Chapter 14
Dante
It’s late by the time we arrive at the estate. But we have him.
The pathetic bastard.
At last.
Leonardo and Mario sit in silence on either side of me, their expressions hard. A second vehicle follows closely behind, bearing Harlow’s family, summoned the moment I made the call, the moment I revealed where the traitor had been hiding.
And we caught him.
I always knew we would. He was never going to outrun us forever.
My men had eyes on every conceivable exit, day and night, without rest. Not only mine, but Moretti’s and Ricci’s as well. United, our reach was absolute. The fucker never stood a chance.
But there’s no gratification in the victory. No rush of triumph. Only a pressure in my chest that refuses to ease, a fury so tightly coiled it hums beneath my skin.
Because I’m late.
Late to her.
To my wife.
I promised I’d return before she fell asleep. I gave her my word. And I failed her.
The gates open at a crawl. My jaw is clenched, my entire frame drawn taut beneath the weight of my own failure.
Harlow still suffers night terrors. Still wakes up screaming, soaked in sweat, convinced she’s back in that basement. If I’m not there to anchor her, if I’m not there to pull her back and hold her steady in my arms, she’s left to face it alone.
The thought fucking guts me.
And then, as though the night hadn’t taken enough from me, the Albanians struck, an ambush on one of our outposts. They’ve been silent for weeks. I knew better than to trust the quiet. Their retaliation was inevitable. They hit with precision, quick, strategic. A calculated show of force. My men held the line, but the assault was brutal. I had no choice but to respond, personally.
I handled it for now, but it’s only the beginning. They want their revenge, Luan wants his dead brother’s name avenged, and more than that, he wants the boy back. He’s still under my roof, guarded and well fed. Untouched. But they want him returned as if I own them that, as if they didn’t already forfeit any right of negotiation when they land hands on what’s mine.
What delayed me further, however, was the matter of my Capos.
Adriano Esposito, ever the opportunist, demanded a meeting. Claimed the time had come for a face to face. It seems my absence these past weeks has stirred unrest among the men beneath me.
In my stead, I’ve sent Mario or Leonardo to handle routine affairs, and until now, that sufficed. But not tonight. Esposito pressed the issue. He wanted to look me in the eye, needed to be reminded of precisely where the power in this organization resides.
I obliged him.
Not out of courtesy. Out of necessity.
It wasn’t a conversation. It was a correction.
By the time I walked out of that room, it was already well past the hour I should have been home. The detour, the attack, the cleanup, the meeting, cost me the only thing that matters.
Her.
My fury simmers beneath my skin. Not just at the Albanians, not just at Esposito, but at the very world that dared to pull me away from her again.
But buried beneath the anger, beneath the violence pressing behind my teeth, there’s something worse.
Fear.
The kind I don’t name. Don’t say aloud. Don’t even allow myself to fully acknowledge.
Fear for her.
For the way she flinches in her sleep. For the days when she drifts so far inside herself I can’t find her.
I’ve stationed guards outside our bedroom, armed, disciplined men, handpicked and given one directive, if she so much as whimpers in fear, they are to intervene immediately or summon the doctor without delay. No alarm was raised.
So perhaps—just perhaps, she’s asleep.
Peacefully. Dreamlessly.
Maybe, for once, the ghosts have granted her a reprieve.
And yet, even as the thought flickers across my mind, dread coils tight within me. A visceral warning.
Why the hell do I feel this relentless unease?
But I’ve always trusted my instincts, and they’ve never been wrong.
As the car pulls up in front of the estate, I don’t wait. I’m out before the engine settles, just as one of my men emerges from another vehicle. He meets my gaze and gives a single nod, wordless, but understood.
Behind him, Piero is being dragged from the back seat.
Bloodied. Silent. Alive, for now.
Two men haul him toward the entrance to the basement, his boots scraping uselessly against the gravel. That’s where he’ll wait. Where I’ll deal with him, when I’m ready.
I offer the slightest incline of my head, then turn and head straight for the front doors, striding into the house with the others falling in behind me.
Inside, Mario veers off toward the kitchen, giving me a quiet glance before disappearing down the hall. Leonardo ascends the staircase, likely chasing a moment’s rest before tomorrow comes for us all.
