Chapter 8
Julietta
Sleep abandoned me somewhere around three in the morning. Again. It had become a pattern—lying awake in this gilded cage, staring at shadows while the city breathed beyond my windows.
I'd been drifting in that suspended state between consciousness and dreams when voices penetrated the walls. Male voices. Low. Urgent. The kind that made my skin prickle with the instinct that something was being decided about me.
I lay still for a moment, listening to the hum of the penthouse's ventilation system, the distant sound of the city breathing below us. Then I rose, barefoot and silent, moving toward the door.
The lock was solid. Unforgiving. But the gap between the door frame and the hallway was thin enough. Thin enough to press my ear against the cold metal and listen.
"—accelerated his timeline. He watched Miguel die. Watched his daughter get taken.."
That was a voice I didn't recognize. Older. Clinical.
"Two million for intel on her location. Five million if she's returned alive and unharmed. He wants her back."
The words hit like a physical thing. A weight in my stomach.
"The entire underworld is hunting her."
I pressed my ear harder against the gap, my breath shallow.
"—the Elena Marchetti file," the older voice was saying. "You've been sitting on this since before the extraction. Two months, Dante. She deserves to know her father murdered her mother."
My breath stopped. Elena Marchetti. My mother. Lorenzo had always been tight-lipped about what happened to her, claiming only that she didn't want me or the life he'd created for her.
"I'm aware." Dante's voice was cold, clipped.
"Then why haven't you told her?" the other man pressed.
"Because telling her about Elena is one thing. But there's something else." A pause. Tension in Dante's voice I'd never heard. "What else did you find?"
"You're not going to like it." The other man—Marcos, I thought—sounded grim. "The intel from Sinaloa came through. Lorenzo's communications with the Suarez family weren't just about the wedding."
"Spit it out, Marcos."
"He was planning to kill her. Two weeks after the wedding. Stage it as an accident, blame the Suarez cartel. Start a war while consolidating the distribution routes the marriage was supposed to secure—without the liability of having his daughter embedded in enemy territory."
Silence. Long and terrible.
"You're certain." Dante's voice was flat. Deadly.
"Encrypted messages. Financial transfers for the hit. Timeline mapped out. He had it planned down to the funeral arrangements." Marcos paused. "You saved her life when you took her, Dante. Whether you knew it or not."
Another silence. Then Dante's voice, barely audible: "She can never know I didn't realize. That I took her for myself, not for her safety. That I got lucky."
"You think she'd care about your motives?"
"I think," Dante said slowly, "that she deserves to believe someone saw her as worth saving. Not as... this." His voice turned bitter. "An obsession that accidentally became a rescue."
Silence stretched.
"And the other intel? About Sinaloa?"
"Confirmed," Dante said flatly. "Two weeks after the wedding. Lorenzo planned to stage her death, blame it on the Suarez family. Start a war while he consolidated power."
The room tilted.
My father. My father had planned—
"The entire underworld is hunting her."
I staggered backward, my hand finding the wall to steady myself.
My breath came in short, sharp pulls. The penthouse suddenly felt too small, the air too thin.
I could taste copper in my mouth. Could feel the phantom weight of my father's hand on my head when I was a child, his voice explaining logistics of business as if I were a ledger to be balanced.
You belong to the family now, Julietta. Your purpose will be made clear.
My purpose.
I pressed my palms against my eyes and tried to stop the spinning.
Tried to separate the threads of this nightmare.
My father wanted me dead. Not metaphorically.
Not in the distant future. He'd had a date circled.
A location chosen. He'd been counting down the days until he could justify my death to the world.
And Dante—
Dante had taken me. Locked me in this pristine cage. Watched me through cameras like I was an animal in a zoo.
But Dante had also stopped it.
I walked to the window, my reflection ghostly in the glass.
The city sprawled below me, indifferent to the fact that I was supposed to be dead in fourteen days.
That there was a price on my head. That every criminal organization in the underworld was sifting through intelligence, chasing leads, closing in.
My father hadn't just betrayed me. He'd made me a corpse with a countdown timer.
And the man who'd kidnapped me was the only thing standing between me and a grave.
The realization made me want to scream.
I moved back to the bed and sat on the edge, my mind fragmenting into a thousand sharp pieces. I thought about the way Dante had looked at me in the bathroom doorway. The barely restrained hunger. The way he'd said when I kiss you, not if.
Was that possession or protection?
Was there a difference?
Hours crawled past. The sky lightened from black to charcoal to that bruised purple that came just before dawn. I didn't move. Didn't cry. Didn't do anything but sit in the dark and wait for the moment he'd return.
I heard him before I saw him. The soft sound of his footsteps in the hallway. The deliberate, controlled way he unlocked my door. He entered carrying a tray—fresh fruit, pastries, espresso in a small white cup. The domesticity of it felt obscene.
