Chapter 2 - “You wouldn’t make it to the state line,” Dante said flatly.
“Marcus has eyes on every bus terminal and train station.
No.
You’re not running anymore.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Dante stood up, offering me his clean right hand.
“You’re going to come upstairs with me.
We are going to get you a clean shirt, pour a very large drink, and figure out how to destroy Marcus Bellamy.”
The war began quietly.
I didn’t return to Bay Four.
I was moved into the penthouse suite above the garage, a sprawling loft of exposed brick, bulletproof glass, and luxury that stood in stark contrast to the grit below.
For the first week, I healed.
Dante sent up a private doctor who asked no questions, stitched my shoulder, and left.
Dante visited every evening.
He didn’t ask me to bind my chest, and he didn’t call me Eli.
He treated me with a guarded fascination.
We sat by the massive fireplace, drinking scotch, and he made me tell him everything.
I told him about my father’s gambling debts.
I told him how Marcus Bellamy had bought those debts, using them to force my father into signing over our estates and, ultimately, me.
I told him about the night I ran, the scissors, the cold drive into the city.
“He expects obedience,” I told Dante one night, staring into the flames.
“He likes breaking things.
If he gets me back now, after I’ve humiliated him…” I shuddered, unable to finish the thought.
Dante sat in the armchair opposite me, swirling the amber liquid in his glass.
“He won’t get you back.”
“You don’t know that.
If he finds out—”
“Let him find out,” Dante interrupted softly.
I looked at him, stunned.
“Are you insane?
You said yourself it would start a war.”
“A war I am fully prepared to win,” Dante stated with terrifying confidence.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.
“Your father is weak, Elena.
Marcus is arrogant.
Arrogance is a disease that makes men sloppy.
For seven months, Marcus has been bleeding money, paying off cops, funding private investigators.
His organization is distracted.
Vulnerable.”
“Why do you care?”
I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“Why risk your empire for a mechanic who lied to you?”
Dante held my gaze.
The intensity in his dark eyes made my breath hitch.
It was the same look he had given me the first day he noticed me, but magnified.
“Because you fixed my Mustang,” he said, a faint smirk playing on his lips.
“And good mechanics are hard to find.”
Before I could respond, the heavy steel door of the penthouse opened.
Tony burst in, breathless and pale.
He didn’t even knock.
“Boss,” Tony gasped, glancing at me before looking back to Dante.
“We have a problem.”
Dante didn’t raise his voice.
“Report.”
“Bellamy’s men.
Three SUVs just pulled up to the front gates.
Heavy hitters.
Marcus is in the lead car.”
Tony swallowed hard.
“They’re asking to search the premises.
They claim they tracked a burner phone signal to this block.”
My blood turned to ice.
The phone.
Before the shooting, I had used a cheap burner to call my father’s estate, just to hear if the maid, Maria, was okay.
I hadn’t spoken, just listened, but the call lasted thirty seconds.
Enough to trace a cell tower ping.
“They can’t come in here,” I panicked, standing up, my hand instinctively going to my wounded shoulder.
“Dante, I have to hide.
The basement—”
“Sit down, Elena,” Dante commanded.
He stood up, buttoning his suit jacket with a terrifying calm.
He checked the clip of his weapon and slid it into his shoulder holster.
“Dante, there are three cars of them,” I pleaded.
“Let them in,” Dante told Tony.
Tony’s eyes went wide.
“Boss, if they see her—”
“I said, let them in.
Open the main garage doors.
Tell Marcus I will meet him on the floor.”
Dante turned to me.
“Go to the bedroom.
There is a suit in the closet.
Black silk.
Put it on.
Fix your hair.”
“What?
You want me to dress up?”
“I want you to look like exactly who you are,” Dante said.
“You aren’t Eli Ross cowering in the shadows anymore.
You are Elena Russo.
And you are standing beside me.”
“He’ll take me,” I whispered, terrified.
Dante crossed the room in three strides.
He cupped my face in his large, warm hands.
His thumbs brushed over my cheekbones, wiping away a tear I hadn’t realized I shed.
“No one is taking you anywhere,” he vowed, his voice a low, fierce rumble.
“Do you trust me?”
I looked into the eyes of Chicago’s most feared crime boss.
I thought of the way he had protected me, patched my wounds, and sat with me in the dark.
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Then get dressed.
And come downstairs.”
The garage floor was a scene out of a nightmare.
Six of Dante’s mechanics, all armed with shotguns and automatic rifles, stood in a semicircle around the perimeter.
In the center, beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, stood Marcus Bellamy.
He hadn’t aged well in seven months.
His face was puffy, his eyes manic and bloodshot.
He was flanked by eight massive enforcers, all with hands hovering near their coats.
Dante stood casually leaning against the hood of a vintage Ferrari, smoking a cigarette.
He looked like a king observing unruly peasants in his court.
“Marcus,” Dante drawled, exhaling a plume of gray smoke.
“To what do I owe the displeasure of you scuffing my floors?”
“Cut the crap, Moretti,” Marcus spat, pacing like a caged animal.
“We traced a call from my runaway fiancée to this exact address.
I know she’s hiding here.”
“A runaway fiancée,” Dante mused.
“Sounds careless of you to lose her.”
“She’s my property,” Marcus snarled.
“Her father signed the contracts.
She belongs to me.
Hand her over, and I’ll forget this insult.
Hide her, and I’ll burn this garage to the ground with you inside it.”
Dante laughed.
