CHAPTER 2
DANTE
The deadbolt slid into place with a heavy, metallic thud that usually brought me peace.
Usually.
Tonight, it felt like I was locking a live grenade inside my guest room.
I stood in the hallway for a long moment, listening.
I expected the inevitable sound of a breakdown.
The frantic pounding of fists against the wood.
The muffled sobs of a woman who finally understood she had been sold to a monster to settle a ledger.
Women in her position always cried. It was the natural order of things.
Fear bred tears, and I was the architect of both.
Silence.
Not a single sound leaked through the heavy oak.
I dragged a hand down my face, the friction doing nothing to erase the bone-deep exhaustion settling into my muscles. My left cuff felt stiff. The blood from the warehouse hit three hours ago was completely dry, sticking to my skin like a second layer of armor I didn't have the energy to strip off.
Sienna Rossi.
She was supposed to be a simple transaction.
A signature on a piece of paper that gave me undisputed control over the Brooklyn docks.
Her father, a pathetic excuse for a Capo who spent more time at the roulette tables than managing his territory, had offered her up to clear a three-million-dollar debt.
I didn't want a wife. I wanted the shipping routes.
I wanted a clean line of supply for the syndicate.
But looking at her downstairs, clutching that ridiculous designer suitcase, running her mouth while her pulse beat so hard in her throat it looked like a trapped bird...
She wasn't a transaction. She was a problem.
I rolled my shoulders, forcing the tension down, and walked away from her door.
The house was quiet, the heavy carpets absorbing the sound of my footsteps as I made my way to the east wing staircase.
I needed a shower. I needed three fingers of scotch.
Mostly, I needed the pounding behind my eyes to stop.
I pushed open the double doors to my study. The room was dark, save for the low light of the brass desk lamp and the glow of the city filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Luca was sitting in my leather chair, his feet propped up on my mahogany desk.
He was tossing a silver switchblade into the air and catching it by the handle, over and over, with the casual precision of a man who had ended more lives than he could count. He didn't bother looking up when I walked in.
"Get your boots off my desk," I told him, walking straight to the crystal decanter on the side table.
Luca caught the knife, snapped it shut, and dropped his feet to the floor. "You look terrible, boss. The Petrov crew put up a fight, or did the bride finally arrive?"
"Both." I poured the amber liquid into a glass, the clinking of the crystal sounding far too loud in the quiet room.
I didn't offer him one. He already had a half-empty glass of my best bourbon sitting next to his elbow.
"The warehouse is secure. Three casualties on their side. None on ours. We have the shipment."
"Good." Luca leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He was two years younger than me, my Underboss, and the only man in the five boroughs who could walk into my office uninvited and leave with all his limbs attached. "And the girl? Did she faint when she saw the blood on your sleeve?"
I took a slow drink. The alcohol burned a hot, welcome trail down my throat. "She asked Fridge for his dental plan."
Luca blinked. A slow, genuine grin spread across his face. "She what?"
"She named him Fridge," I clarified, staring at the amber liquid in my glass. "Then she critiqued the foyer decor and asked if she could wear red to the wedding tomorrow because white washes her out."
Luca threw his head back and laughed. It was a loud, booming sound that bounced off the wood-paneled walls.
I stared at him, my patience thinning to a microscopic wire. "I am glad my arranged marriage to a lunatic is providing you with entertainment."
"Come on, Dante. You have to admit it’s a little funny.
" Luca wiped a tear from his eye. "You’ve spent the last ten years building a reputation as the Ghost. Men cross the street when they see your car.
Capos wet themselves when you call a meeting.
And some twenty-two-year-old mafia princess walks into your fortress and roasts your interior design? "
"She is not a princess," I said softly.
The laughter died in Luca’s throat. He knew that tone. He sat up straighter, the humor vanishing from his posture, replaced by the lethal focus that made him my second-in-command.
"She is a liability," I continued, setting the glass down on the desk. "Her father is desperate. The Petrovs are pushing into our territory because they know Rossi is weak. If they find out I took his daughter to secure the docks, they won't go after him. They’ll come after her."
"The estate is locked down," Luca reminded me. "Fifty armed men on the perimeter. The dogs are loose in the courtyard. Nobody is getting within a mile of her."
"I know."
I walked around the desk, my eyes drifting to the corner of the room. Boris, my Neapolitan Mastiff, was sprawled on the rug. He lifted his massive, wrinkled head, letting out a low rumble of greeting before dropping his snout back onto his paws.
I don’t care what the scary men with the earpieces say, Boris. You’re just a giant, wrinkly baby, aren’t you?
Her voice echoed in my head, bright and chaotic.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "She fed him prosciutto."
"Who?" Luca asked, confused.
"Sienna. She sat on the floor in her silk pajamas and fed my attack dog imported meat." I looked at Boris. The traitor thumped his tail against the rug. "He let her."
Luca pressed his lips together, clearly fighting another smile. "Animals are good judges of character."
"Animals are opportunists," I corrected.
I sat down in my chair, the leather creaking under my weight.
"The priest arrives at noon tomorrow. The paperwork is already filed with the state. Once the vows are said in front of the family, the docks are officially ours, and her father’s debts are wiped. "
"And then what?" Luca asked quietly.
