3. Loss
Chapter three
Loss
(Danica)
“Enough, Emilio. Let me help!” I demand, shouting at my protector.
This inconvenient dress is a poor excuse to be sidelined.
I can’t just cower on the floor.
Not while my boys are out there getting shot at.
It’s not right.
Alessio happily handed me off to Emilio, drawing his weapon to join the fight. Like I’m some child that needs to be shuffled from one babysitter to the next. Fuck that.
“Miss Matthews—” Emilio starts, but I don’t let him finish. I hate the sound of that surname. It grates my nerves. So close; I was almost rid of it.
Around us, guests flee in waves, abandoning us to our fate. Cowards. If they stayed, if they helped...
Ignoring Emilio’s protests, I push myself up, straining to get a better view as I scan the mayhem for my groom.
I find him, but not in time.
Fuck!
The world slows to individual heartbeats when I see the pipe connect with Dante's skull.
The sound—god, that sound—cuts through the pandemonium like a knife.
No!
I'm moving before thought can catch up, ignoring Emilio's desperate grab for my arm. But I’m too quick; he misses.
My wedding dress tangles around my legs like a beautiful prison. Kicking off my stilettos, I hike yards of white fabric up to my knees, not caring what tears or stains.
None of it matters.
Nothing except getting to Dante.
He's sprawled on the grass to my right, the immaculate suit we spent hours fitting now stained with dirt.
The pipe—thick and shiny—hovers near his head, its owner gearing up to take another swing.
Please, god, let me get there in time.
The distance between us stretches like forever, each step as laborious as running through water.
Too slow. I'm too slow.
But luckily, I’m not the only one on this mission. Alessio reaches our fallen lover first, his shouting drawing the attacker’s attention.
The Vegas Joker moves like a dancer, like a predator, buying precious seconds.
As I close the distance between us, my eyes suddenly catch on something glimmering in the grass—a knife, dropped in the chaos.
I grab it on instinct, tightening my knuckles around its handle.
By the time I reach the fight, knife in hand, Alessio is grappling with two attackers while Dante struggles to rise. The pipe hit must have been bad—his movements seem sluggish, unfocused.
Something primal rises in my chest, a fury that’s been lying dormant.
Nobody gets to hurt my Dante. Not without consent.
What happens next feels like watching someone else move through my body.
The knife finds the first attacker's shoulder blade like it belongs there.
His scream sounds distant, underwater.
Alessio seizes his advantage, and I'm already moving again—knee up, blade out, just like training.
But this isn't practice.
This is blood and bone and the taste of metal in the air.
When the knife finds flesh again, the bleeding man’s shout is guttural, foreign. Russian?
I’ve never heard anyone speak Russian in real life, only in those age-restricted action thrillers I sneakily watched with my older brothers as a child.
In hindsight, I’m rather glad the twins were above coming to my wedding, else I would’ve had to worry about saving their asses too right now.
Suburbia didn’t do much to teach any of us to survive in the shadows. But I haven’t been that girl from suburbia for a long time now.
Fuck being the damsel in distress.
"Don't you fucking dare lay a finger on her!" Dante's voice cuts through my battle haze. He's up now, fury giving him strength as he drives his fist into the guy’s face.
“Who are you?” my groom demands, pulling the guy’s mask off to reveal a thirty-something buzzcut-sporting thug with a gold tooth and creepy snarl. “Who sent you?” he tries again.
The apprehended man just laughs, making it clear he has no intention of squealing.
I watch Dante—my beautiful, dangerous Don—lose patience.
The gunshot that takes the gold-toothed thug’s manhood is almost anticlimactic.
Just another sound in a garden of violence.
But the man’s anguished screams pierce through. For him, it wasn’t just another sound, another shot. It was someone shooting at his dick.
Asshole.
"Don't fuck with me," Dante growls, raising his gun again, and in that moment I see it all: the rage, the protectiveness, the pure love that makes him capable of such violence.
“Leave him, Dante,” Alessio calls, another attacker pinned beneath his shoe.
Dante hesitates for a second, the gun still aimed at the bleeding guy’s head.
I’m sure he’s going to shoot the fucker, put him out of his misery, but he doesn’t.
He just leaves him there, bleeding in agony.
“Go home, Danica. We’ll take care of this,” Dante tells me curtly, opening the gun’s magazine to count the remaining bullets. Gone is the handsome hero who regarded my journey down the aisle with such adoration. The warrior is in charge now.
Instantly, the rage starts rising in my throat. He should know better than to dismiss me like that.
I cross my arms over my chest, resisting the urge to stomp my bare feet. “Fuck that, I’m not leaving.” I know I should listen. That this is his world. But my mind isn’t thinking straight. Up feels down and down feels like fuck knows what, but I won’t let him push me aside, not now.
“Danica—” Alessio starts, but I shoot him a loaded look, and he instantly shuts up, returning his focus to the perp at his feet.
“No, Dante. I’m not some child you need to protect.”
