Chapter 21
SCARLETT
“Focus on his mouth,” Dante says. “Not his eyes. His mouth. What shape were his lips making?”
I squeeze my eyes tighter and try to push past the blood and the fear and the way Antonio’s body kept twitching even after Dante’s bullet tore through him.
It’s another session of trying to get my memories of that night back. We’ve been at it for an hour already and my head is starting to pound.
“I don’t know. It’s still just pieces.”
“Try again. You’re close, I can feel it.”
I go back in again, to Antonio’s office. The smell of blood and bullet is so strong, and Antonio is dying in front of me again, his lips are moving, trying to say something.
“Saint…Sebastian…watches…”
Then it finally clicks. The whole thing, like someone finally turned the last piece of a puzzle in.
“Saint Sebastian watches the sinners burn at the old cathedral.”
My eyes fly open and I nearly choke on my breath.
“Scarlett?” Dante leans forward in his chair in concern. “What is it? What did you see?”
I stare at him and my mind is racing so fast I can barely keep up with the thoughts. Because I know what those words mean. I’ve known for six years, ever since I paid a private investigator a gross amount to dig up everything he could find on the Marchetti family.
The PI found newspaper archives dated back decades.
Obituaries. Birth announcements. And one detail that stuck with me because it seemed so specific: the Marchetti family held their funerals at St. Sebastian’s Cathedral in Brooklyn for over a hundred years.
The church closed in the eighties. Abandoned and left to rot.
That’s where Antonio must have hid the ledger.
Which means I’m holding the answer everyone in this city is killing for. And if I tell Dante, he’ll go after it. The other families will find out and that will mean trouble. They’ll gather at that cathedral, and lots of people will die in the process.
“Scarlett.” Dante’s voice pulls me out of the thought. “Talk to me. What did you remember?”
I open my mouth and what comes out is a lie.
“Nothing. It slipped away.” I press my hand to my forehead because it’s not entirely fake, my head really is throbbing. “I thought I had it but then it just…disappeared.”
He watches me for a long moment and I force myself to hold his gaze even though everything in me wants to look away. Lying to Dante feels wrong in ways I didn’t expect. When did that happen? When did his opinion start mattering so much?
“You’re pale,” he says finally. “We’ve been pushing too hard.”
“Maybe. I think I need to lie down.”
“Yeah, you need rest. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
I practically run out of his office, my heart hammering against my ribs. Rosa is in the kitchen when I pass through and she calls out something about lunch, but I just wave her off and keep moving until I’m in my room with the door closed.
Then I sit on the edge of the bed and try to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do.
There’s no good choice here. Both choices are filled with different cons.
I spend the rest of the morning in my room, pretending to rest but staring at the ceiling and running through the same thoughts over and over.
Rosa brings lunch that I barely touch. And when Luca comes in wanting to play, I do my best to be present for him, but my mind keeps drifting back to that memory.
Around two p.m., Elena shows up with her kids.
We get the children settled in the playroom. Rosa agrees to watch them while Elena and I retreat to the sitting room where no one will interrupt us.
“Alright.” Elena drops onto the couch and fixes me with a look. “Spill. You’ve got that face.”
“What face?”
“The face that says you’re carrying something heavy and you’re about to collapse under the weight of it.” She pats the cushion next to her. “Sit. Talk to me.”
So I sit, then I tell her everything.
About the memory session, and what I recalled. About the PI I hired six years ago. That I put it together.
But I don’t tell her the location either.
“So let me get this straight,” Elena says when I finish. “You know where the ledger is. And you haven’t told Dante.”
“I lied to his face this morning. Told him I couldn’t remember.”
“Why?”
“Because if I tell him, people will die. He will go after it and every family in the city will show up ready for war. It’ll be disastrous.”
Elena is quiet for a moment. Then she leans forward and takes both my hands in hers.
“Scarlett. Listen to me carefully because I’m only going to say this once.
” Her grip tightens. “In this world, you protect your own. Full stop. Those people who might die because of the tussle for the ledger? They’re not your family.
I’m sorry to sound this selfish, but it’s the truth.
They’re not your responsibility. They made their choices when they joined up with men like their bosses.
You didn’t put them in danger. They put themselves there. ”
“But I’d be the one who—”
“No. You’d be the one who chose to keep her son safe.
That’s all this is. A mother protecting her child.
” She squeezes my hands harder. “Do you think any of those families would hesitate for even a second if they had information that could save their kids? Do you think they’d lose sleep over your death or Luca’s if it meant getting what they wanted? ”
I don’t answer because we both know the answer.
“They wouldn’t,” she spells it out. “So you can’t afford to lose sleep over them. Not when Luca’s safety is on the line.”
“There’s something else. “It’s about Viktor,” I add.
“What about him?”
