Chapter 29 - Ana
The rope cuts deeper into my wrists with every movement, raw skin burning where I’ve been testing the knots for the past hour.
Blood trickles down my palms, making them slippery, but that might actually help.
The warehouse stretches around me like a tomb, all cold concrete and rusted metal that will soon be painted with blood.
Their blood, if I know my husband. And I do.
I know him in ways that make my chest ache with love and terror in equal measure.
My split lip throbs where the first guard backhanded me for spitting at him. The copper taste of blood coats my tongue, mixing with the phantom taste of Dante's kiss from this morning.
"Be safe," I'd signed, and he'd caught my hands, kissed each palm with reverence that made my eyes burn. "Always come back to me." His promise was in the way he pressed my hand over his heart, letting me feel its steady beat, the only voice that truly speaks for him.
"Boss wants her conscious when he gets here," one guard mutters, lighting a cigarette. The smoke drifts toward me, mixing with the smell of motor oil and fear-sweat. Not mine. Theirs. They know what Dante will do when he finds out they took me.
My shoulders ache from being wrenched behind the chair, but I keep working the rope against a rough edge of metal I found on the chair leg.
Every shift sends fresh pain through my raw wrists, reminding me of how gently Dante held those same wrists last night, kissing the delicate skin where my pulse races for him.
Pain means I'm alive. Pain means I still have time.
Twelve men that I can see, maybe more in the shadows.
Papa would be proud I'm still counting, still planning.
But all I really want is Dante's arms around me, his silent promise that we're going home.
Two exits visible from this chair: the loading dock they dragged me through and a door marked with peeling paint that might lead to offices.
The warehouse door clangs open, and my breath catches. More men enter, their footsteps echoing on concrete. I count eight more, bringing the total to twenty. Twenty men for one woman. They're terrified of Dante. As they should be.
"Keep working that rope, sweetheart," a familiar voice says from behind me. "Won't do you any good, but I admire the effort."
Carlo Senior steps into my line of sight, and my stomach drops.
The man from the restaurant discussion, the father who took his dead son's name.
I recognize him now, not his face, but his presence, the way he carries himself like violence is his birthright.
Just like they described at dinner before the attack.
The hothead pushing boundaries, the one seeking revenge for Carlo Junior's death last year.
His cologne is cheap, wrong, nothing like Dante's sandalwood scent that still clings to my hair.
"Ana Rosetti," he says, that smirk spreading across his weathered face. "Though you'll be Ana Moretti again soon enough. Or maybe just 'merchandise.' Depends on how this plays out."
"You think you're selling Ana Moretti," I tell him, blood dripping from my split lip. "But I'm Ana Rosetti now. My husband doesn't negotiate for what's already his. He just takes it back."
"Your husband has until midnight." He pulls out an expensive watch, makes a show of checking it. "Four hours left to hand over everything. Every territory, every route, every cent the Rosettis have built. His kingdom for his queen."
"He won't—"
"Then you go to the highest bidder." His smirk widens, and bile rises in my throat. "You'd be surprised how many want a turn with the Rosetti whore. The girl who spread her legs for her family's killer."
My face burns, but I keep my expression neutral. Don't give him the satisfaction.
"We've been watching you," Carlo continues, circling my chair like a predator. "That bedroom of yours, those big windows. You really should close the curtains when you fuck him. Though I'll admit, my men enjoyed the show."
The words catch me off guard. I knew they'd been watching, planning.
That prisoner in the basement told us as much.
But knowing they watched our most intimate moments, turned our love into entertainment…
This morning in the shower, when Dante pressed me against the tile, water streaming over us as he fucked me with desperate need, signing my name against the glass door. They saw it all.
"Is it true he makes no sound when he comes?" Carlo's voice drips with sick amusement. "Even in pleasure, the silent devil stays mute. Must be frustrating, never hearing him call your name."
My hands clench behind the chair, rope cutting deeper.
They watched us. Invaded our privacy, turned our love into something vulgar for their entertainment.
But they don't understand. Dante speaks to me in ways they could never comprehend.
His body is his voice, every touch a word, every thrust a promise.
"The auction starts at midnight if he doesn't comply," Carlo says, pulling out his phone. "Already have three interested buyers. The Mexicans want you for revenge. The Irish think you'd be useful leverage. And there's a private collector who just likes pretty things."
Then I hear it. Distant at first, like thunder rolling in from far away. Screams, muffled by distance and walls, but getting closer. One of the guards near the door tenses, hand moving to his weapon.
The warehouse air changes, like before a storm. The guards feel it too, that primitive awareness that predators are near. One checks his gun for the third time. Another's hand trembles lighting a new cigarette. They know what I know: Death is coming for them, and his name is Dante Rosetti.
"Check that out," Carlo snaps, but he's noticed it too. The slight uncertainty in his eyes, the way his hand drifts to his own gun.
More screams, closer now. Then suddenly, silence. The kind of silence that's worse than screaming.
Hope blooms in my chest, hot and desperate. Dante. He's coming for me. Not at midnight, not playing by their rules. He's here now, and from the sounds outside, he brought hell with him.
"Double the guards at the doors," Carlo orders, but I can hear the edge of fear in his voice now. He thought he had until midnight. Thought Dante would negotiate, would weigh options like a businessman.
He doesn't know my husband at all. Dante doesn't negotiate when it comes to me. He destroys.
Another scream cuts off abruptly. Closer. The guards are shifting nervously now, guns drawn.
