Chapter 4
Dante
4 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 12 seconds.
The thoughts consume me.
I’m suffocating, choking on fury, desperation, and a hatred so absolute it sears itself into the marrow of my bones.
I can’t function.
More truthfully, I don’t want to.
There is only one imperative.
Find my wife.
And annihilate the wretch who dared to touch what is mine.
We’ve razed everything in our path, city by city, ruin by ruin, leaving behind a mosaic of corpses and whispered terror.
Diplomacy is obsolete. I buried it alongside mercy.
Sleep doesn’t elude me. I reject it. The moment I close my eyes, I see her.
Only when Leonardo or Mario quietly drug my drink do I surrender to the void, an uninvited silence from which I wake thrashing, vengeance coursing through every vein.
I refuse to imagine what she’s enduring. To see her afraid… broken… would shatter something ancient inside me.
Something that can never be restored.
Let them call me deranged. Let them whisper that I’ve forfeited my soul.
Because I fucking have.
I was never a good man.
But now? I am something far worse.
The last time I saw her, I failed her. Completely.
I let fear dictate my actions—let pride and possessiveness distort my judgment. I saw her standing too close to that Albanian boy, and the world went red. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t stop to think. I simply reacted. The only thought in my mind was to pull her out of that room and away from him.
Away from what I believed was danger.
My wife. My leonessa. She’s wild. Unyielding. She bows to no one. She challenges, she disobeys, and I, blinded by my own ego, punished her for it.
I said things I can never take back.
Regret was foreign to me. Until now.
Now, it coils around my throat, sinking in, relentless suffocating what’s left of whatever soul I still have.
I shake the memory off, but it clings to me. It festers beneath the surface, burrowing deep into my bones.
I’m in my office.
Again.
Watching the security footage on an endless loop.
Again.
Like a masochist compulsively prodding at an open wound. I’ve memorized every frame, every flicker of movement, every shift in shadow, but still, I search.
Desperately.
As if a detail might have escaped me. A subtle gesture. An anomaly. A clue overlooked amidst the chaos.
I sit here, surrounded by bespoke furniture and curated art, replaying the precise moment everything was taken from me.
Looking for a breadcrumb that refuses to exist.
We’ve just returned from yet another dead end lead, another meticulously constructed illusion meant to drain us of time, of hope, of whatever resolve remains.
Mattia, my son, is unravelling. He hides behind a silence sculpted by fear, and it’s breaking me, slowly, relentlessly. He had only just begun to rediscover his light when Harlow came into our lives, and now that light has been extinguished once more.
Giovanni, my wife’s father, is here in Naples. His sons stand with him, ruthless in their search. They spent their whole lives unaware of Harlow’s existence, but blood speaks its own language. They’ve come to know her, slowly.
She stays guarded, hesitant to let her heart splinter again, understandable, after what her mother put her through. But even in that restraint, I know she cares for them. And they care for her, in the only way men like us know, fiercely, imperfectly, and with a loyalty that doesn’t waver.
The Morettis are painting the streets crimson in her name. Michael is here, aligned with us, while her grandfather and Fabio, her other cousin, scour Chicago for answers. That’s where it all began, where the sickness of that man’s obsession first took root. Or so we think.
And yet, no matter what we do, it’s not enough.
Because she’s still gone.
I hit play again. My stomach twists—no, writhes—like it wants to tear itself apart. Dread, fury, disgust, they’re all the same now. I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
There, on the screen, that wretched sick fuck appears. I watch as he presses a cloth to her face, and she, my leonessa fights.
Of course she does.
But her limbs falter. Her body gives way.
My vision narrows, tunnelling into black.
And then I’m no longer sitting.
I shoot up from the chair, sweeping the contents of my desk onto the floor in a single, unhinged motion. Crystal shatters. The mahogany splits. The wreckage at my feet is nothing if not a mirror of what I’ve become.
My fist drives into the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Blood blooms across ivory plaster in brutal, unrepentant smears. I don’t feel it.
Pain is a language I never spoke.
The door bursts open and Mario, my second in command, strides in, his face drawn and colourless, the weight of sleepless nights clinging to him. He looks like death.
We all do.
“We have a lead,”
Mario says, his voice low and frayed, worn down by silence and too many cigarettes.
