Chapter 23
SCARLETT
I can’t stop shaking.
My whole body is trembling like I’m freezing even though the room isn’t cold. My hands won’t stay still. My breath keeps coming in short gasps that don’t give me enough air.
Luca is gone.
The reality of it keeps hitting me in waves, each one worse than the last. My baby was stolen from his bed while I slept two floors away. Taken by Viktor who’s been planning this for months. And I didn’t see it coming. Didn’t stop it. Didn’t save him.
This is my fault.
I brought him here. Called Dante when I should have kept running. Trusted his protection when I should have known better than to think anywhere could be safe. And now my son is with monsters.
“Scarlett.” Marco’s voice breaks through my thoughts. “The doctor needs to check on Rosa. You should come with me.”
I let him lead me from the room to the medical wing on legs that don’t feel like mine. Everything feels distant and disconnected. Like I’m watching this happen to someone else.
Rosa is laid out on a bed with Dr. Giovanni working on her head. There’s so much blood. Her face is pale and swollen and she’s not moving.
“Concussion,” the doctor says without looking up. “Severe. She tried to fight them off but there were too many.”
She tried to protect him. Tried to stop them from taking my baby. And they beat her unconscious and took him anyway. The guilt is crushing. Suffocating. I can barely breathe past it.
“Is she going to be okay?” I hear myself ask.
“She’ll live. But she needs rest and monitoring for the next twenty-four hours.”
I sink into the chair beside her bed and take her hand. It’s cold and limp.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
She can’t hear me, but I say it anyway because the guilt has to go somewhere.
I sit there for maybe twenty minutes before the shaking gets worse and I have to move. Have to do something other than sit still with my thoughts.
The house is chaos. Guards running everywhere. Phones ringing constantly. Men shouting orders and coordinates and search patterns.
But no one has found Viktor. No one knows where he took my son.
I find myself walking to Dante’s office without meaning to. The door is hanging off its hinges and I can hear him before I see him.
“I don’t care if you have to tear apart every building in Brooklyn! Find him!”
I step inside and stop.
The office is destroyed. Completely demolished. His desk is overturned and splintered. The computer monitors are smashed. Papers everywhere. Books ripped from shelves and thrown across the room. Even the heavy chair is broken into pieces against the wall.
And in the middle of it all is Dante, breathing hard, his shirt torn and bloodstained from his split knuckles.
He’s on the phone and his voice is something I’ve never heard before. Raw. Uncontrolled. Filled with rage so intense it makes the air feel dangerous.
“Seventy-two hours,” he snarls. “We have less than three days to find my son. So stop telling me about problems and start giving me solutions.”
He hangs up and immediately hurls the phone against the wall where it shatters.
Then he picks up what’s left of a lamp and throws that too. Then a picture frame. Then anything else within reach.
I’ve never seen him like this. Never seen the control slip even a fraction. But right now there’s no control. Just pure destruction and rage.
Marco appears behind me. “Boss, we’ve got teams checking Viktor’s known associates. His apartment was cleared out but we’re tracking—”
“It’s not enough!” Dante roars. He grabs what’s left of his desk and flips it completely over. The crash is deafening. “My son is out there with a traitor and you’re checking apartments?”
“We’re doing everything—”
“Then do more! Bring me Viktor’s family. His friends. Anyone who might know where he’d take a child. I don’t care what you have to do to make them talk.”
Marco nods and backs out quickly.
Dante stands there breathing hard, staring at the wreckage around him like he doesn’t recognize it.
“Dante,” I try quietly.
He spins toward me and the look in his eyes makes me take a step back. They’re wild. Empty. Completely unhinged.
“What?” The word comes out harsh.
“We need to plan. We need to figure out how to get him back.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He’s shaking now, his hands clenched into fists. “You think I haven’t been running every scenario through my head?”
“Then talk to me. We can—”
“This is my fault.” He slams his fist into the wall hard enough to put a hole through the plaster. “I should have seen Viktor’s betrayal sooner. Should have investigated him the moment I had suspicions. Should have protected Luca better.”
“Dante—”
“I brought you here. Promised you’d be safe. Swore my protection meant something.” His voice is cold. Flat. “And I let a traitor work under my nose for fifteen years while he planned this. While he positioned himself to take my son.”
The guilt in his voice cuts through my own panic because it’s the same guilt eating me alive.
“It’s not just your fault,” I hear myself say.
He goes still. “What?”
And the confession I’ve been holding spills out before I can stop it.
“I should have told you about Viktor sooner. I did tell you, but not soon enough.” My voice is shaking. “I noticed things weeks before I said anything. The way he watched me during the memory sessions. The questions he asked about what I remembered. How he always seemed to be nearby.”
“You told me days ago—”
“But I felt something was wrong before that. Weeks before.” Tears are streaming down my face now. “I felt uncomfortable around him almost from the beginning but I didn’t say anything because I was scared.”
Dante’s expression goes dangerously still.
“Scared of what?”
“That you’d think I was paranoid. That you’d send us away if I caused problems between you and your second-in-command.