I looked at him. "Then we run the city. Same as always."
"I meant with her, Dante." Luca tilted his head, studying me. "You can’t keep her locked in that room forever. She’s your wife. The men are going to look to her. The other families are going to watch how you treat her. If she’s a ghost in her own house, it makes you look weak."
My jaw tightened. "I will manage my wife."
"Right." Luca stood up, stretching his arms over his head. "Well, good luck managing the hurricane. I’m going to go check the perimeter before I head out. Try to get some sleep. You look like a corpse."
"Get out of my office, Luca."
He grinned, gave me a mock salute, and walked out of the room, pulling the heavy doors shut behind him.
The silence returned, pressing against my eardrums. I leaned back in the chair, staring at the ceiling. The adrenaline from the warehouse was finally fading, leaving behind a hollow ache in my chest. I hated the mess of today. I hated the blood, the noise, the unpredictability of the Petrovs.
My life was built on ruthless order. Every variable accounted for. Every threat neutralized before it could take a breath.
Then Sienna Rossi walked through my front doors, smelling like expensive perfume and defiance, and the order shattered.
I shouldn't care. She was a means to an end. A pretty, annoying pawn I had acquired in a game of chess. But when I backed her against the wall in the hallway, when I felt the frantic, wild flutter of her pulse beneath her skin...
I didn't want to break her. I wanted to see how far she would push back.
A soft, rhythmic chime broke my train of thought.
I opened my eyes, looking down at the security console built into the surface of my desk. A small red light was blinking on the digital blueprint of the estate.
Warning: Localized temperature anomaly. East Wing. Guest Suite 2.
My blood turned to ice.
Guest Suite 2. Sienna’s room.
I sat up, my fingers flying across the touchscreen. The fire suppression system in this house was state-of-the-art. If there was a real fire, the sprinklers would have already engaged and the alarms would be deafening. This was a low-level alert. A heat spike.
I pulled up the hidden camera feed for her room.
The screen flickered to life, bathing my face in a pale, bluish light.
I expected to see smoke. I expected to see her panicking, trying to break a window or screaming for help.
Instead, I saw my newly acquired bride standing in the center of the massive bedroom. She had kicked off her designer heels. They were lying haphazardly near the door. She was pacing back and forth in front of the large stone fireplace, her hands on her hips.
The fire was roaring.
I zoomed the camera in, my brow furrowing. I hadn't ordered a fire lit in her room. The nights in late September were cool, but the house was perfectly climate-controlled.
Then I saw what was burning.
Sienna stopped pacing. She bent down, picked up a long brass iron from the fireplace toolset, and casually poked at the flames.
Inside the fire, the charred remains of my mother’s custom, hand-embroidered velvet throw pillows were turning to ash.
I stopped breathing.
I literally forgot how to pull oxygen into my lungs. I just stared at the screen, watching this twenty-two-year-old girl casually incinerate ten thousand dollars' worth of antique textiles because... why? Because I locked the door? Because she was bored?
She pulled the iron back, satisfied with her work. The flames cast dancing shadows across her face, highlighting the sharp curve of her jaw and the stubborn set of her mouth.
She didn't look scared. She looked victorious.
I gripped the edge of the desk, a strange, dark pressure expanding in my chest. It wasn't anger.
Anger was cold and calculating. This was hot.
This was a chaotic, violent surge of adrenaline that made my fingers itch to go upstairs, unlock that door, and pin her to the mattress until she admitted exactly who she belonged to.
On the screen, Sienna dusted her hands off on her dress. She turned away from the fire and began to survey the room again. Her eyes scanned the heavy curtains, the antique dresser, the vaulted ceiling.
She was looking for something.
She walked toward the corner of the room, her bare feet silent on the rug. She stopped directly beneath the smoke detector, tilting her head back. Then, her eyes tracked the molding along the wall, moving slowly, deliberately.
She stopped.
She was looking directly at the hidden lens of the security camera. Directly at me.
She couldn't possibly know I was watching. The lens was the size of a pinhead, disguised behind a carved wooden rosette. But her eyes narrowed, locking onto the exact spot.
A slow, wicked smile spread across her face. It was the smile of a woman who knew she was walking into a war and had already decided she was going to win.
Without breaking eye contact with the lens, Sienna raised her right hand.
She extended her middle finger, holding it up to the camera for three long, deliberate seconds.
Then, she turned her back, walked over to the massive king-sized bed, climbed right into the center of the mattress in her expensive dress, and pulled the heavy duvet over her head.
I sat in the dark office, the silence ringing in my ears.
The red light on the console stopped blinking as the pillows burned down to embers and the temperature stabilized.
I looked at the lump under the blankets on the monitor. I looked at the glass of scotch on my desk. I looked at the blood drying on my cuff.
I had built an empire on fear. I had surrounded myself with men who killed on command and enemies who plotted my death in the shadows. I had survived car bombs, betrayals, and federal indictments.
But as I watched Sienna Rossi sleep in the glow of the fire she had started just to spite me, I realized a terrifying truth.
I wasn't ready for tomorrow.
Because tomorrow, I wasn't just marrying the daughter of my enemy.
I was marrying my ruin.