Chapter 5
Dante
I’d always hated getting fitted for clothes. Getting tailored for my wedding tux was no different.
Russo and sons had fitted four generations of Caruso men. My ancestors had stood on this same platform, arms outstretched like crucifixes, while old Giuseppe or his father or his grandfather circled with pins between their teeth.
Giuseppe moved around me with the patience of a man who had dressed politicians and priests and killers, his gnarled fingers finding imperfections invisible to anyone else. He'd fitted me for my confirmation suit when I was twelve. My first communion. My father's funeral, three days ago. Now this.
The tuxedo was half-finished, pinned in a dozen places, the fabric pulling slightly across my shoulders where the final adjustments hadn't been made. In the three-way mirror, I looked like a man preparing for something ceremonial. Something final.
Santo sprawled in the leather armchair by the window, scrolling through his phone with the kind of aggressive disinterest that meant he was barely containing himself.
His presence filled the small room the way it always did—restless energy coiled tight, looking for an outlet.
He hadn't shaved. The stubble on his jaw was dark against his skin, and the shadows under his eyes told me he hadn't slept much either.
Marco perched on the arm of the sofa, already impeccable in his own fitted suit. He looked like he'd walked off a magazine cover—not a hair out of place, his smile easy and knowing as he watched Giuseppe work. He was too observant for his own good, my youngest brother.
"You look like you're about to face a firing squad," Marco observed. His voice carried that particular lilt of amusement that meant he was enjoying himself at my expense. "Smile, fratello. You're getting married, not executed."
I didn't smile. Couldn't make my face cooperate.
The mirror showed me exactly what Marco saw: rigid shoulders, tight jaw, the muscle in my cheek ticking where I was clenching my teeth.
I looked like a man preparing for war, not a wedding.
The tuxedo was beautiful—Giuseppe's work always was—but it couldn't disguise the tension running through me like a live wire.
Forty-eight hours. In forty-eight hours, I would be married to a stranger. A stranger I’d barely been able to speak to.
Thank you. I appreciate you coming.
That was it. That was all I'd given her. Six words, delivered with all the warmth of a tax audit.
She'd offered condolences—genuine ones, I thought, though it was hard to tell with her careful composure in place—and I'd responded like a man who'd forgotten how human interaction worked.
She probably thought I was cold. Dismissive.
The kind of husband who would ignore her except when I needed something.
The thought made something twist in my chest.
Giuseppe tugged at my sleeve, muttering something in Italian about the break of the cuff.
I forced myself to breathe. Forced my arms to stay extended even though every instinct screamed at me to move, to act, to do something other than stand here like a mannequin while my future unraveled in my mind.
I'd barely slept last night. Kept seeing her face.
"The shoulders are perfect," Giuseppe announced, stepping back to assess his work. "We'll have the final fitting tomorrow morning. The alterations will be complete by Friday evening."
Friday evening. The night before my wedding.
The night before Gemma Moretti became Gemma Caruso.
The thought should have felt like just another transaction. Another piece of family business, no different from the dozens of deals and alliances I'd negotiated since taking over. Strategic. Necessary. Emotionless.
Instead, it felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down into water I couldn't see the bottom of.
What had happened to her? The question had been circling in my mind since the funeral, completely unshakable.
Something had shaped her into that careful, guarded creature.
Something had taught her to hold herself like she was bracing for impact, to smile without letting it reach her eyes, to apologize for existing.
"We need to talk about the Valentis."
Santo's voice cut through my thoughts like a blade. I watched in the mirror as my brother shoved his phone into his pocket and leaned forward, elbows on knees, that familiar dangerous energy coiling in his frame. The restless sprawl was gone. In its place was something focused, predatory.
Here we go.
"I've got confirmation now." He was on his feet, pacing the narrow space between the armchair and the window.
"Enzo met with Papa privately two weeks before he died.
No one else present. No record of what they discussed.
Not a single witness." His jaw worked, that muscle ticking the same way mine did when I was holding back.
"And there's that doctor—Anthony Ricci, the one who lost his license for selling scripts—"
"We’ve already discussed the doctor," I interrupted.
