Chapter 20
Julietta
Cold shocked me into awareness. Not the gradual kind that creeps through your bones. The kind that hits all at once, like plunging into black water. My eyes snapped open to darkness so complete it felt solid.
I was on concrete. My wrists burned.
The zip ties bit into my skin—I could feel the plastic edges digging in where I'd thrashed against them in the sedan before they'd forced the hood over my head. Before everything went dark.
I forced myself to breathe. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. As soon as I sat up, the light flickered on–motion sensored. The air tasted like rust and something worse—something organic and rotting.
My eyes adjusted slowly. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, maybe forty watts, casting everything in sickly yellow. Walls of exposed brick. No windows. Metal bars forming a cell maybe twelve feet by eight, with a cot in the corner and a bucket that I didn't want to think about.
This wasn't Dante's penthouse.
This wasn't anywhere with marble floors or climate control or the illusion of choice.
This was a cage.
I pulled at the zip ties. Hard. The plastic held firm, and pain shot through my wrists like electric current. I pulled again, teeth gritted, trying to slip my hands through. My skin scraped raw. Blood pooled between my palm and the plastic.
It didn't matter. Nothing moved.
I forced myself to stop. Yanking like an animal wouldn't help. That's what they wanted—panic. Desperation. A woman so terrified she couldn't think.
I'd been that woman once. The day Dante's men pulled me from the car on Aldrich Street, I'd screamed. I'd fought. I'd believed the world was ending.
But that wasn't me anymore.
I sat back on my heels and cataloged what I could see.
The cell had a reinforced door with a slot at the bottom—where they'd pass food, probably.
The bars were old but solid, welded at the corners.
The light bulb hung from a fixture that looked original to whenever this place was built.
Not a modern compound. Somewhere older. Somewhere forgotten.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time moved differently in the dark.
I could hear footsteps above me sometimes. Muffled voices. The scrape of furniture. I was underground. A basement or a sub-level. The kind of place my father probably owned a dozen of across the city.
Of course. He'd taken me somewhere he controlled.
I lay still and listened. Not just to the muffled sounds above, but to everything.
The rhythm of footsteps—guard rotations, multiple people moving in patterns.
The distant hum of generators—this place was off-grid, which meant Lorenzo was hiding here, not just using it for storage.
The faint smell seeping through the ventilation, expensive tobacco mixed with cigar smoke. Cuban. The kind Lorenzo favored.
I was inside his stronghold. The place he felt safe enough to smoke cigars and conduct business.
That was worth something. Worth more than whatever beating or interrogation might come next.
Because when I came back for him—and I would come back—I'd know exactly where to find him.
I thought about the moment his men had grabbed me in Red Hook.
I'd walked into that warehouse district intentionally, my burner phone hidden in my jacket pocket, my GPS pinging to Dante before I'd even stepped out of the Tesla.
I'd known Lorenzo's location through the intelligence I'd gathered. I'd known exactly what I was doing.
I'd also known that Dante would come.
But somewhere between leaving the compound and stepping into that warehouse, something had shifted.
Walking through the city on my own—really on my own, not just permitted to move through Dante's spaces—had reminded me of something I'd almost forgotten in the weeks of his penthouse and his protection and his possessive hands.
I could disappear.
I could survive without him.
I needed to know if I could.
The footsteps stopped above me. Then started again, moving in a pattern. Guard rotation. I began counting. Thirty seconds of silence. Then footsteps returning. Another thirty seconds of silence.
One minute and fifteen seconds total.
I ran the pattern three more times, and it held. Either they were incredibly disciplined, or incredibly bored. Probably both.
I looked at the cot. Metal frame. The mattress was thin enough that I could feel the springs through it. Not useful. The bucket in the corner was plastic, brittle from age. The corner had a crack.
I crawled over to it and worked at the crack with my fingers. The plastic had become fragile with time, and a piece broke off—maybe four inches long, with a jagged edge that caught on my thumbnail.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
I worked at the zip tie on my left wrist, scraping the edge of the plastic against it. The motion was awkward with my hands bound, but I'd learned patience. I'd spent weeks watching Dante move through rooms, the way he never rushed. The way he assessed before he acted.
Control the room. Don't let it control you.
His voice was clear in my head. I'd heard him say it during a debrief with Marcos. They'd been discussing a negotiation that had gone sideways because one of his men had panicked when the other side brought extra security.
I wasn't going to panic.
The zip tie was tough. Made of the same durable plastic as the ones Dante's security team used when they needed restraints that wouldn't leave marks. Whoever had tied me knew their business.
But I was learning mine.
Hours passed. My wrists bled. The plastic barrier I'd created was dulling quickly, and I switched to using the edge of the metal bed frame, positioning my wrists against the sharp corner where the rails joined.
