CHAPTER 23
DANTE
The safe house in Pennsylvania wasn't a fortress. It was a dilapidated, two-story farmhouse sitting at the dead end of a gravel road, surrounded by eighty acres of dense, unkempt forest.
I pulled the Audi around the back of the barn, cutting the engine. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the sound of the wind rustling through the dry autumn leaves.
I looked at Sienna. She was staring out the windshield at the peeling white paint of the farmhouse. She didn't look terrified. She looked like she was mentally cataloging the exits.
"Stay in the car," I instructed, reaching for the door handle.
"I’m coming with you," she countered immediately, her hand shooting out to grip my forearm. She carefully avoided the bandage hidden beneath my shirt.
"Sienna." I turned to face her, keeping my voice low. "The man who owns this property owes me his life, but he is a paranoid recluse who builds untraceable weapons for a living. I need to clear the house before you step out of this vehicle."
She held my gaze for a second, her jaw tight, before slowly releasing my arm. "Two minutes. If you aren't back in two minutes, I’m coming in."
"Deal."
I stepped out of the Audi, drawing the Glock from my shoulder holster. The air was crisp, lacking the heavy humidity of Miami or the sharp exhaust of New York. It smelled like pine needles and woodsmoke.
I walked toward the back door of the farmhouse, my boots silent on the packed dirt.
Before I could reach the porch, the back door swung open.
A man stepped out, holding a customized, short-barreled shotgun leveled directly at my chest. He was in his late fifties, with a wild gray beard and grease-stained coveralls.
"You’re supposed to call before you show up, Dante," the man grunted, not lowering the weapon.
"I threw my phone out the window somewhere in New Jersey, Elias," I replied, keeping my own gun pointed at the ground. "Are we going to stand out here and measure barrels, or are you going to invite me inside?"
Elias stared at me for a long moment, his eyes darting to the dark Audi parked behind the barn. He slowly lowered the shotgun.
"Feds raided your Brooklyn vault this morning," Elias said, leaning against the doorframe. "It’s all over the encrypted channels. Leo Vitiello is telling everyone you ran."
"Leo Vitiello talks too much." I holstered my weapon. "I need the house, Elias. Three days. Maybe four."
"I don't harbor fugitives from the FBI, Dante. It’s bad for business."
"You harbor me, or I remind the federal prosecutor in Chicago exactly who built the explosives for the 2018 bank job," I said, my voice stripped of inflection.
Elias’s jaw tightened. He knew I didn't make empty threats. He spat a curse in Greek, turned on his heel, and walked back into the house, leaving the door open.
I turned back to the car and gave Sienna a brief nod.
She climbed out immediately, grabbing the heavy black duffel bag from the back seat before I could reach it. She walked up the dirt path, her posture perfectly straight despite the exhaustion radiating from her.
We stepped into the farmhouse.
The interior was a chaotic mess of metal parts, gun oil, and empty coffee cups. Elias was standing by a wood-burning stove in the small kitchen, watching Sienna with open curiosity.
"You brought a woman," Elias noted, raising a bushy eyebrow. "The news said the warrant was for your wife. Antonio Rossi’s kid."
"She is my wife," I confirmed, stepping slightly in front of her. "And she is off-limits for conversation. Where is the secure line?"
Elias pointed to a heavy black rotary phone sitting on a cluttered workbench in the corner of the living room. "Line is scrambled. Bounces off three satellites before it hits a tower. Nobody can trace it."
"Thank you. We need the upstairs bedroom."
"Take it," Elias grunted, picking up a rag to wipe the grease off his hands. "I’ll be in the barn. Don't touch my tools."
He walked out the back door, leaving us alone in the quiet, dusty house.
I turned to Sienna. She was standing near the kitchen counter, still clutching the duffel bag full of cash and passports. She looked around the dingy room, her eyes lingering on the disassembled rifle parts on the dining table.
"It’s not the Plaza," I murmured, walking over to her.
"I don't care about the Plaza," she replied, dropping the heavy bag onto the floor. She looked up at me, her brown eyes completely focused. "You’re bleeding again."
I glanced down at my right arm. The dark stain had seeped through the fabric of my shirt, expanding past the edges of the bandage she had applied in Florida. The adrenaline of the drive had masked the pain, but now that we were stationary, the dull, burning ache was returning with a vengeance.
"It’s fine," I dismissed it, turning toward the secure phone. "I need to call Silas."
"You need to sit down," Sienna corrected, her tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. She walked past me, grabbing my left wrist and pulling me toward a worn leather sofa in the center of the room.
