Chapter 15
Dante
I was in the gym, working through a heavy bag like it owed me money, when Marcos appeared with his phone. He didn't need to speak. The look on his face told me everything.
"The Castellano crew," Marcos said, already pulling up data on his tablet. "They're making a move. Calculated. Deliberate."
I stopped mid-punch, my knuckles still pressed against the bag's worn leather. Sweat dripped down my chest. My breathing came heavy, controlled.
"Details."
“Intercepted chatter suggests they're targeting the charity event.
The one Julietta's attending in two hours.
" He swiped through screens, cross-referencing intel.
"They want to send a message about the marriage, destabilize the Altieri alliance before it takes root. The timeline suggests coordination with someone inside—”
My jaw tightened. The charity event was a calculated move—public appearance, plenty of witnesses, proof that the marriage was legitimate and that Julietta was secure. Strategic. Smart. Necessary.
And now a liability.
"How many men?"
"At least six confirmed. Possibly eight."
I unwrapped my hands slowly, methodically, letting the rage settle into something cold and purposeful. This was the business. People died when alliances shifted. People bled when territory threatened to realign.
But not my wife.
"Pull her from the event," I said.
"She won't like that."
"I don't care if she likes it."
Marcos hesitated—he knew me well enough to recognize when I was lying. I cared exactly how much she liked it. But I cared more about keeping her breathing.
"I'll inform her," he said.
Julietta was in the library, reviewing quarterly reports for the trafficking operation when I found her. She looked up from the laptop, already sensing something had shifted in the air between us.
"The event is cancelled," I said.
"Why?"
"Security threat."
She closed the laptop with deliberate slowness. "Dante."
"We're not discussing this."
"We absolutely are." She stood, crossing her arms. "You promised autonomy. You promised no cages."
"And I meant it. As long as you're alive to exercise that autonomy." I moved closer, my tone dropping to something sharper. "The Castellanos are making a move. They want to hit you at the charity event. Public location, maximum visibility, maximum impact."
She went still. I watched her process the information, watched the fear flicker across her face before she buried it.
"Then we change the plan," she said. "We don't hide. We show up stronger."
"No."
"You don't get to unilaterally—"
"I do. Because you're my wife, and there's a cartel trying to murder you in front of television cameras, and I will not lose you because you're trying to prove something about independence." My voice was ice. "The event is cancelled. You stay here. This conversation ends."
She stared at me, and I could see her calculating angles, looking for leverage. This was the woman I'd married—brilliant enough to weaponize every word I'd ever spoken about trust and choice.
"If you cancel publicly, it looks weak," she said carefully. "It looks like you can't protect your wife. Let me go. But we flood the location with security. Plainclothes, rooftops, embedded in the crowd. We make it impossible for them to move."
"Absolutely not."
"Then you're caging me. You're telling me I can't go anywhere unless it's safe, and in your world, nothing is ever safe. So you're keeping me locked in this compound forever."
She was right. The realization hit me like a physical blow.
I couldn't keep her locked away—not without destroying the very thing that made her mine. She chose to be here. She chose to stand beside me. And the moment I took that choice away, I became just another man controlling her life.
I wanted to put a fist through the wall.
Instead, I pulled out my phone and called Marcos.
"Security detail. Full team. I want snipers on every adjacent building, plainclothes operatives mixed into the crowd, and an exit route with backup vehicles. Julietta goes, but not one person from the Castellano crew leaves that building alive if they so much as breathe in her direction."
"Sir," Marcos's voice came through measured, controlled, "that level of deployment will expose our numbers. If this is bait to assess our—"
"I don't care if it's bait. Execute it."
A pause. Then: "Understood. I'll coordinate with Vince on placement."
Julietta's eyes widened.
I ended the call and looked at my wife.
"You go. And you do exactly what my people tell you. No improvisation. No heroics. You smile for cameras, you shake hands, you play the grateful bride. And the moment Marcos gives the signal, you move. Understood?"
"Understood," she whispered.
The hit came at 2:34 p.m.
I was in the security room, watching six different camera feeds simultaneously.
Julietta looked radiant in an ivory dress, her hand resting on a society woman's arm, laughing at something that wasn't funny.