He set the tray on the small table by the window, and I watched him move through the space like a predator in his own territory.
Every gesture calculated. Every breath measured.
He was dressed for the day already—charcoal suit, crisp white shirt, ice-blue tie.
His hair was still damp from the shower.
"You're awake early," he said, not looking at me. "Couldn't sleep?"
I studied him. Looked for the man who'd just told his associates he'd burn cities. Looked for the crack in his armor. But he was smooth again. Polished. The kind of dangerous that wore a three-thousand-dollar suit and smiled like he wasn't already planning someone's death.
"Dante." My voice came out smaller than I wanted. Smaller than the rage that was building in my chest.
He turned. His eyes found mine, and for just a moment—a fraction of a second—something flickered across his face. Something that looked like guilt.
"Yes?"
I stood. My legs felt unsteady, but I forced myself upright. Forced myself to meet his gaze without flinching.
"Why me?" The question came out quiet. Steady. But underneath it, I could hear the tremor. The need. The fact that I was standing in front of the man who'd kidnapped me and asking him to explain why he hadn't let me die.
Dante's jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed, and for a moment, I thought he might throw me back out of his life like I was something he'd picked up and regretted touching. But instead, he stepped closer.
One step. Two.
Close enough that I could see the faint stubble along his jaw. Close enough to catch the scent of him—something expensive and dark.
"You want the truth?" His voice was low. Carefully controlled.
I nodded.
He reached up, and I felt my breath catch as his fingers brushed against my cheek. Almost gentle, except for the way his thumb traced the edge of my jaw with the kind of deliberation that suggested he was mapping out something that belonged to him.
"I saw you at that gala." He was speaking slowly, each word weighted with something I couldn't quite name.
"Six months before your engagement announcement.
You were standing near the terrace, and you were watching your father like you were trying to solve an equation that kept changing the variables on you. "
My heart hammered against my ribs.
"I couldn't stop watching you after that. I told myself it was strategy. That you were useful. That knowing everything about you would give me leverage." His hand dropped. "I was lying."
"To who?" My voice was barely a whisper.
"To myself." He stepped back, and the loss of his proximity felt like something had been torn away. "I took you because I wanted you. Because the thought of you marrying that cartel prince, belonging to anyone but me, was something I couldn't—"
He stopped. Jaw clenching.
"Couldn't what?" I pushed.
"Couldn't tolerate." The words came out rough.
Raw. Like he'd pulled them from somewhere deep and it cost him to let them go.
"I told Vince it was leverage. Told myself it was business.
But the truth is, I would have taken you regardless.
Strategy or no strategy. Dead fiancé or not. I would have found a reason."
I stood frozen, processing the weight of what he'd just admitted. The possessiveness of it. The danger. The fact that I was standing in front of a man who'd orchestrated my abduction not out of necessity but out of pure, primal need to own me.
"And now?" The question escaped before I could stop it.
His smoldering icy blue eyes locked onto mine. The muscles in his jaw worked, and I could see him wrestling with something. With the truth, maybe. Or with the decision of whether to give it to me.
"Now," he said, his voice dropping to something that sounded almost like a confession, "there's a two-million-dollar contract on your head.
Your father decided you were more valuable dead than alive.
And the only thing keeping you breathing is the fact that everyone knows I'll destroy anyone who tries to collect. "
The words should have terrified me.
Instead, they settled into my bones like something that had always been there, waiting to be acknowledged.
I looked at him—this man who'd kidnapped me, held me captive, admitted his obsession like it was a weakness. This man who'd also killed my fiancé. Extracted me from a hotel. Positioned himself between me and a grave.
"Why tell me now?"
He didn't answer immediately. His hand rose again, and this time he cupped the side of my face, his thumb tracing my cheekbone with the kind of care that seemed impossible coming from someone who'd just threatened to burn cities.
"Because," he said, and his breath was close enough that I could feel it against my skin, "I need you to understand that the choice you make next matters. Not for leverage. Not for strategy. For me."
He leaned in. Close enough that his lips almost brushed mine. Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his body.
"When I kiss you," he whispered, "and I will, it needs to be because you want it. Not because you're afraid. Not because you're confused. Not because you think it's the only way to survive."
His forehead nearly touched mine.
"It needs to be because you choose me."
The penthouse seemed to hold its breath. The city below continued its endless motion, indifferent to the fact that I was standing at the edge of something I couldn't name. Something that felt like drowning and flying simultaneously.
My heart thundered against my ribs.
"And if I don't?" The question came out barely audible.
His eyes searched mine. Jaw tight. Hands steady even though I could feel the tension vibrating through him.
"Then we find another way," he said. But his voice sounded like a man making a promise he wasn't sure he could keep.