My head snaps toward him. “Who?”
He doesn’t answer at once. His jaw tightens, something coiling beneath the surface.
“An IT asset,”
he says eventually.
“Ghost level clearance. The kind that doesn’t exist on paper. He’s been scrubbing digital trails, corrupting surveillance feeds, rerouting signal paths, feeding us calculated misdirections from the inside.”
He pauses. A beat too long. His jaw tight, anger seeps from every pore.
“He was working for… him. Well not exactly working. They grew up together. Practically raised side by side.”
The word lands bitter.
“He’s good,”
Mario continues.
“Too good. Better than anyone we’ve encountered. If he managed to keep us chasing shadows this long, if he slipped past our systems, past our people, then we underestimated him.”
He doesn’t finish the thought. He doesn’t need to.
My lungs expand, barely.
Air, weighted and bitter.
A lead.
Finally.
A thread of hope, fragile, unravelling, but it’s something.
“Where is he?”
I ask, my voice urgent and cold.
“In the basement. With Leonardo,”
Mario replies, offering a hollow chuckle that never reaches his eyes.
“He’s being… properly introduced.”
I nod once.
“Then let’s not squander another moment.”
We make our way to the basement, shadows thickening with every step. The scent hits first, copper and sweat. Fear, sharp and metallic, clings to the walls. Then the sound follows, dull and rhythmic. Flesh meeting bone. Over and over.
Leonardo is a storm. He towers over the figure strapped to the chair, fists slick with blood. The man’s face is barely recognizable, a swollen mass of tissue and pain. One eye sealed shut, the other blinking in jagged, panicked rhythms. His shirt clings to him, soaked through in crimson.
But Leonardo doesn’t stop.
He’s past rage now, somewhere far darker. His eyes are empty.
Unhinged.
Deranged.
He’s going to kill him, and enjoy it.
“Enough.” I snap.
Leonardo stills. He turns slowly, his posture coiled, ready to strike. Then he sees it’s me, and the tension in his shoulders eases, slightly. His fists lower, but his rage remains, humming just beneath his skin.
“I need him alive,”
I say, voice glacial. “For now.”
Leonardo’s jaw tics.
“I’m aware,”
he murmurs darkly.
“But let’s not drag it out. He’s already exhausted every breath the world ever mistakenly granted him.”
No hesitation. Just venom.
Leonardo, Mario, and everyone, from my men to the household staff, have changed since Harlow was taken. She’s my wife, yes, but more than that, she’s their queen. Harlow commands attention, earns respect, and never once asked for it. She’s strong, grounded, impossible to ignore, and they saw that. They liked her. Some came to see her as family. So now, they want justice. They want retribution for what was done. Because they want her back, not just for me, but for all of us. She belongs here, where she was always meant to be, at my side, ruling this empire.
We close in, circling the man like predators scenting weakness. His breathing is ragged, shallow. But fear keeps him conscious. Keeps him useful.
Good.
I remain perfectly still, positioned directly before him. To my left, Leonardo paces with the narrowly suppressed fury of a man on the verge of rupture, his anger thrumming just beneath the surface, coiled and volatile. Mario stands against the far wall, arms folded with ease, his posture betraying nothing. Outwardly, he appears composed, almost dispassionate. But I know better. I’ve always known. It’s the gleam in his eyes that fractures the illusion. He is not calm. He is calculating. And he is craving blood. He wants to end it—end him.
My voice is low. Impeccably controlled.
“We’ll begin with something simple.”
I already know the answers, but I want to hear him say them.
“Who are you, and who were you working for?”
He spits blood onto the floor, a pathetic display of defiance.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
Wrong move.
Leonardo doesn’t wait. His fist cuts through the air and slams into the man’s face. The sound is sharp and wet. The man’s head snaps sideways as crimson sprays across the concrete like a stain that won’t ever come out.
“Wrong fucking answer,”
Leonardo snarls.
“We can do this all night. And frankly? I’d fucking relish every second.”
I step closer, stare down at the bastard who helped make my wife vanish.
“Let’s skip the warm up. We know who you are. We know who you worked for. You rerouted the cameras. You scrubbed the plates. You covered his tracks like a loyal little lapdog.”
Mario crouches, his tone cold.