But I don’t stop. My steps are silent, swift, purposeful.
There’s only one place I need to be right now.
I turn to Giovanni, his sons, and Michael.
“The guest rooms are ready. You know where to find them.”
They give a slight tilt in response, wisely holding their tongues. They see that barely contained desperation in me. The all-consuming need to see Harlow.
I don’t waste another breath.
My entire being aches for her. My hands tremble with the urge to touch her. My lungs burn to breathe in her scent.
I take the stairs two at a time, each step feeding the panic clawing up my chest. At the door, the guards straighten immediately. One offers a crisp nod before stepping aside.
I open the door slowly. Silently. My movements are careful, so I don’t wake or frighten her if sleep has finally taken mercy.
The room is cloaked in shadow. But the bed is empty. And my fucking heart seizes in my chest.
I stare at the dishevelled sheets as if they’ve betrayed me.
She’s gone.
And that’s when the panic morphs into a tangible force, serrated and relentless. The fury, the noise, the chaos in my skull, it all crashes in at once.
I try to stay composed. To remain in control.
The bathroom light glows faintly beneath the closed door.
Closed.
I never fucking close it.
So she must be inside.
Maybe she woke from another nightmare, disoriented, shaken, and ran a bath. Maybe she needed space. Solitude.
There’s no other goddamn explanation. The guards were posted right outside, alert. She didn’t leave. She couldn’t have. Not without them seeing. Not without me being informed.
My gaze snaps to the window. To the balcony.
And the heart that refused to beat a moment ago now claws against my ribcage like it’s trying to break free.
I reach for reason the way a drowning man reaches for air, wildly and uselessly. But the sickness coiling in my gut, black, corrosive, tells me exactly what I don’t want to believe.
My hand shakes, fucking trembles, as I reach for the doorknob. I turn it slowly, cautiously, every nerve braced for impact.
The light stabs into my eyes, too bright, too clean for what waits inside. But it’s not the light that eviscerates me...
It’s the crimson.
A violent, glistening red that pools across the tile, thick and unnatural. The moment I see it, I know.
I fucking know.
It clings to the floor like it belongs there, like it’s claimed the space. And before my eyes even find her, my soul does. Something inside me breaks, splinters under the weight of what I haven’t yet fully seen but already understand.
As I step inside, the scent assaults me, iron rich, unmistakable, heavy. Blood hangs in the air, coating the back of my throat with a bitterness that’s unforgiving.
And that’s when I see her, my wife, collapsed on the cold, brutal tile, her body surrounded by a dark halo of red.
There’s a gash across her forehead, deep and angry, and a longer one carved into her left wrist, too precise to be anything but intentional. Blood glistens along the edges, trailing toward the floor.
She’s unconscious.
A glass lies near her hand, shattered, it must’ve slipped from her grasp. I glance around, confused, trying to understand where she got it. My eyes land on the mirror, splintered, webbed with cracks, its jagged edges gleaming.
Her right fist is bloodied, torn open across the knuckles, as if she broke it herself, whether with her bare hand or by throwing something, I can’t tell. But that’s where the glass came from. That’s what she used.
“FUCK!”
The roar tears from my throat, raw and violent, as a part of me breaks, utterly and irreversibly. I collapse beside her, knees hitting the tile with a thud I barely register. My hands shake as I reach for her wrist, the uninjured one, my fingers clumsy, frantic, searching. I press two against her skin, waiting.
Waiting.
Fucking waiting.
And then, there it is. Faint. So fragile I could’ve missed it.
Her pulse.
Barely there, but enough. Enough to hold on to.
Relief floods me with such force it feels as though I’ve been held underwater, lungs burning, and only now am I allowed to breathe.
She feels too small in my arms, like one wrong move might break her in half. I pull her into my lap, cradle her head with trembling hands, and brush the strands of hair from her face.
Her beautiful fucking face. Now drained of colour. Now so heartbreakingly still.
“No, leonessa. Don’t you fucking dare. You don’t get to leave me. I won’t allow it.”
