Chapter 3 - I Woke Up in the Mafia Boss's Safe House—Then Learned Someone Inside His Family Had Ordered His DeathThe safe house was not a house.
It was a fortress pretending to be a luxury lodge.
It sat beyond a private road deep in the Coast Range, surrounded by Douglas firs so tall they seemed to swallow the sky. Cameras watched every approach. Steel gates blocked the road. Armed men occupied positions I would not have noticed if Marco had not pointed them out.
Dante regained consciousness twenty minutes before we arrived.
His first words were not about himself.
“Isabella?”
“I’m sitting directly beside you.”
“Sophia?”
“Still alive.”
“Dog?”
Thor lifted his head.
Dante nodded.
Then passed out again.
I should not have found that endearing.
I absolutely did not find it endearing.
That was what I told myself.
Inside the lodge, I commandeered a bedroom and turned it into the closest thing available to an examination room.
Dante’s stitches had partially torn.
Fortunately, the bullet wound itself had not reopened badly enough to cause catastrophic bleeding.
Marco stood nearby.
“You need a surgeon?”
“He needs a hospital.”
“No hospitals.”
“Then yes, I need someone with actual human medical training.”
“We have a doctor.”
I stared.
“You have a mafia doctor?”
Marco looked mildly offended.
“He’s a licensed trauma surgeon.”
“Of course he is.”
Dr. Samuel Greene arrived forty minutes later.
He was sixty, gray-haired, tired-eyed, and deeply unimpressed by Dante.
When he examined my original work, he looked at me.
“You did this?”
“Yes.”
“With veterinary supplies?”
“Yes.”
He studied the stitches.
“Not bad.”
“Highest compliment I’ve received all week.”
He repaired the torn section, administered IV antibiotics, checked Dante’s ribs, and confirmed what I had suspected.
Two cracked.
No internal bleeding.
No major vascular damage.
The man had survived through a combination of physical strength, stubbornness, and extraordinary luck.
Afterward, Greene pulled me aside.
“He needs forty-eight hours of real rest.”
“Tell him.”
“He doesn’t listen to me.”
“He barely knows me.”
“Exactly. You still have leverage.”
“What leverage?”
“He likes you.”
I stared at him.
Greene smiled.
“I’ve known Dante Romano for seventeen years. He has never asked whether the doctor treating him was safe before asking about himself.”
My chest tightened.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Of course not.”
He walked away smiling.
I hated doctors.
Human ones, anyway.
Dante slept most of the afternoon.
Sophia and I were given adjoining rooms.
Thor refused to leave Dante’s door.
Traitor.
By evening, I had reached the limit of my patience.
I found Marco in a downstairs office.
“I want answers.”
He looked up from his laptop.
“About?”
“Why people are shooting at me.”
“That seems reasonable.”
He closed the computer.
“Dante has been trying to restructure the organization.”
“What organization?”
Marco gave me a look.
“The one you already know exists.”
I folded my arms.
“Say it.”
“The Romano family.”
There it was.
No euphemisms.
No corporate language.
“The mafia.”
“Yes.”
I swallowed.
“And Dante runs it?”
“For eleven years.”
“How many people has he killed?”
Marco’s face became unreadable.
“That’s a question for Dante.”
“So more than zero.”
Silence answered.
I felt sick.
“What happened last night?”
Marco leaned back.
“Dante discovered someone was moving fentanyl through Romano-controlled freight routes.”
That surprised me.
“You’re telling me the mafia boss objects to drugs?”
“He objects to fentanyl.”
“That is a very specific moral line.”
“He has several.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
Marco looked toward the window.
“Dante’s younger brother died from an overdose when he was nineteen.”
The anger inside me paused.
“Gabriel?”
Marco nodded.
“Dante was twenty-four. Their father treated Gabriel’s death as weakness. Dante treated it as a declaration of war.”
“So he banned drugs?”
“From every business and territory under his control.”
“And someone ignored him.”
“Someone inside the family.”
I understood.
“That’s why they tried to kill him.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
A voice came from the doorway.
“I have an idea.”
Dante stood there.
He looked terrible.
He was also shirtless.
For approximately three embarrassing seconds, my brain stopped participating in the conversation.
His torso was mapped with old scars.
Knife wounds.
Bullet wounds.
One long pale line across his abdomen.
A history written in damaged skin.
I forced myself to look at his face.
“You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I was.”
“Return.”
“No.”
“Dante.”
“Isabella.”
Marco quietly left.
Coward.
Dante walked toward the desk.
“Someone arranged the ambush knowing my exact route.”
“Inside information.”
“Yes.”
“Who knew?”
“Five people.”
“Marco?”
“Yes.”
“You suspect him?”
“No.”