My men were positioned perfectly—two at the exits, four embedded in the crowd, another six on adjacent rooftops.
She was safer than any asset in my entire operation.
It still wasn't safe enough.
The first shot came through the building's east window. The bullet missed Julietta by inches and shattered the champagne flute in her hand. For a moment—one terrible moment—she froze.
Then my men moved.
I'd known they were looking for her—Marcos had warned me about the Castellanos weeks ago. What I hadn’t expected was them actually making a move. But anticipating an attack and stopping it were different things.
Castellano's crew had positioned themselves in three locations. We'd anticipated two. The third team came through the kitchen, guns drawn, intent clear.
Julietta went down as Marcos threw himself across her body. My men engaged. The ballroom became a war zone—screams, gunfire, the sharp crack of silencers, bodies hitting marble.
It was over in ninety seconds.
Four of Castellano's crew were dead. Two were captured, bleeding, dragged toward the kitchen by my men. The society guests were evacuated by exits my team had secured.
And Julietta was on the ground, covered in another man's blood, her hand gripping Marcos's shoulder.
The world stopped.
Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Actually stopped—sound cutting out, my vision tunneling to nothing but her body on that marble floor, red spreading across ivory silk.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Every carefully constructed wall I'd built over twenty years shattered in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
This was the thing I'd feared since the moment I'd taken her. Not death, betrayal, or losing the empire I'd built. This—her blood on marble, her body still, the possibility that I'd failed to protect the only thing that mattered.
My mother's face flashed through my mind. That basement apartment. The way she'd looked at me in those final moments, apologizing because she couldn't afford to stay alive. I'd been eight years old and powerless to save her.
I was thirty-four now. I owned half this city. I had an army at my command.
And I still couldn't keep the people I loved from bleeding.
The thought paralyzed me for exactly three seconds—three seconds where my body refused to move, refused to accept what my eyes were seeing, refused to process the reality that I might have just watched her die.
Then training overrode terror.
I didn't remember moving. One moment I was watching screens, the next I was there, pulling her against me, my hands running over her body checking for injuries.
"I'm fine," she gasped. "I'm fine, I'm okay—"
"Shut up," I breathed into her hair. "Don't talk. Just stay still."
My rage was a living thing, something with teeth and claws. It had been contained, purposeful, strategic. Now it was a wildfire.
I looked at Marcos. "Bring the survivors to the interrogation room. And call cleanup."
Marcos nodded once, already on his phone, coordinating the extraction with clinical precision. No questions. He'd learned years ago that after I made a decision, analysis time was over.
The first one broke in seven minutes.
His name was Paolo Deluca, and he'd been recruited by the Castellano crew three months ago. He knew their operation, their supply lines, their safe houses. More importantly, he knew who'd authorized the hit.
My fist had moved three times before he said a word.
"Who sent you?"
"Castellano. Bruno Castellano. He—"
I broke his arm.
I already knew Lorenzo had hired the Castellanos. What I needed to know was how they'd found us. Who'd given them the exact location, the timing, the security layout.
"Who gave you the intel?"
"I don't know, I don't know—"
"You're lying."
I broke the other arm.
He screamed. Good. Let him scream.
"There's someone," he gasped, blood dripping from his mouth.
"Someone close to Lorenzo. They've been feeding us real-time information—locations, schedules, security rotations.
Told us the reception would be the perfect opportunity.
Told us Lorenzo wanted it done clean but couldn't be seen ordering his own daughter's death. "
The words hit me like ice water.
I'd known Lorenzo hired the Castellanos to find her.
I hadn't known he'd authorized them to kill her.
Or that someone in his inner circle was helping them do it.
Paolo gave me three addresses before he stopped breathing. Two were decoys. The third was Bruno Castellano's actual compound—a fortified estate on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by private land and armed guards.
Bruno Castellano had accepted a contract to kill my wife. Had positioned men at our wedding reception. Had pulled triggers that nearly ended her life.
And somewhere in his organization was information about Lorenzo's inside man—the person feeding them intelligence, the person who'd betrayed his own Don to facilitate his daughter's murder.
I needed Bruno alive long enough to give me that name.
Then I needed him dead.