Chapter 3 - “That’s not an answer you give often.”
“No.”
“Try again.”
He looked at her.
“I love you.”
Scarlett stopped breathing.
Dante’s expression changed.
He seemed almost irritated with himself.
“That was not how I intended to say it.”
A laugh escaped her.
“Was there a board meeting scheduled?”
“I had imagined better circumstances.”
“You just dismantled a criminal organization before dinner.”
“A portion of one.”
“Very romantic.”
His mouth twitched.
Then he became serious again.
“I love you. And I hate that loving me put you in that room.”
Scarlett reached for his hand.
“What happened today isn’t nothing.”
“I know.”
“I’m angry.”
“You should be.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“And I am not going to become a prisoner in your house because you’re scared too.”
His jaw tightened.
“Scarlett—”
“No. Listen.”
He did.
“I decide where I work. Where I go. What kind of life I have.”
“Yes.”
“You tell me when there’s danger.”
“Yes.”
“You do not secretly manipulate my coworkers.”
Dante looked away.
Scarlett’s eyes narrowed.
“Dante.”
He remained silent.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing recently.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Ethan’s schedule was adjusted.”
She stared at him.
“You cut Ethan’s shifts because you were jealous?”
“He irritated me.”
Scarlett put both hands over her face.
The great Dante Moretti suddenly looked like a schoolboy waiting outside the principal’s office.
She began laughing.
He frowned.
“This is not amusing.”
“It is incredibly amusing.”
“I disagree.”
When she finally stopped, Scarlett leaned against him.
His arm went around her carefully.
“Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise.”
Dante sighed.
“I promise.”
Scarlett rested her head against his shoulder.
“And I love you too.”
His entire body went still.
She looked up.
“You heard me.”
“Yes.”
“Say something.”
Dante pulled her closer.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if I speak right now, I may embarrass myself.”
Scarlett smiled against his chest.
For the first time in years, Dante Moretti allowed himself to hold something precious without immediately imagining its loss.
Loving Scarlett did not make Dante a different man overnight.
That would have been easier.
It made him a man forced to examine the one he already was.
Scarlett continued working at Vita Vecchia.
Dante hated it.
They argued about it on a Monday morning.
“You do not need the money.”
“That’s not why I work.”
“I can finance your catering company tomorrow.”
“That’s exactly why you’re not financing it tomorrow.”
“Explain the logic.”
“I need to know I can build something without you buying it.”
“I would not buy it. I would invest.”
“You own twelve companies.”
“Fourteen.”
“That does not help your argument.”
Dante stared at her across his enormous kitchen.
Scarlett buttered toast.
Eventually he said, “What if the investment came from a bank?”
“I’m listening.”
“With a business plan.”
“Yes.”
“Market-rate terms.”
“Yes.”
“A loan officer I have never met.”
Scarlett narrowed her eyes.
“Have never met or will pretend you’ve never met?”
Dante looked offended.
She laughed.
Eventually, she applied for a small-business loan on her own.
Dante was allowed to review the financial projections only after she completed them.
He found three mistakes.
Scarlett found two mistakes in his corrections.
They called it even.
Meanwhile, Dante accelerated changes he had begun years earlier.
The Bellini crisis had shown him something he could no longer ignore.
He had spent most of his adult life believing order justified the world he controlled.
But Scarlett’s kidnapping exposed the lie.
It did not matter how disciplined he was.
It did not matter that he preferred negotiation.
As long as his power depended on fear, someone would eventually use fear against the people he loved.
So Dante began dismantling pieces of his own underground empire.
Quietly.
Carefully.
Some operations were sold.
Others simply stopped.
Cash businesses became legitimate corporations.
Men who wanted legal work were placed in warehouses, construction crews, and freight companies.
Men who wanted the old life were paid what they were owed and told Chicago was large enough for them to find it elsewhere.
Marcus watched the transformation with fascination.
One night he asked, “You’re really doing this?”
Dante signed a document.
“I should have done it years ago.”
“Because of Scarlett?”
Dante thought.
“Because of Michael.”
Marcus waited.
“And Scarlett made me willing to admit it.”
By spring, life had become almost ordinary.
Which, to Dante, felt miraculous.
Scarlett left shoes in his hallway.
Coffee mugs appeared in rooms where nobody had eaten or drunk anything in years.
Music returned to the kitchen.
One Saturday, Dante walked in and found Scarlett dancing badly while making pasta with Rosa.
He stood in the doorway.
Scarlett pointed a wooden spoon at him.
“Don’t judge me.”
“I would never.”
“You’re judging.”
“I am observing.”
Rosa rolled her eyes.
“He is jealous because you dance with me.”
“I am not jealous of Rosa.”
“You were jealous of Ethan.”
“Ethan had hair.”
“So does Rosa.”
Rosa laughed so hard she nearly dropped the sauce.
Dante shook his head and walked out.
Scarlett followed him into the hall.
“You smiled.”