“You shouldn’t eliminate suspects because you like them.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You think like an investigator.”
“I diagnose animals that cannot tell me where it hurts. Pattern recognition is ninety percent of my job.”
That earned the smallest smile.
“The others?”
“My cousin Luca. My chief financial officer, Adrian Cole. My uncle Vincent. And my security coordinator, Elias Mercer.”
“Which one benefits if you die?”
“All of them.”
“Fantastic.”
I walked toward him.
“Sit.”
“I’m fine.”
I pressed two fingers against the bruising over his ribs.
Dante immediately inhaled sharply.
“Sit.”
He sat.
“Bullies,” I said, “are surprisingly easy to train.”
“I’m beginning to understand why Thor respects you.”
I checked his bandage.
Clean.
No fresh bleeding.
“Your fever is improving.”
“Good.”
“That does not mean you can start mafia-ing again.”
“Mafia-ing?”
“It’s a medical term.”
He laughed.
Actually laughed.
The sound changed his face.
For a moment he did not look dangerous.
He looked tired.
Human.
Then his expression became serious.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Your clinic.”
I stopped.
“The windows can be replaced.”
“It’s more than windows.”
“Yes.”
He looked at his hands.
“I never intended to bring this to you.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
There was no excuse.
No manipulation.
That mattered more than I wanted it to.
“Why did you come to my clinic?”
“It was the only light I saw.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“So fate?”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“Neither do I.”
Thor appeared at the doorway.
He walked to Dante and placed his head on Dante’s knee.
Dante scratched him.
“Your dog might.”
I smiled despite myself.
Then someone screamed downstairs.
A gunshot followed.
Dante moved before I did.
He grabbed me and pulled me behind the bed.
Another shot.
Men shouted.
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Dante reached beneath the mattress.
Of course there was a gun there.
“Stay behind me.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“Not this argument again.”
“You have one functional arm and two cracked ribs.”
“And you have zero guns.”
“I have Thor.”
Thor growled toward the hallway.
Dante considered that.
“Fair.”
Footsteps approached.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Dante raised his weapon.
The door opened.
Marco appeared.
“Boss.”
Dante lowered the gun slightly.
“What happened?”
“We caught someone trying to open the west gate.”
“Who?”
Marco hesitated.
That frightened me more than anything.
“Elias.”
Dante’s face changed.
His security coordinator.
One of the five people who knew the route.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Talk?”
“Not yet.”
Dante started toward the door.
I caught his arm.
“You are not interrogating anyone.”
His gaze dropped to my hand.
“You really have no idea who you’re talking to.”
“I know exactly who I’m talking to. A man with a fever, cracked ribs, and twenty-six stitches.”
“Twenty-six?”
“Greene added three.”
Dante stared at me.
Then Marco made a sound suspiciously like a laugh.
Dante looked at him.
Marco immediately became serious.
“Something else,” Marco said.
“What?”
“We found a phone on Elias.”
He handed it over.
Dante examined the screen.
I watched his expression darken.
“What is it?”
He showed me.
A photograph.
My clinic.
Another photograph.
Sophia leaving her apartment.
Another.
Me grocery shopping three days earlier.
Then another.
Thor asleep beside my bedroom window.
My stomach turned.
“They were watching me before Dante arrived.”
Marco nodded.
“Yes.”
“That means this didn’t start because I treated him.”
“No.”
I looked at Dante.
His face had gone cold.
“Then why were they watching me?”
No one answered.
“Dante?”
He enlarged the final photograph.
It showed my father.
Taken outside his home in San Antonio.
I stopped breathing.
My father had died six years ago.
Which meant the photograph was old.
Very old.
On the bottom was a handwritten date.
October 14, 2018.
Three days before my father’s death.
I whispered, “What the hell is this?”
Dante looked at Marco.
Marco looked shaken for the first time.
Dante turned the phone over.
On the case was a symbol.
A silver wolf.
Dante went completely still.
“What?” I demanded.
He looked at me.
“That symbol belonged to my father.”
My blood chilled.
“What does your father have to do with mine?”
Dante did not answer immediately.
And in that silence, I understood something terrible.
He knew.
Maybe not everything.
But something.
“You know who my father was.”
Dante’s eyes met mine.
“Yes.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“My father was a veterinarian.”
“No.”
The word came softly.
“He was much more than that.”
I stepped away.
“What are you talking about?”
Dante swallowed.
“Your father saved my life once too.”
I stared at him.
Dante’s next words changed everything.
“Twenty years ago, Rafael Santos helped my mother escape the Romano family.”
And suddenly I understood why the enemy had been watching me before Dante ever knocked on my door.
May you like
I had not accidentally entered his world.
My family had been connected to it long before I was old enough to know.
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