Chapter 28 - Dante
The territory map bleeds red ink across my desk as Detroit pushes into our southern districts.
Marco’s voice carries that measured authority as he outlines response strategies, but something cold settles in my gut.
A premonition maybe, or just the memory of Ana’s sleepy smile this morning when I left her tangled in our sheets, her fingers signing “I love you” against my chest before I forced myself to leave.
"The southern route needs restructuring," Marco continues, pointing to shipping lanes. "Detroit's getting bold."
I nod, forcing focus, but my hand finds the paper crane in my pocket. One of Ana's, folded last night while we talked about children, about the future, about everything we almost lost. The jasmine scent of her still clings to my shirt from when she pulled me back for one more kiss.
My phone sits dark on the desk. No messages. She usually sends something by now, even just a photo of her morning coffee or a sign language video that makes me smile. The silence feels wrong.
"Dante?" Marco's voice cuts through. "The Hadley situation?"
"Double the security on those shipments," I sign, but my attention splits. That cold feeling spreads, ice through my veins. Something's wrong. Something's happening.
Then Nico crashes through the door, and his face tells me everything.
"Ana." His signs are frantic, violent. "Taken. Detroit."
The world stops.
Then explodes.
The desk flips before I realize I'm moving.
Papers scatter, the territory map ripping as everything crashes to the floor.
A coffee cup shatters against the wall, ceramic shards flying.
A sound tears from my damaged throat. Not words, just pure rage that makes Marco and Nico step back.
The noise that escapes is inhuman, the scarred tissue burning as it tries to form her name.
My throat feels like it's tearing open again, desperate to scream what it never can.
My hands find the wall, punch through drywall, needing to destroy something, anything, everything. Blood runs from my knuckles but I can't feel it. Can't feel anything but the absence of her.
The contracts on my desk, the ones I helped her understand last week, my handwriting in the margins explaining the complex English, I tear them to pieces.
Worthless. Everything is worthless without her.
My fist connects with the window, spider-webbing the glass.
In the fractured reflection, I see what my brothers see: not the controlled enforcer they know, but something feral.
Something they've never witnessed, not even when I came back from three days of torture.
Marco grabs me, his grip iron on my shoulders. "Dante. Brother. Focus. We'll get her back."
But I can't breathe. My scarred throat convulses, trying to scream, trying to call for her, but only managing that horrible, damaged sound.
Can't think past the image of their hands on her.
Ana alone, frightened, maybe hurt. Maybe…
no. She's alive. Has to be. They'd want me to know if they'd… if she was…
Her taste is still on my lips from this morning's goodbye kiss. Her fingernail marks still sting on my shoulders from last night when she rode me, signing my name as she came. Three hours ago she was beneath me, around me, choosing me. Now they have her. Detroit has what's mine.
"Brother." It's Luca, and for once his voice carries no amusement. "You're scaring Nico."
I look up to find Nico pressed against the door, hand on his weapon. Not to use, just instinct when faced with something dangerous. They're afraid. My own brothers are afraid of what I'm becoming. Good. They should be. Everyone should be.
My hands shake too violently to sign properly. The movements come out broken, desperate: "How? When? The security?"
"She went shopping," Nico reports, military efficient despite the crisis. "Three guards dead. Professional execution. They knew exactly when and how."
Professional. Planned. They've been watching, waiting for the perfect moment when I'd be distracted, trapped in a meeting, unable to protect what matters most.
Another sound escapes my throat, this one pure animal fury. The scar tissue pulls, threatens to tear, but I don't care. Let it rip open. Let me bleed. Nothing matters without her.
"Dante." Marco's voice cuts through. "They left this."
A brown envelope, my name scrawled across it in block letters.
My hands shake as I tear it open. A single photo falls out.
Ana, unconscious, laid out in what looks like a van.
A bruise blooms on her temple, purple against her pale skin.
Her dress, the blue one she wore this morning, the one I helped her zip while kissing her neck, torn at the shoulder. But she's breathing. Alive.
The photo smells wrong. Male cologne, cheap. Someone else's scent on her image. My vision goes red at the edges.
I flip it over. The message is simple, impossible:
"Your queen for your kingdom. All territories, all operations, everything Rosetti. Midnight. Six hours. Or we sell her to the highest bidder. Many want the Rosetti whore."
The paper crumbles in my fist. They called her that. They dared to call her that.
My throat burns again, trying to roar, to scream, to make any sound that matches the rage tearing through me.
This morning she traced the scars on my throat, kissed each one, signed "your voice is in your hands, in your touch, in how you love me.
" Now those same scars burn with the need to scream her name.
The door opens again. A kid, maybe eighteen, shaking like a leaf. Detroit's messenger. He's brave. Stupid. Dead.
"Mr. Rosetti," his voice cracks. "I'm supposed to wait for an answer."
I move before thought forms. My hand wraps around his throat, lifting him off the ground.
Not strangling, not yet, just holding him suspended while his feet kick uselessly.
His pulse hammers against my palm. Frightened prey in the grip of something that's stopped being human.
I can feel his voice box working, the thing I lost, the thing they took. He can scream. I can't.
Marco doesn't intervene. Neither does Nico.
They know better than to get between me and anything connected to Ana's taking.
I see them exchange a look. They've never seen me this far gone.
When I came back from torture, I was silent, contained.
This is different. This is what happens when you take the only thing that makes a monster want to be human.
The kid's eyes bulge. "Please, I'm just, they made me."
I drop him, then grab his wrist. The bone snaps with a satisfying crack that makes him scream. A warning. A promise. A preview of what's coming for everyone involved. His scream echoes what my throat can't produce, and I want to break every bone until his screams match my rage.
