Chapter 9
Catalina
My teeth chatter so hard my jaw aches. The wind off the Chicago River is a wall of ice, slicing right through the soaked layers of my clothes. Mud sucks at my boots with every shift of my weight. Drainage water drips from my hair and freezes against my neck.
Fabio's arm locks across my shoulders, keeping me tucked flush against his side. His body acts as a physical shield against the wind. The heat radiating off him is like him—dominant and unyielding. It wraps around my panicked brain and forces it to settle.
He stands right beside me on the muddy embankment, every line of him tuned to threat.
He is unbothered by the freezing temperature.
The river water drips from his hair. His chest rises and falls in slow, measured rhythms. A man who just slaughtered four trained Bellanti hitmen in pitch darkness should be breathing hard.
He should be shaking from the adrenaline dump.
He's not shaking. He's scanning the perimeter, eyes clocking every shadow, every rustle of the wind.
My family sent a strike team to execute me. They sewed a tracker into my bag. They broadcast a fake transmission to get me killed by the Costas. I grew up inside the suffocating shadow of what they did to my aunt. It was the ultimate lesson. Nobody leaves the Bellanti machine alive.
I'm not dead. I'm standing on the banks of the Chicago River, breathing the freezing air, alive, because a Costa burned the world down for me.
My brain tries to run the odds. It is what I do.
I spent my whole life inside the Bellanti compound, surviving by analyzing every micro-expression and tracking every shifting allegiance.
The math says I should be terrified of him.
The math says he's volatile, unpredictable, a Costa with every reason to hate my bloodline.
The math is garbage.
He shifts his stance, angling his body to block the worst of the biting wind from hitting me. He does it automatically. He doesn't even look down. His right hand hovers just above the small of my back, not touching, drawing a line nothing alive would cross.
A set of headlights cuts through the darkness on the street above us. The tires screech against the pavement at the top of the embankment, stopping abruptly at the edge of the riverwalk above us.
Fabio's stance widens. His hand drops to his waist, his fingers curling around the grip of his weapon.
A blacked-out, armored SUV idles on the concrete above us. The driver's-side door opens.
Dante Costa steps out.
I know the faces of the enemy. I have studied their files in the Bellanti archives. Dante is the enforcer, the quiet, terrifying Guard who survived his own crucible. He wears a dark sweater under a tactical jacket, his posture loose but coiled, ready to detonate.
Dante doesn't look at the river or the muddy embankment. He looks directly at Fabio.
Then his eyes slide to me.
I lift my chin. My lips are probably blue.
My wet clothes are plastered to my skin beneath Fabio's jacket.
I look like a drowned rat. I refuse to cower.
I square my shoulders and stare right back at the Costa enforcer.
He thinks he can intimidate me with a dead-eyed stare?
Please. I sat at dinner tables with men who ordered hits between courses.
One more mafia enforcer doesn't scare me.
Not anymore.
Dante raises a single eyebrow. He looks back to Fabio.
"Get in the car," Dante says. His voice is a low rumble, devoid of judgment or surprise.
Fabio doesn't answer. He simply moves. His hand settles firmly at my hip, steering me up the muddy incline. His grip is iron-solid. He hauls me up the slippery bank with zero effort, taking the brunt of my weight so I don't slip in the sludge.
We reach the pavement. The wind howls louder up here, but the heat radiating from the open SUV door is a physical wall of relief.
Fabio guides me to the back door. He shoves it open.
"Get in," he orders. His voice is broken glass and razor blades.
I don't argue. I scramble into the back seat. The leather is warm. The heater is blasting. I sink into the seat, pulling my knees toward my chest, desperately trying to hoard the hot air against my freezing limbs.
Dante gets into the driver's seat. He leaves the vehicle in park while the second team holds the riverwalk above us
I expect Fabio to get in the passenger seat. They are brothers. They have tactical debriefs to do. They need to discuss the bodies left cooling in the speakeasy and the flooded drainage pipe behind it. They need to discuss the war.
Fabio doesn't walk around the front. He climbs right into the back seat next to me.
The armored cabin suddenly feels half the size it was. The cabin contracts around the shape of him. He slams the armored door shut, sealing us inside the quiet, insulated cabin. He ignores Dante. He turns his body toward me.
His large, rough hands reach out. He grips my frozen fingers, rubbing them aggressively between his warm palms.
