Chapter 22 #3
“Are you sure? Isn’t this something Enzo can handle? We don’t want to involve too many outsiders.” Tony gathered his folders.
“Enzo is too busy looking for the mole to add this to his plate. I’ll take care of it and don’t mention it.” Dante pushed back from the table.
“I won’t.”
“Great. I need to head out.” Dante stood.
“Of course.” Tony shook Dante’s hand and he left.
Dante sent out a text to a guy as he left the building.
****
Dante let himself into Madison’s place. On the way he had stopped and picked up chicken lo mein from her favorite place and a couple of bottles of Moscato. He set them down on the kitchen table and went to look for Madison.
Angelo had told him she hadn’t left so where could she be? She hadn’t come out when he came in. He strode down the hall, but the water was running. He didn’t want to scare her, especially while she was in the shower, so he went back to the kitchen and got the food and wine ready.
He could feel her presence.
“What are you doing here?” She had on an oversized shirt and leggings. Her arms were wrapped around her waist and she looked around and avoided eye contact.
“I came to bring you some stuff that I hoped would make you feel better. Angelo told me things hadn’t gone well at your parents.”
“You didn’t need to come.”
“I know, but I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you. I can’t bear it that you’re in pain.”
She looked him in the eye. “Even when you cause it?”
“Especially when I’ve caused it. I never meant to hurt you.
It wasn’t so much that I didn’t trust you, but that I didn’t trust myself.
I didn’t trust my gut that was telling me you wouldn’t cheat and that I was enough for you.
” He moved closer to her. “I had believed the same with respect to someone else, and it turned out to be false.”
“I’m not her.”
“I know you’re not, and I’m sorry for not realizing that sooner.” He moved closer to her.
“So where does that leave us?”
“Nothing has changed for me. I still want our marriage to be real and for you to come back home. If you can accept the fact that even though I left the mob, they are still my family.”
“I understand that now. We didn’t pick the families we were born into, and they will always be a part of you.”
“Can you accept that?” Dante held his breath. This was the make it or break it moment and would determine if they had a future together or not.
“I can. I love you so much, Dante, that it hurts and I’m scared. I don’t want to turn into my parents.”
“Oh, baby, come here.” He wrapped her in his arms, and she rested her head on his shoulder. “You could never be like them.” He cupped her face in his hands so he could look into her eyes. “You’re already so different. You were taking care of them, which is more than can be said for them.”
He wiped the tears from her eyes with the pads of his thumbs. “Look at your friendship with Zoe and the way you cared for Sabrina, even though after a while she didn’t deserve it.”
“Yeah, turns out she hated me.”
“Not everyone is going to like you. All that matters is that you like yourself.”
“I’m nervous to have kids.”
“We don’t have to have them right away. We can take our time, and you can decide down the road how you feel.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to resent me if I decide I don’t want them.”
“I won’t. I’d prefer to have you than someone else and kids.”
“Oh, Dante.” She kissed him.
Dante deepened the kiss and then pulled back. “Let’s get you something to eat. I know you have to be hungry.”
“I am, but for you.”
“Me too, but we have the rest of our lives for that. Let’s eat and talk. I missed our talks.” He reached for her hand, and she slipped hers in his and it was right.
****
Dante needed to call a meeting. One that he would invite Enzo to later. Would Enzo show up or just skip it and ignore him? He was using a meeting room in one of their office buildings where they kept offices for real estate and their financial firm.
The men filed in some one by one, others in groups until everyone was there except Enzo. The family lawyer was there as well. Dante waited for his tech guy to show up. When Hunter came in, Dante began the meeting.
“The reason I called everyone here is because Hunter found out who hacked the accounts and set me up.”
“Who?” said the Don.
“Hunter, if you want to go ahead and give your report again.”
“Sure. It took me several days to uncover the culprit. He was good at hiding his tracks, but a new piece of spyware technology has come out, and I was able to use that as it was so new. The hacker didn’t have access to it yet.”
“That’s all nice and well, but who is it?”
“It’s Enzo.”
The room was so quiet you could hear a bullet drop.
“Enzo. How can it be?” Enzo’s dad asked.
“He’s family,” said Don Calo.
“Yeah, are you sure someone isn’t setting my son up like they did Dante?”