“No.”
“You did.”
“You imagined it.”
She stepped in front of him.
“Do it again.”
“Absolutely not.”
Scarlett wrapped her arms around his neck.
Dante’s hands settled around her waist.
Three years earlier, he could not have imagined standing in his kitchen while someone laughed downstairs.
Now the possibility of returning to silence frightened him.
One Sunday in April, Dante drove Scarlett two hours north into Wisconsin.
He did not explain where they were going.
She eventually stopped asking.
They reached a quiet cemetery outside Madison.
Dante parked beneath bare maple trees.
Scarlett understood immediately.
Michael Moretti.
Beloved son.
1999–2022.
Twenty-two years old.
Dante stood with his hands in his coat pockets.
Scarlett stayed a few feet away.
He looked at the stone.
“I have never brought anyone.”
“You don’t have to talk.”
“Yes, I do.”
His voice tightened.
“He wanted to teach.”
Scarlett looked at him.
“History.”
Dante smiled faintly.
“He said businesses made me boring.”
“I like him already.”
“He would have liked you.”
The smile disappeared.
“I spent three years believing that sentence could never exist. He would have liked you. As if there could never be anyone new for him to have an opinion about.”
Scarlett stepped closer.
Dante stared at his son’s name.
“I almost resented you.”
She said nothing.
“The first time you made me laugh, I went home furious.”
“At me?”
“At myself.”
He swallowed.
“I thought happiness was evidence I was forgetting him.”
Scarlett reached for his hand.
“You’re here.”
Dante looked at her.
“You haven’t forgotten anything.”
They stood beside Michael for almost an hour.
Before leaving, Dante placed his palm against the top of the headstone.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Scarlett pretended she did not hear.
Six weeks later, Scarlett received approval for her business loan.
She burst through the front door of Dante’s house waving the envelope.
“I got it!”
Dante came out of his office.
“You got what?”
“The loan!”
He smiled.
A real smile now.
They were becoming less rare.
“I told you they would approve it.”
“You said their debt-service ratio assumptions were conservative.”
“They were.”
“You also said the bank manager lacked imagination.”
“He does.”
Scarlett launched herself into his arms.
Dante caught her.
Marcus happened to enter behind them.
He immediately turned around.
“I saw nothing.”
Scarlett laughed.
By July, Scarlett’s catering company had its first large contract.
By September, she hired two employees.
By November, Dante had moved the last major illegal cash operation out of his direct control and placed most of his wealth into businesses that could survive daylight.
It cost him money.
Power.
Several old relationships.
He slept better.
On the first Thursday in December, exactly one year after the wine incident, Dante returned to Vita Vecchia.
He wore a white shirt.
Scarlett was waiting with a full glass of red wine.
Dante looked at it.
“No.”
She smiled.
“Afraid?”
“Of you with beverages? Absolutely.”
Rosa laughed from behind the bar.
Scarlett sat opposite him.
The restaurant was closed.
Only the three of them remained.
“What are we celebrating?” Dante asked.
Scarlett slid a small envelope across the table.
He looked at it.
Memory flickered between them.
The first envelope.
Her attempt to repay a ruined shirt.
Dante opened this one.
Inside was a photograph.
An ultrasound.
He stopped breathing.
Scarlett watched his face.
For once, she could not read him.
“Dante?”
He looked at her.
Then at the photograph.
Then back at her.
“Is this…”
“Yes.”
He remained completely motionless.
Scarlett’s smile weakened.
“Say something.”
Dante stood.
For one horrifying moment, Scarlett thought he was walking away.
Instead he came around the booth and dropped to his knees beside her.
He wrapped his arms around her waist.
His forehead rested against her stomach.
Scarlett’s breath caught.
Dante Moretti began to cry.
Silently.
No dramatic sobbing.
No words.
Just the quiet breaking of a man who had spent years believing life had taken the last person he would ever call family.
Scarlett touched his hair.
Rosa turned away, already crying herself.
After a long time, Dante looked up.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
Scarlett smiled through tears.
“Good.”
He frowned.
“What?”
“Neither do I.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“We’ll learn.”
His hand rested against her stomach.
Fear returned to his eyes.
Scarlett recognized it immediately.
“Dante.”
“I can’t lose—”
“No.”
He stopped.
“We are not living inside every terrible thing that might happen.”
He lowered his eyes.
“You taught me that.”
“No. I kept repeating it until you finally listened.”
“That sounds more accurate.”
She touched his face.
“You get to be happy.”
Dante kissed her palm.
Months later, he took Scarlett back to Michael’s grave.
This time Dante carried the ultrasound photograph.
He stood quietly before the stone.
“I’m going to have another child,” he said.
The words nearly failed him.
Scarlett stood behind him.
“A daughter.”
He glanced at Scarlett.
“She insists it is a daughter.”
“I have a feeling.”
“You have no evidence.”
May you like
“I have maternal intuition.”
“You have internet search history.”
