Chapter 2 - “Dante, I am not one of your warehouses.”
His face went still.
“You don’t get to manage me because you’re scared.”
That landed.
She saw it.
For the first time, Scarlett realized the great Dante Moretti was terrified.
Not for himself.
For her.
Her voice softened.
“You tell me what I need to know. We make decisions together. Or you stay away from me.”
He looked as though nobody had given him terms in twenty years.
Finally, he nodded.
“Together.”
“Good.”
“But you will allow someone outside the building at night.”
Scarlett exhaled.
“One person.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“One and a car.”
Dante considered.
“Acceptable.”
She pointed at him.
“See? Negotiation.”
“I hated every second.”
“I could tell.”
That Thursday, he remained after closing.
Rain glossed the sidewalks.
Scarlett locked the front door and turned.
“You’re still here.”
“Yes.”
“Because?”
“I’m walking you home.”
“Your car is ten feet away.”
“I know.”
They stepped outside.
Marcus followed in the SUV at a distance.
Scarlett and Dante walked beneath one umbrella.
Their shoulders touched.
Neither moved away.
At her apartment steps, Scarlett stopped.
Dante stopped below her.
For once, he seemed uncertain.
Scarlett had never seen uncertainty look so strange on a man like him.
“You’re staring,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to decide whether leaving is the right thing to do.”
“And?”
“I dislike the right thing.”
Scarlett smiled.
Then she reached down and touched his cheek.
Dante froze.
Her fingertips traced the line of his jaw.
His eyes closed for half a second.
Such a small reaction.
Yet it told Scarlett more than every expensive coat, every protective car, every unfinished sentence.
“How long?” she whispered.
His eyes opened.
“How long what?”
“Since you let anyone close?”
Dante knew exactly what she meant.
“Three years.”
Scarlett’s hand remained against his face.
“Come upstairs.”
He looked toward the dark apartment windows.
Then toward her.
“Scarlett.”
“I know who you are now.”
“You know the outline.”
“I know enough to decide whether I want you inside my apartment.”
His voice roughened.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Dante followed her upstairs.
Nothing about that night was hurried.
That mattered to him.
He had spent decades in a world where people grabbed whatever they wanted before someone else could take it.
With Scarlett, he asked.
She answered.
They talked first.
For nearly an hour.
About Michael.
About Scarlett’s failed engagement.
About why Dante had spent three years convincing himself that desire belonged to a previous life.
He told her that after Michael died, even simple happiness felt disloyal.
He stopped eating in restaurants he had once enjoyed.
Stopped traveling for pleasure.
Stopped noticing women.
Stopped allowing music in the house.
“I thought if I started living normally again,” he said, “it would mean I had survived him.”
Scarlett sat beside him on the couch.
“You did survive him.”
Dante’s face tightened.
“That isn’t betrayal.”
He looked at her.
“You loved your son. You still love him. Being alive doesn’t erase him.”
Those words broke something.
Or perhaps opened something.
Dante kissed her.
Slowly.
Carefully.
As though returning to a language he had once spoken fluently and feared he had forgotten.
Scarlett kissed him back.
Later, the rain stopped.
The city outside her windows became quiet.
And Dante discovered that what he had lost was never merely physical desire.
It was permission.
Permission to want warmth.
Permission to be touched without calculating motive.
Permission to close his eyes beside another person and believe, for a few hours, that he did not have to control the world.
At five in the morning, Scarlett found him sitting at her tiny kitchen table.
His shirt was half-buttoned.
He was staring out at the street.
“Regretting it?” she asked.
Dante turned instantly.
“No.”
The force of the answer surprised her.
She sat opposite him.
“Then what?”
He looked down.
“I am afraid.”
Scarlett almost smiled.
“Dante Moretti is afraid of a waitress?”
“Terrified.”
That did make her smile.
He reached across the table.
“Last night made you important to me in a way I had tried very hard to prevent.”
“I think I was already important.”
“Yes.”
“How annoying.”
“Extremely.”
She placed her hand over his.
“Then we start there.”
Dante nodded.
When Scarlett arrived at work later, Rosa was waiting.
The older woman looked at her.
Then at the black SUV parked across the street.
Then at Scarlett again.
“Oh, no.”
Scarlett took off her coat.
“What?”
Rosa crossed herself.
“You.”
“What about me?”
“You fell in love with Dante Moretti.”
Scarlett nearly dropped her purse.
“I did not say that.”
“You did not have to.”
“I am not in love with anybody.”
Rosa stared at her hair.