It was a cold, cruel sound.
“You threaten a fire in a house of gunpowder, Marcus.
Not very bright.”
I stood on the catwalk above, shrouded in the shadows of the staircase.
I was wearing the black silk suit Dante had provided.
It tailored perfectly to my frame.
My dark hair fell in soft waves over my shoulders.
I felt my chest tighten, not from a binder, but from sheer adrenaline.
“I’m not leaving without her!”
Marcus roared, drawing his weapon.
Instantly, a dozen guns clicked, aimed directly at his head.
Marcus’s men drew theirs in response.
A standoff.
“Then look up, Marcus,” I said.
My voice rang out, clear and steady, echoing off the concrete walls.
I stepped out of the shadows and began descending the steel staircase.
Every eye in the room snapped to me.
Marcus’s face drained of color.
He stared at me like he was seeing a ghost.
“Elena,” he breathed, taking a half-step forward.
“You… look at you.
What are you wearing?
Get over here.”
I reached the floor and walked past the armed guards, stepping directly beside Dante.
Dante didn’t flinch.
He just rested a possessive, heavy hand on the small of my back.
A clear, undeniable claim.
“I don’t belong to you, Marcus,” I said, my voice eerily calm.
“I never did.”
Marcus’s eyes darted between Dante’s hand on my waist and my defiant face.
Rage, ugly and red, mottled his cheeks.
“You dirty little whore.
You ran away to spread your legs for a grease-monkey mobster?
Your father will disown you.”
“Her father,” Dante interrupted, his voice dropping to a lethally quiet register, “no longer holds the paper on her.”
Dante reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thick manila envelope.
He tossed it onto the concrete at Marcus’s feet.
“What is this?”
Marcus demanded.
“That is a transfer of debt,” Dante explained coldly.
“While you were driving around playing detective tonight, my accountants were busy.
I bought your trucking company’s outstanding loans, Marcus.
All of them.
I bought the mortgage on your warehouses.
And I paid Elena’s father double what you gave him to dissolve your marital contract.”
Marcus stared at the envelope, his jaw working.
“You… you can’t do that.”
“I just did,” Dante smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“You’re bankrupt, Marcus.
You don’t own Chicago.
You don’t even own the car you drove here in.
I do.”
“You son of a bitch!”
Marcus raised his gun, aiming wildly at Dante.
Before Marcus could even pull the trigger, Dante moved with terrifying speed.
He drew his own weapon and fired a single shot.
The bullet shattered Marcus’s right kneecap.
Marcus screamed, collapsing onto the concrete, dropping his gun.
His enforcers instantly raised their weapons, but Dante’s men cocked their shotguns loudly.
“Anyone who wants to die for a bankrupt cripple, go ahead and pull the trigger,” Dante announced to Marcus’s men.
The enforcers looked at Marcus, writhing and screaming on the floor, then at the heavily armed men surrounding them.
Slowly, one by one, they lowered their weapons.
Dante stepped forward, standing over Marcus.
He looked down at the man who had terrified me for a year, the man who had driven me to erase my own identity.
From this angle, Marcus just looked small.
Pathetic.
“If you ever say her name again,” Dante whispered to the bleeding man, “I won’t aim for the knee.
Get him out of my shop.”
Marcus’s men rushed forward, hauling their boss up by his armpits, dragging him toward the door, leaving a trail of blood on the pristine concrete.
The heavy steel doors of the garage closed behind them with a final, resonating thud.
Silence fell over the shop once more.
Dante slowly holstered his weapon.
He turned to me.
The cold, violent mafia boss vanished, replaced by the man who had gently patched my shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.
I looked at the blood on the floor, then at Dante.
For the first time in seven months, I didn’t feel the crushing weight of panic in my chest.
I felt light.
I felt safe.
“I’m better than okay,” I breathed.
Dante stepped into my space, wrapping his arms around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest.
I rested my hands on his lapels, feeling the steady, powerful rhythm of his heart beneath the fine fabric.
“Eli Ross was a hell of a mechanic,” Dante murmured, leaning down until his lips were a breath away from mine.
“But I think I prefer Elena.”
“Elena doesn’t sweep floors,” I whispered back, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.
“No,” Dante agreed, closing the distance and pressing his lips to mine.
It was a kiss that tasted of smoke, adrenaline, and absolute possession.
“Elena runs the empire.”
Six months later, the garage on the West Side looked exactly the same from the outside.
Inside, however, things had changed.
Tony was still the manager, but the payroll was run from the penthouse upstairs.
Marcus Bellamy had quietly moved to Florida, his empire dismantled and absorbed by the Moretti family.
I didn’t wear a binder anymore.
I didn’t hide my voice.
But occasionally, when the shop was quiet and the midnight rain was lashing against the frosted glass of Bay Four, I would tie my long black hair back, put on a pair of perfectly fitted coveralls, and slide underneath the chassis of a 1967 Mustang.
Dante would sit on the leather stool in the corner, a tumbler of scotch in his hand, watching me with eyes that still missed absolutely nothing.
“You missed a spot on the intake manifold, Mrs.
Moretti,” he would tease, his deep voice echoing in the quiet garage.
I would slide out from under the car, wiping grease from my cheek with a rag, and flash him a wicked smile.
“Come down here and show me, Mr.
Moretti,” I challenged.
May you like
He always did.
The disguise was gone, the shadows were banished, and the man who ruled Chicago’s underworld belonged entirely to the mechanic who had stolen his heart.
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