Giuseppe, bless him, had the good sense to step back. He became suddenly very interested in organizing his pins, turning his back to us with the deliberate deafness of a man who had overheard a lifetime of conversations he wasn't supposed to hear.
"And I know about the meeting," I continued. "I'm handling it."
"Handling it how?" Santo stopped pacing. His eyes locked onto mine in the mirror, dark and burning. "By getting fitted for a wedding suit while the man who might have killed our father walks around Chicago like he owns it? Three days, you said."
Marco had gone still on the arm of the sofa. That particular quality of stillness he got when he was calculating how to defuse a bomb before it went off. He didn't speak. Just watched. Waiting to see which way this would break.
"The timeline has changed," I said, keeping my voice level.
The don does not raise his voice. The don does not show uncertainty.
Papa had drilled that into me since I was old enough to understand.
"I'm still investigating. But right now, the most important thing I can do for this family is secure the Moretti alliance. "
Santo made a sound like a wounded animal.
"That means the wedding happens Saturday," I continued.
"Without incident. With every family in Chicago watching us present a united front.
All of them are waiting to see if we're weak.
If I cancel the wedding or postpone it, they'll smell blood in the water.
And Enzo will know that whatever he's planning is working. "
"So he just gets away with it?" Santo's hands clenched into fists at his sides. The veins in his forearms stood out, ropes of tension under skin. "He kills Papa and we throw a party?"
"No one is getting away with anything."
I stepped down from the platform. The unfinished tuxedo pulled across my shoulders as I moved, but I ignored it. Some conversations needed to happen face to face, not through mirrors.
I stood in front of my brother. Eye to eye.
"I will not start a war based on suspicion," I said. My voice was quiet. Steady. The voice of a don, not a grieving son. "I will not give Enzo the satisfaction of watching us tear ourselves apart three days after Papa's funeral. We investigate. We gather proof. And when the time comes—"
I held his gaze. Let him see the steel underneath my calm.
"—we will make him pay for every single thing he's done. Not just Papa. Everything." I thought of Gemma's white face, her trembling hands. "Whatever debts he owes this family, he will pay them in full. But that time is not now."
The silence stretched between us. Santo's jaw worked, fury and grief warring across his face in waves. His fists stayed clenched. His body stayed coiled. For a long moment, I thought he might swing at me anyway—might let the rage win over the discipline.
Then, slowly, he exhaled.
The tension bled out of his shoulders. Not gone, just banked. A fire reduced to embers but still burning.
"Fine." The word came out rough, scraped over whatever he was swallowing down. "We do it your way."
He stepped closer. His hand came up and gripped my shoulder—hard enough to bruise, hard enough that I'd feel it tomorrow. A gesture that was part threat, part promise, part something I didn't have a name for.
"But after Saturday," he said, his voice low, "we talk. Really talk."
"After Saturday," I agreed. "We'll go through everything together. All three of us."
Marco shifted on the sofa arm but didn't speak. His silence was agreement. His stillness was solidarity.
Santo released my shoulder. Stepped back. The bomb had been defused—for now.
The tension broke, like ice cracking in spring.
Marco produced a flask from his inside pocket—silver, worn at the edges, the Caruso crest engraved on one side.
I recognized it immediately. Our father's flask.
The one he'd carried since before I was born, the one that had sat in his desk drawer for the past decade as his drinking slowed and his discipline sharpened.
Marco must have taken it after the funeral. Claimed it before anyone else could.
Something tightened in my chest at the sight of it.
"To Papa," Marco said quietly, unscrewing the cap. The scent of good whiskey rose into the air. "And to Dante, who's about to learn that marriage is just another form of organized crime."
Even Santo snorted at that. A rough sound, more surprise than humor, but it was something. It was a crack in the wall.
Marco took a sip and passed the flask to Santo, who drank deeply and passed it to me. The whiskey burned going down, smooth and expensive and carrying the ghost of a man who would never drink it again.
I handed it back to Marco without a word.
Giuseppe returned to his pins, sensing that the storm had passed. He resumed his work with the silent efficiency of a man who had seen enough Caruso family dramas to know when it was safe to re-engage. The fitting continued with something approaching normalcy.