” My voice cracks. It’s all information I’ve told him before, but it just feels so much heavier now and I can’t stop internalizing the blame.
“So I stayed quiet. I noticed and I felt weird and I said nothing for weeks. And now Viktor has Luca because I was too afraid to speak up when it mattered.”
The silence that follows is crushing.
Dante just stares at me with those grey eyes gone completely arctic. Cold. Empty. Void of anything recognizable.
I wait for him to agree. To confirm what I already know. That my silence led to this. That I failed our son.
Instead his voice comes out flat and final.
“We get him back. Then we deal with everything else.”
No absolution. No comfort. No reassurance that it’s not my fault.
Just cold pragmatism and a refusal to acknowledge anything beyond the immediate crisis.
He walks past me without another word, and I’m left standing in his destroyed office feeling like I’ve been hollowed out.
The next several hours blur together.
Marco brings maps of the cathedral. Dante outlines positions for his men. They discuss entry points and extraction routes and backup plans.
I sit in the corner of the war room and try to follow along but the words don’t stick. All I can think about is Luca.
Is he cold? Scared? Hurt?
Does he think I abandoned him?
The thoughts are torture, but I can’t stop them.
Elena shows up sometime in the afternoon. She doesn’t ask questions or offer empty comfort. Just sits beside me and holds my hand while Dante and his men plan.
“They’re going to get him back,” she says quietly.
I can’t respond. Can’t find words past the crushing weight in my chest.
The sun sets and the estate stays on lockdown. Guards everywhere, up and doing, but no word on Viktor’s location.
He’s vanished completely. Like he planned every detail and knew exactly how to disappear.
I end up back in Luca’s room because I can’t stand to be anywhere else. His bed is still rumpled. His stuffed dinosaur is still on the pillow. Everything still smells like my son.
I pick up the dinosaur and hold it against my chest. He doesn’t have it with him. Wherever Viktor took him, Luca doesn’t have his favorite toy.
That thought breaks something in me and I start crying. The kind of sobbing that shakes my whole body and makes it impossible to breathe.
This is my fault. My fault. My fault.
I don’t know how long I sit there crying before I hear footsteps.
Dante appears in the doorway. He looks like hell. Eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. Face drawn. Still covered in dried blood.
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“Can’t sleep?” he finally asks.
“Can you?”
“No.”
He crosses the room and sits beside me on Luca’s bed. Neither of us speaks for a while.
“I keep seeing his face,” I finally say. “When I tucked him in last night. He looked so happy. So safe.” My voice breaks. “And now he’s with Viktor and I can’t stop imagining how scared he must be.”
“He’s strong. Like his mother.”
“He’s five years old. He shouldn’t have to be strong.”
“I know.”
The tears start again and I can’t stop them. Can’t hold anything back anymore.
“What if we don’t get him back? What if Viktor kills him anyway after he gets the ledger? What if—”
“We’re getting him back.” Dante’s voice is rough. Raw. “That’s not a question.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because the alternative isn’t survivable.” He turns to look at me and I see the same terror I’m feeling reflected in his eyes. “For either of us.”
I break down completely then. Sobbing so hard I can barely breathe. All the fear and guilt and crushing terror pouring out.
Dante pulls me against him and holds me tight while I fall apart.
“I’m sorry,” I cry into his chest. “I’m so sorry. For not speaking up sooner. For bringing him here. For everything.”
But he doesn’t say anything, he just holds me while I shake and cry and break into pieces.
We sit there for a long time. Me crying. Him holding me. Neither of us talking about the impossible choice ahead or the seventy-two-hour deadline or the fact that we might lose everything.
Eventually the tears stop because there’s nothing left. I’m empty and exhausted.
“Come on,” Dante says quietly. “You need to rest.”
He leads me to his room and we lie down together without bothering to change. He wraps himself around me and I curl into him desperately seeking any comfort I can find.
“We’re going to get him back,” Dante says into the darkness. “Whatever it takes. Whoever we have to kill. We’re bringing Luca home.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
I close my eyes and try to believe him. Try to quiet the terror screaming through my veins long enough to rest.
We lie there in the darkness holding each other, and somewhere between the fear and the planning and the guilt, something unspoken passes between us.
A pact.
Whatever it takes, we get our son back.
Or we die trying.
His arms tighten around me and I press closer, drawing strength from his presence even though I know he’s just as broken as I am.
Eventually exhaustion pulls me under into fitful sleep filled with nightmares of Luca crying for me while I can’t reach him.
When I wake a few hours later in the pre-dawn darkness, Dante is still awake staring at the ceiling.
“Did you sleep at all?” I whisper.
“No.”
“Dante—”
“I can’t. Every time I close my eyes I see him.”
I take his hand and hold it tight. We don’t say anything else. Don’t need to.
We both know what’s coming.
In a few hours, I will walk into that cathedral, face Viktor, and trade the ledger for our son’s life.
For our sake, I hope the universe is kind enough to make things work out in our favor.