Chapter 36
DANTE
Scarlett insists on going to get Luca herself. I’m not even surprised, that woman never listens.
I want to argue and tell her to let the men bring him. Insist on going with her, because I can’t let her out of my sight after all we’ve been through. But the look in her eyes stops me.
She insists she needs to hold her son. Needs to feel his small body against hers and know that he’s real and alive and safe. I understand that need because I fell it too.
So I let her go.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, her voice still shaky from what she’d just done. “I need to see him.”
“Go. I’ll get the ledger.”
She nods and disappears through the doorway that leads down to the catacombs, leaving me alone in the cathedral with the bodies and the blood and the deafening silence that felt louder than the gunfire had been.
The ledger. I left it in the side chapel when Isabella’s forces attacked, hidden behind the statue of St. Sebastian where Antonio had concealed it all those years ago. I need to retrieve it before someone else finds it.
I make my way through the destruction, stepping over fallen soldiers, avoiding the worst of the carnage. The cathedral looks like a death hole because that’s exactly what it became. Bodies and blood everywhere.
My men. Isabella’s men. Viktor’s men. All of them dead or dying, scattered across the floor. I try not to look at faces. There’ll be time for that later, for the grief and the guilt and the cold accounting of lives spent.
The side chapel is quiet. Untouched by the worst of the fighting, like a small pocket of peace in the middle of hell. St. Sebastian still stands in his alcove, arrows piercing his stone flesh, face turned toward heaven in eternal suffering.
Where the saint watches the sinners.
I reach behind the statue and pull out the waterproof cases. Three of them, heavy with secrets that have destroyed lives for decades. I set them on the floor and kneel there in the dim light, staring at what they represent.
Ultimate power. Complete control over the five families. The ability to protect my family forever. And the truth about my father.
Viktor’s words keep echoing in my head. The things he gasped out while I had my knife to his throat, before I beat him unconscious and left him bleeding on the altar. The confession I didn’t want to hear but couldn’t escape.
The ledger contains proof that my father orchestrated child trafficking operations for over a decade.
That he worked hand in hand with Antonio Marchetti to move girls through the ports, selling them to the highest bidder like they were livestock instead of human beings.
That Antonio didn’t die because of a simple power struggle between families.
Antonio died because he discovered the full scope of what they were doing and threatened to expose it. My father had his own partner murdered to protect the secret.
He sent me as his weapon.
The man who raised me. Who taught me about honor and loyalty and protecting our blood above all else. Who I spent my entire life trying to impress, working myself to exhaustion just to earn a word of approval from him.
He was a monster. Worse than Antonio ever dreamed of being. Worse than Viktor. Worse than Isabella.
He trafficked children. Sold them like cargo. Built our family’s wealth on the suffering of innocents.
And I never knew. Never even suspected. How blind was I? How desperate for his love that I couldn’t see the truth staring me in the face?
I stare at the cases, my hands shaking. The evidence is all here. Names. Dates. Shipping manifests. Financial records tracing payments from buyers across three continents. Photographs I don’t want to look at but know I’ll have to eventually.
Enough to prove beyond any doubt what my father did. And now I have to decide what to do with it.
I told Viktor I would release it, that I didn’t care about how it’ll impact my family. But as I think of Luca, I can’t bear to run his future with the knowledge from the ledger
Using this ledger means power. Real power.
The kind that would let me control every family in the city, guarantee my family’s safety for generations, ensure that no one ever threatens Scarlett or Luca again.
Every boss from here to Chicago would answer to me.
Every politician on my father’s payroll would become mine to command.
Every judge, every cop, every businessman with dirty secrets would bow to the Moretti name.
I would be untouchable. My family would be protected forever.
But using it also means exposing what my father did.
Dragging the Moretti name through the mud.
Destroying everything my family built over three generations.
The legacy I’ve spent my whole life protecting would crumble to dust, and everyone would know that it was built on the bones of trafficked children.
The alternative is destroying the ledger. Burning it all. Letting the dead stay buried and the secrets stay hidden. Protecting my father’s memory even though he doesn’t deserve a moment of protection.
But if I destroy it, I lose the one weapon that ensures Scarlett and Luca will never be hunted again.
The other families will keep coming. The threats will never end.
We’ll spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, waiting for the next attack, the next kidnapping, the next attempt on our lives.
I’m paralyzed. Kneeling in this ruined chapel surrounded by death, holding the power to change everything, and I can’t move. I can’t think or breathe past the weight pressing down on my chest.
How do I choose between my father’s memory and my son’s future? Between the family name I’ve carried with pride my whole life and the family I’m trying to build? Between power and truth, protection and honor?
I’ve made a thousand hard decisions over the years. Killed men with my own hands. Ordered deaths without flinching. But none of that prepared me for this moment.
I don’t know what to do. For the first time in my life, I genuinely don’t know.
“Dante?”
I look up and there she is.
Scarlett, standing in the chapel doorway with Luca’s hand in hers.
She looks like she’s been through a war because she has.
Covered in blood that’s mostly not hers, exhausted, traumatized.
There are shadows under her eyes and a haunted look that tells me she’s seen things tonight that will stay with her forever.