"Tell them," Marco translates my signs while the kid whimpers. "Tell them they're all dead. Every last one. But they'll wish for death before he's done."
The kid scrambles out, cradling his broken wrist. Good. Let him carry that message back. Let them know what's coming.
"Brother." Luca's voice drifts from the doorway, that wrong cheerfulness that means violence is near. "I heard we're finally getting to play properly."
He enters with that terrible smile, already knowing everything.
Of course he does. Luca always knows when blood is coming.
But even he steps carefully around me, recognizing something different in my eyes.
This isn't the controlled violence he's seen before.
This is something else. Something that doesn't care about collateral damage or consequences.
Alex arrives next, phone already out. "Calling in every marker, every favor. Full intel in twenty minutes."
My family mobilizes without question, each sliding into their role.
But all I can see is that photo. Ana unconscious, vulnerable, in enemy hands because I failed to protect her.
My knuckles are still bleeding from the wall, the window, the destruction, but the pain doesn't register.
Physical pain is nothing. This hollow ache where she should be, that's agony.
My hands move desperately: "Two hours. She's been gone two hours?"
"Since this morning," Nico confirms. "They timed it perfectly. Wanted you trapped in the meeting when the message arrived."
Two hours. Two hours of them having her, touching her, maybe hurting her. The bruise on her temple screams my failure. This morning I traced my fingers over her unmarked skin, memorized every freckle, every scar, every inch. Now they've marked her. Put their violence on what's mine.
"Intelligence coming in," Luca announces, checking his tablet with that academic interest he brings to violence. "Warehouse district. Abandoned Patrilli building. Twenty men confirmed, possibly thirty."
He looks up, those pale eyes bright with anticipation. "And brother? Your wife already injured two of them. Bit clean through one's finger, broke another's nose. They had to sedate her."
Pride wars with terror. That's my Ana, fighting even drugged, even outnumbered. But they sedated her. Put their hands on her. Forced chemicals into her body to make her comply. The image of her unconscious, unable to fight, unable to sign for help, makes my scarred throat convulse again.
Mine to protect. Mine to avenge. Mine to burn this city down for.
"Arsenal," I sign, already moving.
The weapons room opens to familiar steel and gunpowder.
But tonight it's different. Tonight I'm not selecting tools for a job.
I'm choosing instruments of torture. This knife, serrated edge for the one who bruised her temple.
This gun for whoever gave the order. These brass knuckles for anyone who called her that word.
I catch my reflection in the polished steel of a blade.
The man staring back isn't the one Ana kissed goodbye this morning.
That man was learning to be human, to be gentle, to be worthy of her love.
This thing in the reflection is what remains when you rip away that humanity.
The demon she once thought I was, now becoming exactly that because they took the only thing that made me more.
My brothers arm themselves efficiently, but they keep watching me. I'm taking too much, more than I can carry, more than makes tactical sense. Weapons strap to every available surface. Overkill for what's coming.
"Save some for me," Luca hums, selecting knives with disturbing care. "I want to play with whoever bruised her pretty face."
His casual violence usually unsettles people.
Tonight, I make him look stable by comparison.
My hands shake as I secure another blade, remembering Ana's fingers on mine this morning, how she signed "be safe" even though we both knew the meeting was just paperwork.
She worries about me. No one's ever worried about me before.
Marco coordinates tactics while we arm ourselves. "Nico leads entry team Alpha. Dante and Luca go straight for Ana. Alex, you're backup and exit. Wait for Sofia. She's twenty minutes out but insists on joining."
Family. Ana would cry hearing that Sofia's racing back from her meeting downtown to help rescue her. Now she's gone, taken, suffering, and every second feels like a year.
"Two minutes," Marco says. "Cars are ready."
I need to see our room first. Need to breathe her scent, touch something of hers, remember why I'm about to become the demon Chicago whispers about.
The bedroom still smells like jasmine and sex, like the morning we shared before this nightmare began.
The sheets are tangled from our lovemaking, her pillow still indented from her head.
I press my face to it, breathing deep, trying to hold onto her scent.
On the nightstand, three paper cranes she folded last night while we talked.
I wrap one, careful not to crush the delicate wings, in the silk scarf she wore yesterday, then pocket it.
Her torn nightgown from last night lies on the floor.
Evidence of my desperate need to be inside her, to claim her again after she chose me completely.
Now someone else has torn her dress. Put hands on what's mine.
The rage builds until my vision edges red, until my damaged throat burns with the need to scream.
"Coming for you," I sign to the empty room, to her ghost, to whoever's listening. "Hold on, baby. Fight. I'm coming."
The paper crane presses against my chest, wrapped in silk that smells like home. Like her. Like everything they're trying to take.
Marco appears in the doorway. "Cars ready. Time to go. Sofia will meet us there."
He stops, seeing me clearly for the first time. His composed brother, the silent strategist, is gone. In his place stands something that makes even the Don of Chicago step back.
"Dante," he says carefully. "We'll get her back."
I move past him, and he doesn't try to stop me. None of them do. They follow at a distance, giving the demon space to breathe. Smart. The thing I'm becoming doesn't distinguish between friend and foe. There's only obstacles between me and Ana.
"Bring her home, brother," Marco says, understanding the look in my eyes. "Whatever it takes."
Whatever it takes. Even if I have to lose the humanity she helped me find.
The paper crane presses against my chest as we head for the cars. A talisman. A promise. A reminder that somewhere in this city, my wife is waiting for rescue.
Hold on, Ana. The devil's coming for you.
And Hell's coming with him.