The explosion tears through the loading dock door, smoke billowing into the warehouse like a living thing. My ears ring from the blast, but I'm already moving, using the chaos to wrench harder at my bonds.
Guards scatter, shouting, firing blindly into the smoke. Bodies start dropping, but I can't see who's shooting. Everything is chaos and cordite, shadows moving through shadows.
A guard stumbles backward, trips over my chair.
As he falls past me, I lunge forward despite the rope binding me, sinking my teeth into his throat.
He screams, tries to pull away, but I bite harder, tasting copper and feeling cartilage give way.
This is who I am now, not the girl who came here for revenge, but the woman who'll spill blood for her family.
For him. Our violence is our love language, written in bullets and bruises.
He drops his gun to clutch at his throat, and I work my feet toward it, struggling to position myself. The knife in my boot, the one they didn't find because they were too busy groping higher up my legs, slides free as I twist my ankle.
Working blind, hands still tied behind me, I manage to grip the small blade between my fingers. The rope parts strand by strand, each second feeling like an eternity as gunfire erupts around me. Finally, my hands are free.
I grab the fallen guard's gun, muscle memory from Uncle's training taking over. The weight feels right in my hands, familiar. The gun kicks in my hand as I fire, and I don't flinch.
"Ana Rosetti," I say aloud to myself, to them, to anyone listening. The name feels like armor, like weapon, like truth. Not Ana Moretti seeking revenge. Ana Rosetti, choosing to fight beside her family.
A shape moves through the smoke toward me, another guard. I don't hesitate. Three shots, center mass. He drops, and I feel nothing but savage satisfaction. These men watched us, violated our privacy, threatened to sell me like property.
"That's my girl," I whisper, imagining Dante's pride when he learns I didn't wait to be rescued. I fought. Just like he knew I would.
More shadows in the smoke, but these move differently. Controlled, efficient, deadly. The Rosetti brothers have arrived.
Through the clearing smoke, I see him first. Luca. That smile spreading across his face, the wrong one that makes sane people run. But right now, that terrifying smile is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
He moves through the warehouse like death given form, bodies falling around him as his knives find throats, hearts, arteries.
Not shooting, too impersonal. Each kill intimate, personal, the guards dropping without even a gasp as Luca's blades slide between ribs, across necks.
One tries to scream but Luca's hand covers his mouth as the knife goes in, and the man falls like the others, joining the growing pile of corpses.
"Sister," he calls out cheerfully, stepping over the dead. "You've been practicing your bite. Good girl."
Sister. He called me sister. Real family who burns worlds for me.
I try to stand, to move toward him, but cold metal presses against my temple. Carlo's arm wraps around my throat from behind, using me as a shield.
"Stop!" Carlo shouts, his gun hard against my head. "Everyone stops, or I paint the wall with her brains!"
The warehouse goes still. Through the smoke, I see more shapes. Nico, tactical and ready. Marco, commanding even in chaos. Alex, somehow still elegant despite the blood on his suit. Sofia is here too, composed and fierce.
And Dante.
Oh God, Dante.
He stands twenty feet away, covered in other men's blood, and God help me, my body responds like he's not death incarnate but my salvation.
My pussy clenches remembering this morning, how he fucked me against the shower wall whispering promises with his hands.
Even now, even with a gun to my head, I want him. Monster, protector, mine.
I've never seen him like this. Not controlled violence, not calculated rage. This is something else. Something primitive and terrible and entirely focused on Carlo's gun at my head. His eyes meet mine across the warehouse, and in them, I see my whole world.
"You choose death," Carlo hisses in my ear. "Both of you. Together. How romantic."
Dante's eyes meet mine across the warehouse.
In them, I see the same truth I feel. If we die tonight, at least we had this morning.
At least we had these days of choosing each other.
This morning I folded paper cranes in our bed while he watched, his dark eyes soft with wonder like I'm something precious.
Now I'm using one as a weapon. Everything I was and everything I'm becoming, folded into this moment.
"Together," I mouth to him, and see him understand.
But I'm not done fighting. My hand finds the small origami crane in my pocket, the one I made this morning before they took me. My fingers close around it, the paper sharp between my fingers.
"Together," I whisper to Carlo, then slam my head back into his nose while driving the crane's pointed beak into his gun hand.
The gun fires, but I'm already dropping, the bullet passing through where my head was. Luca's knife follows the bullet's path, finding Carlo's throat before he can recover.
"No one," Luca says conversationally as Carlo drops, "touches my sister."
Then Dante's arms are around me, pulling me against his chest, his hands moving frantically over me checking for injuries.
His hands shake as they frame my face. Dante who never shakes, who stayed steady even with my knife at his throat.
But losing me undid him in ways violence never could.
I taste his fear in the desperate press of his mouth to my forehead, feel his control shatter in the way he crushes me against his chest like he's trying to pull me inside his skin where I'll be safe forever.
"I'm okay," I whisper against his throat, breathing in sandalwood and gunpowder, home and war combined. "I'm okay. I fought. I waited for you but I fought."
The look in his eyes breaks my heart and rebuilds it all at once. Pride, terror, love, rage, everything he can't say aloud written in that dark gaze.
"Together," he signs, still trembling. "Always together."
We're both covered in blood, mine, theirs, maybe his, but he kisses my forehead with such tenderness it makes my chest ache. We're here. We survived.
"Home," I whisper against his throat. "Take me home."
His arms tighten around me, and I know without words, without signs, without anything but the way he holds me: I am home. In his arms, covered in our enemies' blood, I'm exactly where I belong.