Chapter 3
Dante
I sat in my office at The Apex—my flagship casino— watching the security feeds Vince had pirated from their system. Multiple angles. The hallway outside her suite. The elevator banks. The parking garage below.
Julietta moved through her room like a caged predator—pacing, examining the windows, testing the door locks. She didn't try to leave. Didn't call out for help. Smart enough to understand the gravity of her situation. Intelligent enough to know that screaming would only confirm her imprisonment.
My cock tightened watching her.
Unacceptable.
I pulled up the news feeds instead. The Altieri family's PR machine was already spinning. Miguel's assassination attributed to rival cartels. Random violence. Tragic accident. The narrative firmed up like concrete—by morning, the masses would believe whatever story Lorenzo fed them.
But they wouldn't believe he'd let his daughter's fiancé die unprotected if he hadn't planned it.
I cross-referenced my intelligence with the fragments I'd collected over months of obsessive research. Lorenzo's financial records. His communications intercepts. The encrypted messages between him and someone code-named "Patriarch."
The pieces crystallized into a horrifying picture.
Miguel's death had been my doing—a bullet through his skull to shatter the Altieri-Suarez alliance. I'd told myself it was strategic. That killing him would destabilize Lorenzo's empire and create opportunities for expansion.
But the intelligence in front of me revealed something I hadn't fully anticipated.
Lorenzo wasn't grieving his daughter's lost engagement. His PR machine moved too smoothly. His financial transfers showed no disruption. No panic. No restructuring.
He'd expected this. Maybe not the exact execution, but he'd anticipated the alliance failing.
Which meant Julietta had never been essential to his plans. She'd been... what? A pawn? Bait? A tool he was willing to sacrifice?
The thought made my blood run cold.
I'd taken her to disrupt his empire. To claim what he valued. But if he didn't value her—if she was expendable to him—then what had I actually accomplished?
Julietta wasn't the bride cementing an alliance.
She was the sacrificial lamb meant to start a war.
And I'd taken her forty-eight hours before Lorenzo could execute his plan.
My hands curled into fists, knuckles cracking against the mahogany desk. The thought of Lorenzo using her, discarding her, treating her like a chess piece on a board designed by men who saw her as nothing more than a womb and a bargaining chip—
No.
Not anymore.
"Move her tomorrow," I told Vince over the encrypted line. "Light escort. They'll think she's being relocated to the family compound. Route her through Seventh and Aldrich."
"The intersection?" Vince's voice carried a note of approval. "Won't be expecting it that soon."
"They won't be expecting it at all. They think she's safe."
I ended the call, returning my attention to the security feed. Julietta had stopped pacing. She stood at the window, her reflection ghostly in the glass. Even pixelated through the camera feed, I could see the strength in her posture. The defiance in the set of her shoulders.
Most people would break after what she'd endured. Most people would curl up in bed and weep.
Not her.
My chest expanded with something that felt dangerously like admiration.
I pulled up her file again. Julietta Altieri, age twenty-three.
Adopted by the Bennetts at six months old.
Raised in suburban Connecticut. Graduated magna cum laude from Yale with a degree in economics.
Fluent in five languages. Hobbies included reading, classical music, and apparently staring out windows at night with the kind of hunger that suggested she was starving for something money couldn't buy.
Seven years of her life promised to a cartel prince. Seven years of obedience and submission. Seven years of slowly dying inside while she played the role her father wrote for her.
I'd watched her at seventeen different events over the past six months. Watched her dance with men twice her age, watched her laugh at jokes that clearly bored her. Watched her become smaller and smaller, folding herself into whatever shape the room required.
Lorenzo kept her separate from the business—she attended legitimate galas, charity functions, society events where his criminal empire could hide behind philanthropy. She was his princess, not his soldier. Clean. Untainted. A perfect gift-wrapped asset for the Suarez family.
She had no idea who I was. Probably couldn't pick me out of a lineup of Chicago's most wanted. Lorenzo made sure his daughter never learned the names of his enemies.
Smart strategy. Keep the merchandise pristine.
But it also meant she'd been watching me watch her for six months without ever knowing the danger she was in.
Then I'd pulled the trigger, and for just a moment—
She'd been alive.