Saw. Scrape. Feel the plastic fray. Repeat.
The footsteps above changed pattern. Three people now instead of one. I paused and listened. Voices, too muffled to make out words, but I caught the tone—something had shifted. They were agitated.
They were reacting to something.
Dante?
Of course he'd come. The GPS tracker he'd undoubtedly planted, the tail he'd inevitably assigned—he'd know exactly where I was. He'd mobilize the entire organization.
The thought should have comforted me.
Instead, I felt something close to resentment.
This wasn't the plan. Getting captured, thrown in a cell, needing rescue—that was exactly what I'd been trying to avoid. I'd wanted to prove I could handle this alone. That I could face Lorenzo on my own terms, not as Dante's wife needing extraction, but as a threat in my own right.
Instead, I'd walked straight into a trap.
The voices grew louder. An argument, maybe. Or a briefing. I couldn't tell. My attention snapped back to the zip tie as my hands slipped.
One more time. Just one more time.
The plastic gave way.
My left hand was free.
I flexed my fingers, rolling my wrist in circles to get the blood flowing again.
The right wrist took another few minutes—easier now that I had more leverage.
When it came free, I dropped the broken plastic to the ground and pressed my palms against my thighs, breathing like I'd just run a marathon.
No crying. No relief. Not yet.
I'd come here looking for Lorenzo. Walked into Red Hook knowing it was dangerous, knowing I might not walk out. I'd wanted to face him. To make him answer for what he'd done to my mother.
I hadn't gotten that. Not yet.
But I'd gotten something almost as valuable: his location. The layout of his stronghold. The rhythms of his security. The knowledge that he felt safe here—safe enough to hold me in his own basement.
Arrogance. The kind that would get him killed.
Just not today.
I got up and moved to the door, peering through the slot. The hallway beyond was empty, lit by the same sickly yellow as my cell. I could see the edge of a desk, maybe fifteen feet away.
The footsteps had stopped.
The silence was worse than the noise.
I went back to the cot and positioned myself against the wall, partially hidden by the angle of the metal frame. If they opened that door expecting to find me panicked and bound, they'd come in casual. They'd come in with their guard down.
That was all I needed.
The minutes stretched. I'd lost track of time hours ago, but my body knew—it had been long enough that the initial adrenaline was wearing off, replaced by something colder. Clarity.
Dante had taught me to observe. I'd learned to calculate. I'd watched the way his hands moved when he was making decisions, the way his eyes tracked potential threats in a room.
Now I had to apply those lessons alone.
The footsteps came back.
Just one set. One person. Heavy boots on concrete. The rhythm was urgent—something had changed.
The slot opened.
A tray slid through—water bottle, a bowl of something I didn't want to examine too closely.
Standard captive feeding. They were keeping me alive for the ransom.
For whatever terms Lorenzo had demanded in that video he'd forced me to record.
For however long it took Dante to either accept or reject his father-in-law's deal.
That meant time.
I waited until the footsteps moved away. Ten seconds. Twenty.
Then I moved to the door and waited for the moment the guard would turn around. The one moment when they wouldn't be looking directly at the slot.
The footsteps reached the desk.
A radio crackled. A voice—distant, but urgent. Words I couldn't make out.
The guard cursed.
Then the footsteps hurried back toward the stairs.
I waited until the sound completely faded before I stood and moved to the food tray. The water was room temperature. The bowl contained some kind of stew, thick and unidentifiable. I ate it anyway. I'd need the calories.
Then I returned to my position against the wall and waited.
I'd failed to confront Lorenzo on my own terms. Got caught before I even got close.
But I knew where he was now. I'd counted guard rotations, memorized the sounds of this place, understood his security. The burner phone was still hidden in my jacket—they'd been sloppy in their search, too confident.
When I got out of here, I'd have everything Dante needed to finish this.
Not a victory. But not a total failure either.
The footsteps eventually came back. Multiple sets this time. The guard wasn't alone anymore.
The door slot opened.
A hand held a phone toward the opening, screen glowing.
"Your husband sent a message," the guard said. His voice was rough, tobacco-scarred. "Said if we hurt you, he'd burn this entire city down. Said he'd find us. Said he'd make it slow."
I didn't move. I let him talk.
"Then he said something else." The guard leaned closer to the slot, and I could see his eye through the opening.
"He said you'd probably already figured out how to escape.
Said you were dangerous enough that we should consider letting you go before you decided we were threats that needed eliminating. "
My chest went tight.
"Question is," the guard continued, "is he right?"
I moved into the light where he could see me through the slot. I made sure he could see the raw places on my wrists where the zip ties had cut. I made sure he could see my eyes—calm, calculating, and absolutely certain.
"He's right," I said softly.
The guard was quiet for a long moment.
Then he reached for the lock.