I switch to Italian without meaning to. "Dalla mia famiglia?"
"From anyone who threatens you."
"Why?" The question escapes in English again. "Why do you care what happens to me?"
His eyes hold mine for a long moment. Then his hands move with more emphasis: "You wear my ring. You sleep in my bed. You carry my name."
Each statement builds his claim, and my body responds to the possession in his movements. This isn't just about duty. This is about ownership. I belong to him in ways that have nothing to do with contracts.
He doesn't sign anything else, just watches me work with that patient attention that makes my skin burn.
My hands stay gentle on his wounds, carefully applying antibiotic cream.
I'm being so careful not to hurt him, this man who just broke another man's arm for insulting me. When did I start caring about his pain?
His breathing changes when I lean closer to examine a particularly deep cut. I can feel the heat of him, smell the lingering scent of violence and expensive cologne on his skin. My exhausted body sways toward him without permission.
My old dress clings to my curves. The cotton is spotted with blood. Giuseppe's or his, I'm not sure. It should disgust me. Instead, I imagine him peeling it off me later, his split knuckles catching on the zipper.
"Mine to protect," he'd signed with those damaged hands. The possessive claim should anger me. Instead, heat pools low in my belly at the memory of him standing between me and danger. The monster of legend, mine.
My fingers linger on his wrist, feeling his pulse steady and strong beneath my touch. How can he be so calm after that violence? How can he sit here letting me tend him like this is normal? Like protecting me is just what he does now?
His other hand rises, signing one-handed: "The red dress. You chose it for me."
Not a question. He watched me shop, probably watched me trying it on. He knows. Heat floods my cheeks.
"Maria said you'd like it," I whisper.
That almost-smile appears, the one that makes my stomach flip. His eyes darken as they travel down my stained cotton dress, taking in how it clings, how it reveals, somehow making it feel as sexy as the red one. When his gaze returns to mine, the heat in it makes my breath catch.
We're close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his dark eyes, close enough that if I leaned forward just slightly…
No. This is exhaustion talking. Nine days without proper sleep making me imagine things that aren't there. Making me want things I shouldn't want from the man who destroyed my family.
But as I wrap the bandage around his knuckles, his hand catches mine. Just for a moment. Just long enough for his thumb to press against my pulse where it races at my wrist. The same way he did at our first meeting. Marking the spot where my heart beats too fast for him.
When he releases me, my skin burns with the memory of contact. Tomorrow I'll remember why I hate him. Tomorrow I'll be stronger.
Tonight, I'm just Ana Rosetti, tending her husband's wounds, my body still humming from watching him become death incarnate in my defense.
And the worst part? The absolute worst part is how safe I feel now, knowing he'll always come for me.