Scarlett touched it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Rosa.”
The older woman sighed.
“Sit down.”
Over espresso, Rosa told Scarlett the rest.
Not rumors.
History.
Dante had inherited a fractured criminal network at twenty-seven and turned it into something disciplined enough that random street violence around his businesses actually decreased.
He was feared because he rarely acted emotionally.
He preferred leverage to brutality.
Money to blood.
Silence to spectacle.
But he was still what he was.
Scarlett listened.
Afterward, she sat alone in her apartment for two hours.
Then texted him.
We need to talk Thursday.
His response came immediately.
Yes.
She stared at the screen.
Then another message arrived.
Are you safe?
Despite herself, she smiled.
Yes.
Two days later, Bellini’s people took her.
Scarlett had stepped out of the bakery beneath her apartment carrying coffee when a gray sedan stopped beside the curb.
One man grabbed her arm.
She screamed.
A second man opened the rear door.
Across the street, Dante’s security man ran toward them.
Another car blocked him.
Everything happened in less than twenty seconds.
At 10:42 a.m., Marcus entered Dante’s office without knocking.
Dante looked up.
Marcus never entered without knocking.
“What?”
“They have Scarlett.”
Silence.
Dante rose slowly.
“Say that again.”
“Bellini’s people took her seventeen minutes ago.”
The room changed.
Six senior men were seated around the conference table.
Every one of them had known Dante for years.
None had ever seen his face look like that.
Not rage.
Something colder.
“Where?”
“We’re tracing the vehicle.”
“How did they get through security?”
“They created a diversion.”
Dante put on his jacket.
Marcus stepped closer.
“They’ll want territory. Maybe the Cicero contracts.”
“They get nothing.”
“They’ll call.”
Dante walked toward the door.
“Then they can call while we find her.”
“Dante, we need to think.”
Dante stopped.
He turned.
“I have spent three years thinking.”
Marcus fell silent.
“I thought grief had taught me that loving someone makes you weak.” Dante’s voice remained frighteningly calm. “It did not. It taught me exactly what happens when you waste the time you have.”
He looked around the room.
“Find her.”
Scarlett was being held in the office of an abandoned trucking depot near Bedford Park.
Victor Bellini arrived an hour after she did.
He expected a frightened waitress.
Scarlett was frightened.
She simply refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much.
Bellini pulled out a chair.
“You must be special.”
Scarlett kept her hands folded.
“I’m actually extremely average.”
Bellini smiled.
“Dante Moretti has moved half his organization in two hours.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“He will trade for you.”
Scarlett looked at him.
“You don’t know him very well.”
Bellini’s smile faded.
She continued.
“He doesn’t like being told what to do.”
For the first time, doubt crossed Bellini’s face.
Scarlett held onto that.
Three hours later, Dante walked into the depot.
Not alone.
But he entered Scarlett’s room alone.
The door opened.
She heard his voice before she saw his face.
Then there he was.
No tie.
No overcoat.
Hair disordered.
The controlled businessman she knew had been stripped down to something rawer.
He crossed the room.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He cupped her face.
“Scarlett.”
“I’m okay.”
Dante closed his eyes.
For one second, his forehead touched hers.
“I have you.”
Three words.
Nothing dramatic.
Yet Scarlett felt the tremor in his hands.
Outside the room, Bellini’s empire was already collapsing.
Dante had not stormed the depot in some reckless act of revenge.
He had done something worse.
He had called lenders.
Landlords.
Suppliers.
Union contacts.
Business partners.
Men who owed him thirty-year-old favors.
By the time Bellini realized Dante had located Scarlett, three of Bellini’s companies had lost financing, two warehouses had been locked by their legal owners, and his closest lieutenant had agreed to testify in a federal fraud case rather than remain loyal.
Dante destroyed Bellini without firing a shot.
Scarlett learned later.
That night, she sat wrapped in a blanket at Dante’s house in Hinsdale while a doctor checked her blood pressure.
Rosa had arrived carrying enough food for twenty people.
Marcus stood near the doorway pretending not to watch Dante.
Dante had not taken his eyes off Scarlett for more than thirty seconds since bringing her home.
Finally Scarlett looked toward him.
“Everybody out.”
Rosa protested.
“Rosa.”
The older woman sighed.
Five minutes later, Scarlett and Dante were alone.
She patted the couch beside her.
He came over.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
Dante looked tired.
More tired than she had ever seen him.
“I don’t know.”
“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.”
May you like
“You tell me when there’s danger.”
“Yes.”
Related Stories
