Chapter 34 Mia
MIA
My husband might think I didn’t have knowledge of what was going on, but no one was stopping me from talking to the man they captured. This ridiculous feud needed to end. A room near the back wing was where they kept him.
Enzo was awake. He did not look surprised to see me. “Mrs. Di Fiore. You shouldn’t be here.”
“You shouldn’t have taken me.” I sat my hip against the doorframe and let the light fall on my face.
He squinted. “You were an easy mark. Pretty, too—too pretty for a girl from here.”
“Is that what your boss told you?”
“My boss?” He blinked. “We follow orders. You come with the chance for a payday. We take it. Big men, little risks. It’s how things work.”
“Names. Give me names.”
He shook his head. “You don’t want to play. We get paid not to—”
“Your boss,” I insisted. “You said ‘we follow orders.’ Who called the orders?”
He stared at me for a long time. “Can’t tell you,” he said at last. “You’re protected though.”
“Protected?” I laughed then, short, a sound too sharp to be polite. “Protected by men who throw women into vans and want ransom?”
He flinched. Then he said the name. “Dante. Dante Gallo. ”
Dante. “Why him?”
“He—” Enzo swallowed. “He—he doesn’t want you dead. Not really. He wants something bigger. He wants to make the man who took everything see what it costs for his deception. He said something about finishing what your father began.” He shrugged.
”What does that mean? What did my father do?”
Enzo blinked, eyes losing their shine. “Family debts. Old promises. He thinks his old man was robbed. He thinks Enrico’s father built a kingdom on his family’s grave. He’s got men who still believe it. They want a reckoning.”
His fear was visible now, thin as skin. “Who’s running him, Enzo?”
“Dante’s father might’ve died, but he’s not the first son to seek revenge for his father. He’s the one with ideas about how to make men pay. He paid us to take you for leverage. He’s not after your blood; he’s after the empire. He wants you to watch your husband’s world crumble.”
Dante’s obsession. Revenge.
“I’ll tell my husband you were helpful with information.
Maybe that’ll make your death less painful.
” I closed the door and went to find Marco.
When I found him in the study, he was running his fingers on an old map.
He gazed up when I came in, and his face folded like a card when I told him the name.
“Dante Gallo,” he said. He didn’t make a noise. He made space. “You heard of him?”
“He’s obsessed. He wants my husband.”
Marco pushed the chair back and stood. “He’s dangerous. The Gallo name has teeth. Especially around here.”
“I don’t want to be the pawn. I want to be the woman who helps the king checkmate.”
Marco’s laugh was dry. “You’re… you’re not the kind of woman who sits pretty and waits.”
“Exactly.”
I left him and about an hour later, Enrico called both of us into his study.
“Dante Gallo,” Marco said. “We have a concrete name.”
Enrico’s fingers curled around the back of the chair. “Where?”
“Enzo gave it,” Marco said. “He was shaky, but he gave us Dante’s name.”
“Who is us?”
I didn’t want to look him in the eye. “I knew he would give me answers.”
His jaw went hard, and when he finally looked at me, his whole face changed into a hundred taut ropes of resolve. “You were taken,” he said.
“Yes. I interrogated him.”
“For what?” The question was clipped, but there was no accusation in it; only concern sheathed in command.
“To find a name,” I said. “To find the name of the man.”
Enrico’s features softened into a thing that was almost gratitude and almost fear.
“Dante.” He repeated the name like he could use it to track a scent.
His eyes darkened onto me in a way that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with ownership and oath and the first tremor of fear being sharpened into vengeance. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“You told me earlier you wanted me to be honest.”
“Yes.” A pause. “And that honesty nearly got you killed. I need you safe.”
I met his gaze. “I refused to be locked away.”
“You didn’t have to go question them.”
“I needed to know.”
He was quiet long enough for dust to rearrange itself. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer. “You’re brave but also stubborn.”
“Both are useful.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, a small concession to the weight he carried. The house around us hummed with cooks, guards, and other staff. “How much did he tell you?”
“Only the name. And that Dante doesn’t want me dead. He wanted the spectacle.”
Enrico let out a breath. “Of course he does. Showmen always want an audience.”
There was a long, dangerous silence that folded itself around us.
“Tomorrow,” he said finally, “I’m going to Via del Leone. With you or without you.”
I set my jaw and answered with the thing I’d grown better at in this house: plain, fierce truth. “With you.”
“There are things you should know,” he said. “There are lines I won’t cross. I need you to know which is which.”
“Teach me.”
He considered this. “We tell no one. Your place will be close to the car and behind the men we trust.”
I wanted freedom; I had not expected to find it in the form of a rulebook written by a man who knew how to kill. “I promise.”
When I left the study, I walked past the gallery where the photograph still rested on the console, bizarre and deliberate. My fingers hovered over the frame and then I let my hand fall away.
If this world had taught me anything, it was how to make a liability into leverage.