27. Dante & Cassie
DANTE & CASSIE
D ante
The earth is still damp where I bury the evidence.
Clothes soaked through with Gino Esposito’s blood. His arrogance. His life.
All gone.
I press the last shovelful of dirt down with my boot, watching the ground settle like none of this happened.
The first shot was to the knee.
Not because I wanted information. Not because I cared to draw it out.
It was principle.
The gunfire had cracked through the air, and one of my men dropped, clutching his shoulder. The others scattered for cover, returning fire at shadows in the trees.
Gino was already moving when he saw the fury on my face, scrambling back toward his SUV.
Where Aria lay drugged in the backseat.
I ran, the world narrowing to a single point: my daughter.
I ducked, rolled, and came up firing at the two men behind Gino’s SUV.
The first one took it in the throat. Second in the chest. Hell, they dropped like stones.
Gino had the back door open now, reaching for Aria’s limp form.
“Don’t,” I snarled.
He froze, half in the vehicle, then slowly turned. The fear in his eyes gave me a sick satisfaction.
He knew.
At that moment, he knew exactly who he was dealing with.
“Romano,” he said. “Let’s be reasonable.”
“Reasonable? You drugged my kid.”
His face twisted ugly with rage. “She’s not yours.”
“DNA says otherwise. Besides, would a father drug his own kid?”
The idiot went for his gun. I made it easy—shot him in the knee. He screamed, collapsed against the SUV door, clutching the shattered joint.
“That,” I stepped closer, “was for making Cassie flinch every time a door slams.”
His gaze jumped, hunting for an escape. Too late. His guys were dead or trapped in the tree line. He was alone.
“The kid,” he gasped. “She’s all yours, okay? Take her. We can work something out.”
I crouched beside him, close enough to smell the fear.
“You know your mistake, Gino?”
He swallowed, eyes fixed on my gun.
“You thought she was leverage.” I leaned in, voice razor-sharp. “She’s my blood. You don’t fuck with a man’s blood.”
For a man so trigger-happy, for his pride, the bastard groveled.
“I’ll disappear. You’ll never see me again. I swear it.”
I laughed. “That’s the one true thing you’ve said today.”
His eyes widened as I pressed the barrel to his forehead.
“That’s for touching what’s mine,” I said, and pulled the trigger.
It wasn’t rage when I did it. Rage gets messy. Rage makes you sloppy. What I felt? That was redemption. The only thing keeping me from putting more bullets in his corpse was the fact that I already had my hands full carrying Aria out of there.
She never woke up. Sedated like a pawn, a prop in his sick power play.
But now she’s home. Now he’s six feet under at the edge of that airstrip, rotting with the worms where he belongs, along with the rest of his cronies.
No one will find him. No one except me knows exactly where he’s buried, and my men?
They’re ghosts when they need to be. Sworn to silence.
Paid to make sure this never circles back.
They’re good guys. Work hard. As we speak, they’re towing Gino’s cars further into the forest, before they set them on fire.
Tina can suspect all she wants. Cassie… she’ll ask questions eventually. But tonight?
Tonight, I bury any trace of Gino.
Tomorrow I start building something better.
But first? I need to wash the stink of him off my skin. I head back toward the house, boots crunching through underbrush, the faint glow of the lake house windows calling me home.
Cassie
I put Aria to bed and go check on Dante. I stand at the doorway and watch as he peels off his jacket, his boots, his blood-soaked clothes.
Something’s wrong.
Not wrong like Aria’s missing wrong, but wrong like I can smell it on his skin.
Blood.
Old, metallic, copper-heavy. It clings to him under the clean clothes. His eyes are darker than usual, and the shadows stretched long across his face.
He told Tina the stain on his shirt was “nothing.” That classic deflection, brushing off concern like it’s a loose thread.
But I know better.
I’ve felt that weight on him all night—the tension coiled under his skin, the shadows stitched along his spine.
He turns and sees me watching. “Cass?”
“I… wanted to thank you,” I say, in all honesty.
He simply nods. “I’m really tired.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
When I no longer feel welcomed, I retreat to check on Aria one more time. But then, when I go to close her blinds so the sun doesn’t bother her, I see him walking out through the lawn, heading to the forest out back.
And when he disappears into the trees, I stop wondering.
I start looking.
Quiet steps down the hall, soft enough not to draw attention from Tina or one of the guards stationed around the house. His bedroom door’s cracked already.
I push the door open and slip in.
The room smells like him. Cedar, rain, gunpowder. And something darker. Something old. Something dangerous.
I scan the dresser and the nightstand. My heart hammers like it knows I shouldn’t be doing this.
But curiosity’s a nasty thing—it drags you places your fear says to stay away from.
There, on the bedside table, half-hidden under his discarded clothes… I see it.
A ring.
Heavy. Silver. Worn.
The crest etched into the metal stops my lungs cold.
A double-headed eagle. A snarling wolf flanked by blades. And words in Cyrillic that, even with my broken memory of college-level documentaries, I can decipher enough to make my spine lock up.
I’ve seen this before.
A late-night deep dive into a true-crime special about power families. Not just mafia.
Royalty.
Bratva royalty.
The kind of family with their claws in every corner of the world. The kind that doesn’t just survive—they build empires. The kind that buries threats like weeds and leaves no witnesses.
My throat tightens as I stare at the ring, cold realization bleeding down my spine.
Dante’s not just mafia.
He’s legacy.
And I’ve been sleeping in the lion’s den this entire time—without even knowing just how sharp his teeth really are.