"Are you hit?" he demands.
"No." My teeth chatter around the syllable. "I'm just cold."
"You're shaking."
"Because it's thirty degrees outside and I just crawled through a flooded drainage pipe," I snap back. The bite is a defense mechanism. I can't help it. It's the only way I keep from breaking apart in the back of his car.
Fabio doesn't care about my bite. He glares at my wet hair. He reaches up, his fingers threading through the soaked strands, checking my scalp for injuries. His touch is rough, frantic. He's running a physical inventory of my body, as if he needs proof I'm still intact.
Dante watches us through the rearview mirror. His dark eyes flick between whatever he sees in his brother and my shivering form.
"Matteo's losing his mind," Dante says calmly. He shifts the SUV into drive. "The perimeter alarms at the compound have been tripping since you went off-grid. Bellanti strike force at the gates. But we are at war. The leak came from inside the perimeter. Santi locked it down. But we're at siege."
The words drop like anvils into the heated cabin.
Siege.
The Bellantis attacked the Costa compound. My family brought the assault to their gates. And I am sitting in the back of a Costa vehicle, wearing a Costa jacket.
My chest tightens. The oxygen leaves my lungs. I know what happens next. I know how mafia politics work. I am a Bellanti. My last name is the reason their gates are being assaulted. My bloodline is currently shooting at their family. I'm a liability. I'm the enemy.
I pull my hands away from Fabio. I press myself against the door, trying to create distance between us. The leather seat squeaks under my wet jeans.
"Drop me off," I say. My voice is thin, but I force it to steady. "Drop me off at the next intersection. I have cash hidden in a locker at Union Station. I have a fake ID. I can disappear."
Dante doesn't hit the brakes. He keeps driving, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Fabio goes still.
The frantic energy bleeds out of his shoulders. The checking-for-injuries panic vanishes. It is replaced by a terrifying stillness. The temperature in the back seat seems to drop twenty degrees.
He slowly turns his head. His eyes lock onto my face. The sharp line of his jaw clenches.
"What did you just say?" His voice is barely a whisper. It's the most dangerous sound I've ever heard in my life.
I swallow hard. The logical part of my brain insists I follow through. “Your family is under attack. By my family. If you bring me to the compound, Matteo will put a bullet in my head the second I step out of this car. Dominic will demand my execution. I'm a Bellanti. You can't bring me home."
"Home," Fabio repeats.
He ignores everything else I said. He zeroes in on that single word.
My jaw sets tight. I hate the tears burning the back of my eyes. "Drop me off, Fabio. It's the smartest play. I gave you the dock intel. We're even."
He moves so fast my body flinches before my brain registers it's him.
His large hands close around my shoulders. He pulls me across the leather seat, out of my defensive corner and directly against his chest. I gasp, my hands flying up to press against his wet shirt.
"Don't ever," he snarls, his face inches from mine, "ever calculate my actions again. Don't run the odds. Don't tell me what the smartest play is."
"Fabio—"
"You're not going to Union Station. You're not using a fake ID.
" His fingers bite into my shoulders. Not enough to bruise, but enough to anchor me.
"Your family is dead to you. They sent a strike team to put a bullet in your spine.
They planted a tracker in your bag. They don't get to claim you anymore. "
My breath hitches. The certainty in his voice shatters my logic.
"I'm a Bellanti," I whisper, the truth tasting like ash on my tongue.
"You're mine."
The words echo in the small cabin. Not a negotiation. A statement of fact.
I stare up into his eyes. I search for the hesitation, for the regret, for the realization that I am ruining his life.
I find nothing but raw, scorched-earth possession. He's consumed by it. Right now, in this cabin, the war doesn't exist for him. His brothers don't exist for him. He only cares about keeping me alive and in reach.
I let out a shaky breath. My hands curl into the wet fabric of his shirt.
I could fight him. I could demand Dante pull over. I know how to disappear. I planned this defection for six months, mapped out safe houses in three different states, stocked burner phones and untraceable cash. I could vanish into the ether and never look over my shoulder again.
But looking at the man holding me together with his bare hands, I realize the truth.
I don't want to go anywhere else.
My entire life has been a series of cold calculations. Surviving my father, surviving my cousins, mapping exits and counting steps, hiding in the shadows while monsters tore each other apart in the light.