“I’m sure. Once I told Dante, he believed the same thing, so I hacked farther into his computer and I found evidence.”
“Like a manifesto. That sounds too convenient,” Don Calo said.
“No, it was checking browser history and purchases. He had scrubbed his computer well, but as I say with new technology coming out every day, I was able to piece it all together. If you want to look at the screen, you can see the images that I took.”
“Why would he do this?” The Don asked. “We’re family. We stick together.”
“Dante has something Enzo wants.” Enzo’s dad hung his head. “I didn’t think he would stoop to this, but he is obsessed.”
“With what?” the Don asked.
“Madison,” Dante and Enzo’s dad said at the same time.
“All this over a woman?”
“Yes.”
“I guess when he found out Madison and Dante were together, it set Enzo off. I remember when he came to me and asked for me to step in. We can’t get an annulment for the wedding. She’s made her choice.”
“This history goes back several years. So he planned to do this before Dante and Madison were together. There is information to suggest Lucca was next.”
“How?” Don Calo’s voice was hoarse.
“Real estate fraud and license revoking was something he had been looking up. This around the time Madison first was working at the club.”
“Why?” Enzo’s dad looked around.
“He wanted to be selected to take over the family business. He believed with Dante out, who I love like a second son, and my own son he would be next in line. Gabe is too young. I would never have picked him,” the Don said.
They all sat around the table lost in their own thoughts.
Enzo walked into the meeting room. “Was it not at one PM?”
“We opened early with a presentation you didn’t need to be here for. We found the mole.”
Enzo’s eyes got shifty and then he tried to make a run for it, but his dad blocked the door.
“How could you do this to your family?”
“It’s the Don’s fault he never let me use any of my skills that I learned in college to help out. I wanted to take over and I knew he wouldn’t choose me, unless I got rid of the competition.”
“So this wasn’t concerning Madison?” The Don asked
“After they were sneaking around together, I knew I had to do something. She was mine.” He looked at Dante. Rage on his face also radiated off of his body like tsunami waves that crashed on the shore. Ready to destroy everything in its path.
“She was never yours.” Dante shook his head.
“She would have been if you hadn’t interfered with what was happening between us. She was almost ready to date me.”
“She wasn’t. She was never interested in you, Enzo. I didn’t take what you didn’t have.”
“Enzo, no,” Enzo’s dad said.
But it was too late. He was across the room and sucker punched Dante in the face, who was at first stunned but then began pummeling Enzo.
They had to pull Dante off of Enzo, and he looked like he had a broken nose and a busted lip and there might have been a black eye forming. Blood was pouring from Enzo’s nose, but he wasn’t trying to stop it. He just kept rocking back and forth, mumbling, “She was mine,” on repeat.
Dante had called the feds to be ready pick Enzo up. They came in and hauled him away. They had been in the other room listening to the meeting. Their lawyer, Tony had gotten Dante immunity to get Enzo.
With his confession of what he had done, he was going to a federal prison. They were going to at least isolate him so that was a comfort to Dante. He didn’t want to think of Enzo being hurt in jail. After all, he was still family. Even if he was a traitor.
****
Madison sat at home unsure of what to do. She had taken several tests, and they all came back positive. She knew she had to tell Dante. She waited for him in the living room with one positive test and a new one because she was sure he was going to want her to do it again with his own eyes.
She knew he was at a meeting. He had told her that he might be home late. She didn’t have anything else to do, but practice in her head what she was going to say and to think how much her life had changed.
She wasn’t working at AS house of fashion or any other fashion house and all she had was time on her hands.
She had no idea what she was going to do.
She kept playing the conversation she had with Zoe in her mind.
She was right. Too often Madison went with what other people wanted and what made them happy that she had lost sight of who she was.
Before Dante, she wasn’t given choices, she was just expected to help out.
But with Dante he showed her what it was like to make choices on her own and for herself and what she wanted.
He had given her two beautiful gifts that she would always cherish. Madison awoke to gentle shaking.
“What? Oh sorry, I must have fallen asleep waiting for you.”
“I think I know what you want to tell me.” He held up the positive pregnancy test.
“Yes, that was part of it.”
Dante looked over her shoulder and she knew the exact moment her packed bags came into view.
“You’re leaving? Why?”
“Dante. I have to. I don’t want to bring up a baby like this.”