I could have stopped her. I could have pulled my hand away and made the call. But the sheer, stubborn determination in her face completely dismantled my resistance.
I sat down on the sofa.
Sienna stood between my knees. She didn't hesitate. She reached for the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head, tossing the ruined fabric onto a nearby chair.
She carefully peeled back the blood-soaked tape of the bandage. The wound wasn't deep, but the constant movement of driving had torn the scabbing flesh open.
"I need alcohol and clean bandages," she muttered, looking around the chaotic room.
"Under the sink in the bathroom," I told her.
She disappeared down the short hallway, returning a minute later with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a clean towel, and a roll of white gauze.
She knelt on the dusty floorboards in front of the sofa, bringing herself level with my arm. She poured the alcohol onto the towel.
"This is going to hurt," she warned, her eyes flicking up to mine.
"Do it."
She pressed the soaked towel directly into the open wound. The burn was instantaneous and blinding, a sharp, white-hot flare of agony that made the muscles in my jaw lock tight. I didn't make a sound. I didn't pull away. I kept my eyes fixed entirely on her face.
She was biting her lower lip, her brow furrowed in deep concentration. Her hands were incredibly steady as she cleaned the blood away, her touch clinical but gentle.
"Why did he do it?" she asked quietly, her eyes focused on my arm. "My father. Why did he put my name on the ledgers?"
"Because he knew I wouldn't let the FBI take you," I answered, the truth brutal and simple. "He knew that if the Feds came for you, I would fight them. He used you as a distraction to tie up the government and the syndicate so he could escape to South America."
Sienna paused, the bloody towel resting against my skin. "He sacrificed me to buy himself time."
"Yes."
She let out a slow, shaky breath. "Then Leo Vitiello found out."
"Leo has informants in the federal prosecutor's office," I explained, watching the realization settle over her features. "He knew the warrant was coming. He waited until the exact moment the raid happened to call the vote against me. He orchestrated the timing perfectly."
Sienna tossed the ruined towel onto the floor and picked up the clean gauze. She began wrapping it tightly around my bicep, securing the wound.
"So how do we fix it?" she asked.
The question wasn't how do you fix it. It was we.
"We need the original ledgers," I said, my hand coming up to rest lightly on the back of her neck.
"The ones the FBI confiscated from the Brooklyn warehouse.
The digital copies your father manipulated show your signature on the shell companies.
But the physical books, the ones I keep locked in the vault, have the original ink.
They prove your father forged your name. "
Sienna finished tying off the bandage. She sat back on her heels, looking up at me. "The FBI has them in evidence. You can't just walk into a federal building and steal them back."
"I don't have to," I told her, a dark, calculating smile touching my lips.
"Leo Vitiello doesn't want the FBI looking too closely at those books either. The Morretti and Vitiello families have done business together for decades. If the Feds dig deep enough, they will find Leo’s name in those ledgers too. "
Sienna’s eyes widened as she connected the dots. "Leo is going to try to steal them."
"He has to," I confirmed. "He used the raid to get me out of the city, but now he has to clean up the mess before the prosecutors build a RICO case that brings down the entire East Coast."
"So we let him steal them," Sienna murmured, her tactical mind working faster than most of my Capos. "And then we steal them from him."
"Exactly." I leaned forward, gripping her waist and pulling her up from the floor until she was sitting straddled across my lap.
She wrapped her arms around my neck, her body pressing flush against my bare chest. The dust and the smell of gun oil in the room faded, completely eclipsed by the scent of her skin.
"If we get the physical books, my name is cleared," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"Your name is cleared, and Leo Vitiello is caught holding stolen federal evidence," I finished, my hands sliding down to rest on her hips. "The government will tear his family apart. And I will walk back into New York and take my city back."
Sienna looked down at me. The exhaustion in her eyes was heavy, but the fire behind it was absolute. She wasn't a hostage hiding in a farmhouse. She was a queen plotting a war.
"Call Silas," she demanded softly. "Tell him to find out exactly when Leo is moving on that evidence room."
I didn't reach for the phone. I reached for the back of her neck, pulling her mouth down to mine.
I kissed her, a deep, consuming pressure that tasted like adrenaline and raw devotion. She opened for me instantly, her fingers tangling in my hair, her body molding perfectly against mine.
We were sitting in a dusty, freezing safe house. We were fugitives. We had lost the empire.
But as I held her against my chest, feeling the steady, fierce beat of her heart, I knew Leo Vitiello had made a fatal miscalculation.
He thought he had taken my power.
He didn't realize I was currently holding it in my arms.