I yank my phone from my pocket and press the call button, dialling the doctor’s number with blood slick fingers. My voice spills out before I can even think, frantic, laced with fury and dread. I don’t know what I’m saying. I can’t hear myself over the roaring in my ears. It’s just noise, desperation in the shape of words, but it doesn’t matter. He’ll understand. He has to. He needs to get here. Now.
Then silence swallows the room. And all I can do is stare.
Paralyzed.
My eyes drift to her hand, slick with blood. To the floor, stained in it. To the shards of broken glass gleaming around her. To the mirror she shattered just to do this. To the gash on her forehead, deep, angry, probably needing stitches too.
I feel everything. Too much. All at once.
Terror.
Fury.
Grief.
And a helplessness so brutal it makes me want to tear my own fucking skin open.
She tried to leave me. She fucking tried to leave me.
But I won’t allow it. She’s stuck with me. For life.
She’s mine. Always will be.
She will live again. I’ll make damn sure of it. I’ll bring her back, to love life again, to love herself again. And if she can’t, I’ll do it for the both of us.
Every. Fucking. Day.
I don’t know what this feeling is, this thing in my chest, this twisting in my gut.
I don’t know when it started.
Somewhere, somehow, it crept in. And now it’s everything.
I can’t fucking breathe when she’s not near.
The thought of her in pain makes me want to put a bullet in my own heart. And the idea of living in a world she isn’t in?
I’d rather fucking die.
If that’s what people call love, then yes, I fucking love her.
Desperately.
Madly.
To the point of no return.
Even though this word feels too small. Too fucking feeble for what this is. What I feel for her doesn’t fit inside something that breakable.
If she stops breathing, I fucking stop.
There is no me without her.
I’ll love her enough for the both of us.
That’s not a promise. That’s a vow.
Even when she can’t. Especially when she can’t.
Fuck.
She was suffering, and I didn’t see it.
And I wasn’t here.
I left her alone.
I fucking knew the nights were hard. I knew her demons came out when everything went quiet. But I didn’t know it was this bad. I didn’t know it was killing her.
She needs help. Real help. Professional help.
And I thought I could fix it. Like I could fight off whatever was inside her the same way I fight everything else, with threats and blood and control.
But I can’t.
I don’t know what happened in that basement, what she lived through. But I see it now. It’s worse than I thought. Worse than I ever fucking anticipated.
Why didn’t I see it?
Why didn’t I pay more attention?
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
And still, I chose war over her.
I chose revenge over the one person who fucking matters. Because if I had been there, like I promised, if I had stayed with her…
None of this would’ve happened. She wouldn’t have ended up like this.
Half dead.
Taking me with her.
I should’ve gotten her help. Forced her into therapy. Sat beside her until she told me everything. Every scream. Every bruise. Every goddamn memory.
But I didn’t.
And now I see it.
Now I fucking see my failure.
Because I failed her.
Again.
The bathroom door slams open and Leonardo stumbles in, the doctor right behind him. He looks down at Harlow in my lap, and recoils like the scene in front of him is too fucked up to be real.
It is.
I don’t spare him another glance. My eyes stay on Harlow, too afraid to look away for even a second.
At the blood.
At the hand that once held mine like it was the only thing anchoring her to this world.
Now it just lies there. Limp. Drained.
My chest burns. I blink, and my vision blurs.
What the fuck is this?
Am I crying?
I’ve never fucking cried in my entire life.
Maybe when I was a baby, and even that’s questionable, with a father like mine. Not when he beat the softness out of me.
Not even when my brother died.
But I feel it now.
This woman, my woman, is bleeding out on our bathroom floor because I wasn’t fucking here.
And when a single tear falls, it lands on her cheek.
I don’t give a damn.
She’s not leaving me.
She doesn’t get to.
She’s not fucking allowed.
She’s staying.
She will fight.
She will live again.
I’ll chain her to me if I have to.
I’ll set everything ablaze, until there’s nothing left but her and me.
I’ll get on my knees and beg. Or I’ll kill every last one of her ghosts with my bare hands.
But she stays.
She lives.
And I’ll make her whole again.
No matter the cost.
This is my vow.
My fucking war.
And I will win.