Chapter 3 - The Ghost of the Past
The ride out of the industrial district was dead silent.
I lay across the plush leather backseat of Dante’s custom-armored Maybach, wrapped in his heavy coat. Heat blasted from the vents, but the shivering deep inside my bones wouldn't stop. Beside me, Dante never let go of my right hand. His thumb traced circles over the purple bruises ringing my wrist, his thumb stained with my blood.
In the passenger seat sat Luca, Dante’s underboss and oldest friend. His knuckles were bruised, a tactical tablet glowing against his lap as he barked quiet orders into an encrypted earpiece.
"Cleaners are at the meat packing plant," Luca reported, not looking back. "No cameras picked up the convoy. But Viktor Ivanov has already put out an alert. He knows his extraction team went dark."
Dante didn’t look up from my face. "Let him panic. Tell Marco to surround their south-side logistics hub. Nobody leaves Chicago tonight."
"Understood, Boss."
I shifted weakly, a sharp gasp tearing from my throat as my bruised ribs protested. Dante’s hand immediately tightened, his other hand coming up to gently brush damp strands of hair away from my forehead.
"Easy," he said, his tone softening into something that almost sounded human. "Dr. Rossi is already waiting at the lake house. You're going to be fine, Sofia."
I stared into his dark, storm-tossed eyes. Two years ago, I packed two suitcases in the middle of the night and left him a note on his mahogany desk: *I love you, but I cannot survive your world.*
I had wanted safety. I had wanted an 8-to-5 job where numbers balanced cleanly on a ledger and no one carried a Glock under their Italian suit jacket. And yet, here I was, covered in my own blood, rescued from certain death by the very monster I ran away from.
"Why did you come?" I rasped, my throat raw from screaming. "I left you, Dante. I vanished. You swore you’d let me go."
Dante’s gaze hardened, a dark fire dancing behind his pupils.
"I swore I wouldn't chase you if you wanted an ordinary life, Sofia," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly, dangerous pitch. "I never swore I would let anyone hurt you. You are my wife. In the eyes of God, the law, and every bullet in this city, you belong to me. Did you really think you could say my name and I wouldn't tear this city down brick by brick to reach you?"
Tears welled in the corners of my eyes, stinging against the cuts on my cheekbones. "I was trying to do the right thing. The numbers... Dante, Ivanov isn't just laundering money. He's building an army. He's bribing federal judges, port directors, the state police..."
"You don't need to worry about numbers anymore," Dante cut in softly, leaning down until his forehead rested against mine. "The only math that matters tonight is how many Ivanovs will die for every drop of blood you lost on that floor."
May you like
The car turned sharply off the highway, entering the heavily guarded iron gates of Dante’s fortress on Lake Michigan. The nightmare had ended, but a different kind of reckoning had just begun.
***