Dante meets my eyes, and I hold his gaze firmly, refusing to budge.
“Just let me help,” I add, softer, “please.”
Finally, Dante nods reluctantly, retrieving the knife from the bleeding assailant and handing it back to me, handle first.
“Thank you,” I say softly, wiping the blade on my dress. “First things first…” Hacking through the material in uneven tears, I cut a slit into the side of my dress, ripping it from the hem to my hips.
“Tesoro…” Dante sighs, watching as I destroy my dress.
But now isn’t the time for sentiment.
Like I’m the latest cast member on Survivor, trapped on a deserted island, I tie the material around my waist, cutting off some of the layers to make moving easier.
“Let’s go!” I command once I’m free from the dirty offcuts, relieved to finally have the full range of my legs again, unobstructed by the heavy material of the wedding dress.
There was no chance in hell I would just sit at home and wait for this all to be over. I’m not the same weakling I used to be. It’s been almost a year now since Emilio got me that bad-ass personal trainer.
Dante told me to learn something useful like Krav Maga or Muay Thai, but I wanted to do Taekwondo like Chung Li in the Streetfighter game.
Dante said it was dumb, but I was determined, so he tasked Emilio with finding me the best trainer money could buy.
I still have some ways to go before getting a basic black belt—at least another two years. But I am undeniably way faster and stronger than I used to be.
Before meeting Dante, my idea of working out was sometimes strolling through the park or maybe taking out the trash.
But now, I feel strong. Prepared. The anxiety is still there, the fear, but it doesn’t freeze me—it propels me.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Dante answers as he and Alessio follow me into the garden.
Things start to move quickly after this point.
With the help of Dante’s well-trained guards, we quickly get the situation under control.
Nobody speaks.
Nobody answers any questions.
The invaders put up one hell of a fight.
But we have no intention of conceding.
Like some hodge-podge Charlie’s Angels team, we help the remaining stragglers out.
It’s too late, though; the damage is done.
Around us, chairs lie scattered, many broken, almost all upturned.
Even the arch that was supposed to cover us as I recited the vows I’d been working on for weeks, is lying uprooted on its side.
And then there is the human carnage…
Oh god.
A loud, piercing wail suddenly slices through the chaos, and I spin around, heart pounding.
It's Carlo.
To the right by the sound booth.
He’s sprawled on the grass, clutching his chest, a blood stain growing over his once-white shirt.
I sprint towards him, dropping to my knees beside the hulk of a guard. Despite our past differences, I've grown fond of Dante’s men. Carlo, especially, with his soft heart and collection of cat memes on his phone that he’d show me whenever Dante wasn’t looking.
“Carlo?” I whisper, carefully lifting his hand from his chest to inspect the gnarly wound. The moment I do, blood gushes out at an alarming rate, and my stomach churns.
It’s worse than I feared.
A bullet is lodged deep in his chest; he’s fading fast.
The dark-haired man with the crooked smile tries to speak, but all that comes out is a gurgled mumble. His body trembles violently.
“Shh, Carlo. You’ll be okay...Dante!” I scream, my voice quivering with panic.
I clutch Carlo tightly, trying to comfort him, even though he’s too big to hold properly. But I do my best, wrapping my arms around him as far as I can reach.
“Miss…” he begins, but the word dies on his lips.
I watch in horror as his chest rises one last time under my blood-soaked hands, then falls still.
“Jesus, Carlo, please. Stay with me,” I plead, shaking him, my hands slick with his blood. “Stay with me, please, please.”
But he's already gone, the life drained from his eyes.
By the time Dante and Alessio reach me, Carlo is lifeless, stiff, in my grip.
“No! No! No!” I keep repeating as I beat his body with my fists, trying to elicit some reaction, any reaction, where there will never be any reaction again.
But there’s nothing but silence.
The world comes crashing down as I lower my head, wiping my teary eyes with bloody hands.
Please, Carlo, please…
Dante crouches behind me, wrapping his strong arms around my shaking frame to lift me off the ground in one smooth motion. Like I weigh no more than a child.
I don’t resist, my strength now gone.
Defeated, I wipe my bloody hands on the ruined wedding dress that will never be white again.
“Fucking assholes!” I shout in between my tears, unable to tear my eyes from the unmoving body on the floor.
Surely Carlo isn’t really dead, right?
Right?
But he is.
I cry into Dante’s chest, shaking in his arms, unable to keep it together any longer.
This is not how my wedding day was supposed to go.
“Come on, Tesoro.” Dante’s voice is soft as he picks me up like a baby and carries me home like he has no injuries.
“I hope you get what you deserve,” my brother said in response to my well-meaning wedding invitation a few months back.
I guess this was it, what I deserved.
“People like you don’t get to be happy, Danica.”
Sniffing loudly, I close my eyes to focus on Dante’s arms around me, the smell of his musky cologne now mixed with sweat and gunpowder, as he carries me over the threshold as his fiancé, not his wife as he was supposed to.
It was all for nothing.