But her eyes are clear as they meet mine.
And Luca is beside her. My son. Clinging to his mother’s hand, his small face pale and tear-streaked, those dinosaur pajamas torn and dirty. He looks so small. So fragile.
“What’s that?” Scarlett asks, her gaze moving to the cases spread out in front of me.
“The ledger. Everything Antonio hid. Everything my father did.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “The truth about who he really was.”
She guides Luca to a broken pew nearby, tells him to sit and close his eyes for a minute, that Mama and D need to talk about grown-up things. Then she comes to kneel beside me, her hand finding my arm.
“Tell me.”
So I do. All of it. Viktor’s confession. What the ledger contains. The trafficking operations. My father’s involvement. The real reason Antonio died. The impossible choice I’m facing.
She listens without interrupting, her face going pale as the horror of it sinks in, her grip on my arm tightening with each new revelation. When I finally stop talking, she’s quiet for a long moment, processing everything I’ve just dumped on her.
“Whatever you decide,” she says finally, her voice soft but sure, “we stand by you. Luca and me. Whatever you choose, we’re with you.”
“Even if I choose wrong?”
“There’s no wrong choice here. There’s just the choice you can live with.”
I look over at my son. He’s watching us with those big grey eyes, so much like mine, not understanding what we’re talking about but sensing that something important is happening. Something that will change everything.
“D?” His small voice cuts through the silence. “Are the bad people all gone now?”
The question hits me like a fist to the chest. Are the bad people really gone? How do I answer that when I’m kneeling here holding evidence that my own father was one of the worst of them?
“Yeah, buddy.” My voice comes out rough. “The bad people are gone.”
He nods, accepting my word because he trusts me. Because I’m his father and he believes what I tell him. The weight of that trust settles onto my shoulders alongside everything else.
“Can we go home now? I’m really tired, D.”
Home. He just wants to go home. Wants this nightmare to be over so he can sleep in his own bed and eat breakfast and play with his toys and be a normal five-year-old again. Such a simple wish from a boy who’s been through more trauma in the last few days than most people experience in a lifetime.
I look at him. Really look at him. This beautiful, innocent child who has my eyes and Scarlett’s fierce spirit.
Who survived being kidnapped and held at gunpoint and trapped in the middle of a warzone.
Who still manages to trust, still manages to hope, despite everything the world has thrown at him.
He deserves better than this. Better than growing up in the shadow of blood money and buried secrets. Better than inheriting an empire built on suffering. Better than carrying the weight of his grandfather’s sins.
He deserves truth. He deserves a father who chose the right thing when it mattered most.
And in that moment, looking at my son’s tired face, the choice becomes clear.
“I’m going to release it,” I say, and my voice doesn’t shake. My original decision still is best. “All of it. The ledger, the evidence, everything. I’m going to expose what my father did. What Antonio did. What all of them did.”
Scarlett’s breath catches. “Dante, that means—”
“I know what it means. The Moretti name becomes poison overnight. Even though I run my own empire, I still carry my father’s name.” I turn to look at her. “But I don’t care. Because he deserves better.”
I gesture toward Luca.
“He deserves to grow up knowing his father chose truth over power. Chose honor over protection. Chose to do the right thing even when it was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
That’s the legacy I want to leave him. Not money or power or a name built on the suffering of innocents.
I want him to know that when it mattered, his father was a good man. ”
Scarlett is crying now. Silent tears that mix with the blood and grime on her face. But she’s smiling too, this beautiful broken smile that makes my chest ache with how much I love her.
“This is the man I fell in love with,” she says, her voice thick with emotion. “Right here. This version of you, making this choice. I’m so proud of you, Dante. So incredibly proud.”
She leans forward and kisses me, and it tastes like tears and blood and hope for the future we’re going to build together. Her hands cup my face, holding me like something precious.
“Daddy?” Luca’s voice breaks the moment. “Can we please go home now?”
I freeze. Daddy. He called me daddy. Not D. Daddy.
I pull back from Scarlett and look at my son, this perfect boy who just gave me the only title that has ever truly mattered.
“Yeah, buddy.” I manage to get the words out past the lump in my throat. “We can go home.”
I gather the cases and tuck them under my arm. Then I reach down with my free hand. Luca takes it immediately, his small fingers wrapping around mine with eagerness. Scarlett takes his other hand.
Together, the three of us walk out of the ruined cathedral.
We step over bodies, around pools of blood, through ash and destruction. I keep Luca’s face pressed against my leg so he doesn’t see the worst of it. When we reach the broken doors, I don’t look back. There’s nothing behind us now except ghosts.
Outside, the cold dawn is waiting for us.
Snow is falling. Soft white flakes drifting down from a grey winter sky, covering the blood and death in a blanket of pure white. It’s peaceful out here. Almost beautiful.
Luca reaches up to catch a snowflake on his palm, awe and excitement momentarily replacing the fear in his tired eyes.
Children, how precious and pure their souls are.
“Look, Mama. Snow.”
“I see it, baby.” Scarlett manages a tired but genuine smile. “It’s beautiful.”
We walk into the falling snow together, a family leaving the ruins and the ghosts behind.
A family forged in fire and in blood, finally choosing light over darkness.