“He makes me uncomfortable. The way he watches me sometimes, like he’s waiting for something.
He’s always nearby when Dante and I do the memory sessions, always lurking just out of sight.
” I pull my hands back and wrap my arms around myself.
“I never told Dante because I thought he’d think I was being paranoid.
Or worse, that he’d send me and Luca away if I caused problems between him and his second-in-command. ”
Elena’s expression goes hard. “You need to tell him. Tonight. All of it.”
“What if I’m wrong?”
“Then you’re wrong and Dante investigates and finds nothing. But what if you’re right?” She stands up and starts pacing, the way she always does when she’s agitated. “Your gut kept you alive for six years, Scarlett. Don’t start ignoring it now just because you’re scared of being inconvenient.”
“Alright. I will. Thank you.”
We talk for another hour. About the cons of loving men like Dante and Marco.
“You know what Marco told me once?” Elena says, her voice softer now. “He said every man in this business has blood on his hands. The only difference is whether they’re honest about it or not.”
“Does that make it easier? Knowing?”
“Nothing makes it easy. But it makes it real. And real is something you can work with.”
By the time she leaves, I know what I have to do.
That night, after Luca is asleep, I find Dante in his office. He’s surrounded by papers, maps spread across his desk.
“Hey,” I call softly, and he looks up.
“Feeling better?”
“Yeah, but I need to tell you something.”
The seriousness in my voice makes him seat up, pushing the papers aside. “Okay.”
I close the door behind me. Cross the room until I’m standing in front of the desk.
“This morning, when I said I couldn’t remember what Antonio whispered.” I force myself to meet his eyes. “I lied.”
And to my surprise he doesn’t give a reaction. Not even a blink, he just listens.
“Saint Sebastian watches the sinners burn at the old cathedral. That’s what he said. And I know exactly what it means.”
He still doesn’t say anything, and I continue.
I tell him about the PI, and the research I did after I ran. About the Marchetti family funerals and the abandoned cathedral in Brooklyn.
He listens without interrupting. When I finally finish, he leans back in his chair.
“You’ve known this all day.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me because you were afraid of what would happen when I went after it.”
“People are going to die, Dante. The second you make a move on that cathedral, every family in the city is going to know. It’ll cause a war.”
“It’s already a war, and has been for years.” He stands up and comes around the desk, stopping in front of me. “Why are you telling me now?”
“Because Luca and I are in danger and I can’t protect him alone. And I know the attacks won’t stop until someone finds that ledger. Because…” I swallow hard. “Because lying to you felt wrong.”
An expression passes through his eye, then he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering against my jaw.
“There’s something else,” I say. “About Viktor.”
His hand stills. “What about him?”
I tell him. The lurking, the way my skin crawls whenever he’s nearby. How I kept quiet because I was scared of causing problems.
Dante’s jaw tightens as he listens. When I finish, there’s a coldness in his expression that wasn’t there before.
“You should have told me immediately.”
“I know. I was scared.”
“Of me?”
“Of being sent away.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then he pulls me into his arms and holds me against his chest, his chin resting on top of my head.
“I’m not sending you anywhere,” he says quietly. “And I’m not ignoring your instincts. Viktor’s been with me for fifteen years, but that doesn’t make him above suspicion.”
I let myself lean into him.
“So what do we do now?” I ask.
He pulls back and looks at me. “What do you think we should do?”
The question catches me off guard. He’s asking my opinion, not just informing me of decisions he’s already made.
“I think we need to be smart about it. Small team. People you trust completely. Get in, get the ledger, get out before anyone realizes what’s happening.”
He nods slowly. “Come here.”
He leads me to his desk where the maps are spread out. For the next three hours, we go over everything together. Entry points. Exit strategies. Who to trust. Who to watch.
“The cathedral has three access points.” He pulls up pictures from the media. “The main entrance is too exposed. The side door through the old rectory might work, but we’d need to clear it first.”
“What about underground? Old churches usually have crypts.”
He looks at me with approval. “There’s basement access through a maintenance tunnel two blocks east. Connects to the old subway system.”
“That’s how we get in?”
“Yes.” He pulls out another map, this one showing the surrounding streets. “I’ll need Marco and a team of six. People I trust with my life.”
“What about Viktor?”
“Viktor stays here. Manages estate security while we’re gone.” His expression is neutral, but I can see the calculation behind his eyes. “If something happens while we’re at the cathedral, we’ll know where the leak came from.”
I nod. It’s a smart idea. Keep your potential enemy close, but not close enough to do damage.
He asks my opinion on timing, routes, and how many men is too many. And he listens when I answer.
Sometime around two in the morning, bent over maps and screens, with coffee going cold beside us, I realize something has changed between us.
I’m not just his baby mama or a woman who needs his protection—we’re partners.