“He disappeared without a trace. But you? You stayed behind. Knowing we’d come. So tell me… what kind of delusion made you think your life was worth gambling for his?”
The man’s eyes flick between us. He swallows hard.
Leonardo lets out a broken laugh, something wild and feral.
“This piece of shit really thought he was untouchable. Thought we wouldn’t find him. Big. Misjudgement.”
Still, the man stays silent. Just breathing. Just bleeding.
I don’t have time for this.
I grab the back of the chair and slam it backwards. He crashes to the floor with a choked wheeze, air ripped from his lungs.
I crouch beside him.
“You’re going to die, that’s not up for debate. The only thing left to decide is whether it’s a slow death… or a painfully prolonged one. So stop wasting my fucking time.”
He gasps, barely holding his breath.
“I didn’t... I didn’t have a choice.”
Leonardo grabs him by the hair and jerks him upright, fury in every inch of motion.
“There’s always a fucking choice.”
“I didn’t know he was going to take her!”
the man chokes.
“I thought it was surveillance, just intel. That’s it. By the time I saw what he’d done, it was too late to back out.”
Mario steps in again, his blade whispering against fabric as it presses into the man’s thigh. Just enough to let him feel what’s coming.
“Why keep helping him scrub the evidence, hide her, erase her from the world? Why protect him?”
The blade presses deeper. A red bloom begins to soak through.
The man trembles. His voice breaks.
“He’s family.”
I smirk. There’s no warmth in it. “Loyalty,”
I murmur.
“You really are the poster boy for dying for your blood, huh?”
I stand slowly.
“Loyalty doesn’t excuse erasing my wife,”
I hiss.
“It doesn’t make you less of a coward.”
His voice cracks.
“Look, he just said he needed my help. He didn’t say why. I trusted him! And then I saw the surveillance, what he did, he took a woman against her will. It was too late to back out. I tried. But he’s insane. He said he’d kill my mom if I didn’t help.”
My anger spikes, a white hot surge behind my eyes. But on the outside? I stay ice cold.
“So he’s unhinged,”
I echo coldly.
“And yet you aided him. You rerouted signals, scrubbed surveillance, buried every trace, obstructed every path that could’ve led me to my wife. Left her in the hands of a madman for weeks. And now you want to paint yourself as a victim?”
“I knew I was already fucked!”
he yells.
“So I did what I had to do!”
I slam my fist into his face.
Once.
Again.
A third time.
The sound echoes through the room.
Four weeks.
That fucking parasite has had her for four weeks.
God knows what he’s done to her. What he’s still doing.
I stop, chest heaving, hands trembling with the effort not to snap. I need the son of a bitch breathing.
For now.
I crouch low again, face inches from his bloodied one.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t—”
Mario’s blade slices across his cheek, a thin, burning line.
“Try again,”
I whisper.
“I don’t fucking know!”
he screams.
“He cut contact after I cleaned his trail. Said I wasn’t useful anymore. I think he stopped trusting me. He was driving everywhere, different routes, burner phones, changing vehicles, everything. I don’t know where he took her. I swear!”
Leonardo moves without a word, grabs a wrench from the table and brings it down on the man’s hand.
The crunch is final. The scream is not.
It rips out of him, raw and animalistic.
I lean in close, my voice a soft, deadly whisper.
“You’re going to give me something, an address, a name, the slightest trace. Because if you don’t, the next thing I break will be your jaw. Then your knees. Then every rib you have. I won’t stop until agony is the only language your body remembers.”
The man sobs now, blood mixing with snot and spit.
“There’s an apartment,”
he gasps.
“It’s his. He lived there, probably planned everything inside those walls.”
I rise to my full height, jaw clenched tight. “Where?”
He rattles off the address through mangled breath.
I nod.
“We verify first. If he lied—”
“He’ll beg for death,”
Leonardo spits.
“And I won’t give it.”
We don’t speak again.
I glance at the guard near the door.
“Keep him breathing.”
Just breathing.
We leave the basement. The air behind us drips with tension. With rage. With promise.
And as we pull away, my mind sharpens into a singular thought.
My wife.
I am coming, my love.
I will find her. No matter the cost.
If I have to burn the world down to do it, so be it.
They already call me a monster.
They’ve got no idea what I’m willing to become.