At 10:47 a.m. the next day, Julietta's black Mercedes S-Class pulled through the intersection of Seventh and Aldrich.
Two cars of security flanked her—minimum protection, exactly as I'd anticipated. Lorenzo didn't want to make a show of moving her, to draw attention from rival families.
Didn't want anyone to know she was vulnerable.
My three SUVs converged with surgical precision. Masked men in tactical gear moved like liquid shadow, doors ripping open, hands reaching—
Julietta fought.
God, did she fight.
She came out of that car like a wildcat, kicking and clawing, her scream cutting through the morning air like a blade. The hood dropped over her head, and she went feral—thrashing, biting, nearly catching Vince on the jaw before they got her restrained.
I watched from the third vehicle, my hands gripping the armrest so hard the leather creased.
"Get her in the vehicle," I commanded.
They hauled her into my SUV, her body a coil of fury and terror, still screaming under the hood. I let her scream. Let her rage. It confirmed what I already knew—she had fire inside her, burning bright and hot beneath that carefully constructed exterior.
The door slammed. My driver accelerated. We merged into traffic, and Julietta Altieri disappeared from the city in the span of a heartbeat.
She thrashed against the men restraining her, her voice raw. "Let me go. Let me go. My father will—"
"Your father," I said, my voice cutting through her panic like a knife, "won't find you."
She went still. In the darkness under that hood, I could feel her attention snap toward me.
"Who are you? What do you—"
I reached out and removed the hood.
Julietta's eyes were wild, her auburn hair tangled, her dress torn at the shoulder. She looked feral and exquisite and absolutely fucking reckless as she lunged toward me, her nails extended like claws.
I caught her wrist, my grip firm but not cruel. "Easy."
"Don't touch me." She twisted hard, trying to wrench free. "I swear to God, if you hurt me—"
"You're safe now," I murmured.
"Safe?" She laughed, a broken sound edged with hysteria. "I've been kidnapped, I'm in a moving vehicle, I don't know who you are and you expect me to believe I'm safe?"
She kicked at the man on her other side unexpectedly, caught him in the ribs. He grunted but didn't retaliate. Smart. If he touched her, she'd fight harder.
I admired that about her. Most people would surrender to fear. Julietta treated fear like an enemy to be combated.
"Restrain her," I commanded.
She fought harder as they secured her wrists with soft cuffs—enough to prevent escape, not enough to cut off circulation. Smart precautions. I hadn't survived this long by being careless with valuable assets.
Except she wasn't an asset. Not really. Assets were interchangeable, replaceable.
She was a collection of contradictions I couldn't stop cataloging. Soft features and hard eyes. Polished exterior and feral interior. A caged bird that had finally been released, and instead of flying, she'd chosen to fight.
I was fucked.
The Apex rose forty-two stories above the city, its black glass exterior reflecting the night sky like a dark mirror.
My compound. My fortress. The lower fifteen floors housed the casino—my most profitable legitimate business and the perfect front for everything else.
The middle levels contained operations: security command, intelligence gathering, the armory, conference rooms where I conducted business that would never see daylight.
And the top three floors? Those were mine. My penthouse. Private. Impenetrable. The only space in this entire city where I could breathe without calculating threats.
The master suite I'd prepared for her occupied the entire east wing of the residential level—bathroom with heated marble floors, closet filled with clothes in her size, a bed large enough to sleep six. Luxury wrapped around her like a gilded cage.
She tested it immediately, even with restraints still on. Pounded on the walls. Twisted the door handles. Found them locked from the outside and laughed, that same broken sound from the vehicle, now edged with something darker.
"Your money can't buy you out of this," I said from the doorway.
She spun, her eyes snapping to mine. Even terrified, even restrained, she faced me like an opponent across a chessboard.
"My father will kill you."
"Your father is a problem I'm equipped to handle."
I watched her process this—the implication that I knew something she didn't, that I'd orchestrated this with knowledge she lacked. Confusion flickered across her face before being replaced with something sharper.
"Miguel," she whispered. "You killed Miguel."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Because I saw you looking for him in a crowd and realized you were looking for salvation in the wrong direction. Because I watched you suffocate under the weight of obligation. Because something in your eyes that night at the gala recognized something in mine, and I couldn't walk away.
"Business," I answered instead.