57. Dante
Dante
I scrub a hand down my face, and shake my head. “Look, Dominic. I appreciate your need to purge, but I’m sort of on a deadline?—”
“I’m the mole,” he says softly. “The traitor.”
He seems to need to get this out, so I let him. Enjoying his big reveal.
“Interesting,” I murmur. “And you’re telling me this now because…?”
His throat bobs.
Eyes glassy, haunted.
“There’s a bomb strapped under this car. In ten minutes, we’re both dead.”
“Twelve minutes by my calculation,” I say, dry. “But who’s counting?”
His eyes snap to mine. “You… know ?”
I nod once.
“What I don’t know is why you? And don’t you mean I’m dead?”
My voice stays flat. Stripped bare. Less emotion and more curious.
Dominic shakes his head hard, the words catching on breath.
“They needed a guarantee. A death to match yours. Someone to take the fall.”
“Like an inside job.”
He elaborates quietly, words carved with razored precision. “Someone fluent in both Italian and Russian.” A pause stretches taut, almost painful. “I’m both.”
“Both?”
How the hell did I not know this?
Christ, millions poured into recon, surveillance, back-end data scrapes, and I don’t even know my own fucking team?
Note to self: If by some miracle I live…fire everyone.
His throat works around the next part, the shame almost tangible.
“When they threatened my family…”
By now, I’m lighting a cigar—flicking the flame like it’s not the fucking end of the world.
“Who’s they ?”
“Your uncle.”
I blow a slow plume into an O. “Anyone else?”
“Roman. And…”
A brutal, suspended second.
“Zver.”
I smirk. Fucking priceless.
My uncle. Zver. That, I knew.
Roman?
Not a fucking clue.
See? This right here— this —reinforces the evil genius of my plan.
Granted, death may be ticking down—for sure.
But I’m taking ten goddamn seconds to gloat.
I was fucking right.
And this plan is… perfect .
Even with the whole impending death thing looming and all.
“I had no choice,” Dominic says, now full blown sobbing, heavy with remorse. “But—” he straightens his spine, jaw hardening—“If I’m already dead, they’ll spare my family. You don’t have to be. You can live.”
The hit comes fast.
Emotion—sharp, uninvited, and totally fucking inconvenient.
I can… live?
Wow.
Dominic’s loyal-to-a-fault, puppy-dog Lassie Come Home shit is noble and tragic and surprising as hell.
The operative word being— fault .
“You’d die with me?” I ask, the words coming out lower than I expect. “Give up your family?”
Just like I’m giving up mine.
He looks at me then. Really looks.
“Yes, sir!” Eyes raw, anguish carved into every line of his face. “If I die, my family lives.”
He swallows hard. “Death was always in the cards, Mr. D’Angelo. Just another pawn in their game.”
My jaw tightens. “What if they kill your family anyway?”
His head drops. “It’s a chance I have to take.”
But before I can respond?—
Headlights.
Blinding. Sharp.
A high-end sports car skids across the gravel, blocking us in with surgical precision.
For fuck’s sake, now what?
The driver’s door flies open.
“Enzo?”
He storms toward us, feral and fast, yanking at the handle like it’ll give. Which is funny because it’s locked.
A gloved hand bangs hard against the glass.
“Goddamnit, Dante! Open the fucking door!” I don’t. “There’s a bomb strapped under your car—C-4. Enough to blow the entire fucking block.”
I roll down the window. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Knox.” He spits the name like poison. “His boss is in on it. You need to get out. Now. ”
I stare at him, cold resolve hardening like concrete in my chest.
“No, I don’t.”
Enzo stops in his tracks.
Eyes wide, desperate, searching for a crack in me he can pry open.
“Look, I know that batshit witch mindfucked you when you were a kid. But you don’t actually have to die.”
“Yes, I do.”
He throws his hands to the sky like it’ll help. “ Why? ”
“Because if I don’t…” I meet his eyes. Unflinching. “We’ll never figure out what happened to our father.”
I let it hang for a second.
Then drive the blade in.
“Roman’s in on it. Special Agent in Charge Vincent Shaw. People we never saw coming.”
It lands like a bullet in a werewolf’s chest.
Me… being right.
And I’m so fucking right.
It’s all tangled across Enzo’s face—rage, panic, pain—like a storm he can’t outrun.
“Does Dillon know?”
I shake my head. “It’s better he doesn’t. Twin brain and all.”
His jaw tightens. “So you’re just gonna what? Sign your own fucking death warrant?”
“My death gives Uncle Andre a win,” I say, steady. “A win that’ll make him sloppy. Just enough to crack the door on his inner circle—so we can light the fuse and blow his world to fucking dust.”
Enzo doesn’t speak.
Just stands there, letting rage fold into grief… then something else.
Understanding.
Enlightenment.
Finally— fucking finally —he gets it.
Gets me .
By this point, Enzo’s lit his own cigar, the tip glowing in judgment.
“And Trinity?”
I shrug. And shake my head.
“Maybe one day… she’ll forgive me.”
“Maybe…”
He exhales slow, the smoke curling right in my face, meant to sting.
Or maybe… to heal.
“There’s no other way?”
“No.”
Enzo reaches in and snuffs out the cigar— right on the soft leather of my car.
Nice.
“Then I guess you’d better get to it,” he says. “And I better get out of the blast radius.” A smirk pulls at his mouth. “New Aston Martin and all.”
And for one final second, he just stares.
Like he’s memorizing me. Us.
Then, without warning, his fucking iron fist slams into my arm, so hard I wince.
No long goodbye.
No speech.
Just Enzo.
“See you in hell,” he mutters.
“Not if I see you first.”
And then, he’s gone.
I turn. “How long?”
Dominic doesn’t look at me. “Six minutes, sir.”
I nod before I make one final, deliberate act of exactly how Dante D’Angelo will die.
I open the door. “I’ll drive.”
Dominic moves to the passenger seat, quiet and decidedly unbuckled.
I slide behind the wheel.
Floor the gas.
Adrenaline slams through me like New Year’s in Times Square.
“Let’s fucking do this.”