CHAPTER FOUR #2
Dante found himself watching her. In his thirty-eight years of life, he had never encountered a woman like this.
She was, quite objectively, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
The architectural perfection of her cheekbones, the contrast of her dark auburn hair against the crisp white shirt, the vivid, startling blue of her eyes—it was the kind of beauty that started wars, the kind that made men incredibly stupid.
But what captivated Dante, what disoriented him, was how unbothered she was by it.
Every woman Dante had ever known wore their looks like a weapon or an expensive jewel. They preened. They posed. They adjusted their posture when they knew he was looking. They sought his validation, his approval, or at the very least, his attention.
This woman did none of that. She wore her beauty like a winter coat she hadn’t bothered to take off.
It was functional. It was irrelevant. She didn't look at him with admiration, and she certainly didn't look at him with fear.
When she had stood over him, checking his bandages, she had looked at him the way one might look at a particularly troublesome, mildly irritating obstacle. A leaky faucet. A flat tire.
No one had ever looked at Don Dante Fazzari that way. No one had ever spoken to him the way she had the night before, stripping him of his power with a few dismissive sentences.
It was a strange, almost dizzying experience. He was the undisputed king of the European underworld. He commanded an empire built on terror and loyalty. Yet, in this grey apartment, he was inconsequential to her.
Zoran, following the line of Dante’s gaze, noticed the dynamic instantly.
The large, pragmatic enforcer couldn't help but feel an acute sense of amusement.
He had watched Dante terrify politicians with a single look, yet this doctor with her laptop and her espresso was treating the Don of the Italian mafia like a stray dog she had reluctantly allowed inside out of the rain.
Deciding to break the thick, unusual tension in the room, Zoran stood up and walked the short distance to the edge of the kitchen island.
Cassia didn't look up from her chart.
"Doctor," Zoran began, his tone polite, attempting to bridge the massive, icy gap she had established. "We are very grateful for what you did last night. And for letting us stay the morning."
"You're welcome," Cassia said, her eyes never leaving the page. She flipped a document over, her pen scratching loudly in the room.
Zoran leaned against the marble counter. "Can we at least know your name?"
Cassia paused. She looked up, her pale blue eyes meeting Zoran’s dark ones.
"No," Cassia said.
Zoran blinked, an amused smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "No? Why not?"
"No," Cassia repeated, her tone perfectly flat, offering no explanation, as if the single word was a complete and inarguable sentence.
Undeterred, Zoran decided to play his hand anyway. He gestured to himself, then pointed a thumb over his shoulder toward the couch. "Well, I’m Zoran. And this is Dante."
Cassia looked at Zoran. Then, she shifted her gaze slightly, looking past him to where Dante was sitting on the couch. She looked at the man who held the power of life and death over thousands, the man whose very name made seasoned criminals sweat.
"Okay," Cassia said.
It was the most indifferent "okay" either man had ever heard. She didn't ask for their last names. She didn't ask what they did for a living, or who had shot them, or why they were hiding from hospitals.
Zoran let out a low chuckle, genuinely entertained. He rested his hands on the counter. "I have to say, doctor, your bedside manner is certainly different from what I’d expect."
Cassia finally put her pen down. She looked squarely at Zoran, her expression devoid of humor. She didn't bother responding verbally to the comment. Instead, she gave him a pointed, heavily weighted look.
It was a look that said everything she was choosing not to say out loud.
It clearly communicated: You two bleeding idiots barged into my life in the middle of the night, disrupted my sleep, bled on my furniture, and forced me to perform an off-the-books surgery.
I am not your host, I am not your friend, and I feel no obligation to be polite to the people responsible for this headache.
Dante, watching this silent, devastating exchange from the couch, found himself quietly deeply amused.
A faint, genuine smile —the first he had worn in a very long time—touched the corners of his mouth.
Her sheer refusal to be charmed, intimidated, or even mildly impressed by either of them was fascinating.
What neither Dante nor Zoran realized, as they sat in her living room, was that Cassia had no idea who Dante actually was.
She didn't follow the local gossip columns. She didn't read the society pages detailing the movements of Italy’s wealthiest and most dangerous families. And even if she had, the name 'Dante Fazzari' wouldn't have meant much to her.
Cassia had grown up in the darkest, most violent corners of the foster care system.
She had been surrounded by cruelty, violence, and predators her entire life.
The concept of a mob boss, no matter how powerful, wasn't shocking or intimidating to her in the slightest. If anything, she had survived far more dangerous circumstances than a couple of men in expensive suits hiding from something.
So, when Zoran had introduced them as "Zoran and Dante," Cassia had taken it at face value. Her attitude essentially amounted to: Okay, and what am I supposed to do with that information?
She picked her pen back up, turned her eyes back to the medical chart, and went back to work, ignoring the two most dangerous men in Rome as if they were nothing more than a passing breeze.