Chapter 5 - The Man Beneath the SuitMrs. Vale survived.
That was the first thing Rafe told us when he returned an hour later.
Concussion. Bruised temple. No memory of the attack beyond the smell of expensive cologne and the sound of a watch clicking open.
Dante did not come back with him.
That was the second thing I noticed.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Rafe stood inside the east room with his jacket unbuttoned, one hand near his sidearm and exhaustion stamped into the lines around his eyes.
“Working.”
“Working means what in this house?”
“It means people are being found.”
“Alive?”
His face gave nothing away.
“Preferably.”
I looked at Matteo asleep again, curled beneath a blanket after crying himself empty. The poor child had gone from shattered glass to old nightmares to a house lockdown in one night.
“He needs his father.”
Rafe’s expression softened almost imperceptibly. “Dante knows.”
“Does he?”
That made Rafe look at me more closely.
People had been doing that all night.
Looking closely.
I was beginning to miss being invisible.
“You speak to him differently,” Rafe said.
“Stupidly, you mean.”
“Honestly.”
“In my experience, honesty is just stupidity with better posture.”
He almost smiled. “You may survive this house after all.”
I glanced toward the door.
“Who is Vincent?”
The almost-smile vanished.
Rafe took his time answering.
“That is not my story.”
“It became my story when someone slid a death threat under my door.”
He accepted that with a small nod.
“Vincent Romano grew up with Dante. Brothers in every way except blood. Their fathers trusted each other. Their families built half the city together, legally and otherwise. When Dante’s wife died, Vincent stood beside him at the funeral. When Matteo stopped talking for three months, Vincent came every day with toys.”
“And now you think he tried to kill Matteo.”
“I think someone wanted us to think tonight was an accident.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he said. “It is survival.”
Before I could press him, the door opened.
Dante stepped in.
He had changed shirts. White now, sleeves rolled to the forearms, cuffs undone. There was a smear of blood near his knuckles that I knew was not his.
He looked more dangerous without the perfect suit.
Less like a man who owned the room.
More like a man who had built it over buried enemies.
Matteo stirred. “Papa?”
Dante crossed to the bed instantly.
The ruthless expression vanished so completely it almost seemed impossible that the same face had worn it seconds before.
“I am here.”
Matteo reached for him without waking fully, and Dante sat beside him, letting the boy cling to his arm.
I watched the way Dante stroked his son’s hair.
Careful.
Practiced.
Terrified.
That was the word I had been circling.
Dante Moretti, feared by men who made other people afraid, was terrified of loving the only person he had left.
He looked up and caught me watching.
Neither of us looked away.
Rafe cleared his throat. “I’ll check the north hall.”
Dante nodded.
Rafe left.
The room became too quiet.
“You found Vincent?” I asked.
“No.”
“But the watch?”
“His.”
I swallowed.
“And the note?”
“Written by hand. We are checking samples.”
“Does Vincent have red nails too?”
Dante’s eyes narrowed.
I regretted the joke immediately.
But instead of anger, he gave a humorless exhale.
“No.”
“Then who was the woman Matteo remembered?”
For a moment, I thought he would shut down.
The old Dante returned to his face, the locked vault, the man who survived by revealing nothing.
Then Matteo murmured in his sleep, and Dante’s hand stilled in his son’s hair.
“My wife’s sister,” he said.
I blinked.
“What?”
“Lucia. My wife’s younger sister. Red nails. Perfume strong enough to announce her before she entered a room.”
“Where is she now?”
“Dead.”
The word was flat.
“How?”
“Overdose. Six months after Sofia’s crash.”
Sofia.
His wife had a name.
It changed something to hear it.
“Did you believe that?” I asked.
His gaze moved to the fire.
“I believed what I could prove.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
He looked older suddenly.
Not in his face. In the space around him.
“When Sofia died, I tore the city open. Drivers, doctors, mechanics, guards, cameras. Every man who had touched that car was questioned. Every enemy was watched. Nothing led back to Vincent. Nothing led to Lucia. Nothing led anywhere except a wet road, failed brakes, and a dead woman.”
“But Matteo saw something.”
“Matteo was two.”
“Two-year-olds still see.”
“I know that now.”
The pain in his voice was quiet enough to miss.
I did not miss it.
Dante stood abruptly, as if stillness had become unbearable.
“You need rest.”
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Ending conversations when they start hurting.”
His eyes cut to mine.
Any sensible person would have stopped there.
I had never been great at sensible when exhausted.
“You brought me here because you think I know something. Or because someone thinks I know something. So do not treat me like a guest you can tuck into bed between threats.”
His mouth tightened. “You need medical recovery, not involvement.”
“I was involved the second glass tore open my back.”
“That does not mean I will let you stand in front of another attack.”
“You don’t get to let me do anything.”
He walked toward me.
Every instinct screamed to retreat.
I did not.
Dante stopped close enough that I could see the faint shadow beneath his eyes.
“You are in my house.”
“Yes.”
“Under my protection.”
“Yes.”
“Because someone connected to my world may want you dead.”
“Yes.”
“So when I say you will not chase danger, it is not because I think you are weak. It is because I have already buried one woman who stood too close to me.”
The room went still.
There it was.
The truth beneath the commands.
Not control.
Fear wearing a crown.
My anger loosened.
Only a little.
“I am not your wife,” I said quietly.
His eyes darkened.
“No,” he said. “You are not.”
The words should have relieved me.
They did not.
A phone rang from the desk.
Not Dante’s.
Mine.
I stared.
Dante turned.
Rafe must have placed my cracked phone on the table earlier. The screen was spiderwebbed, but it glowed with an incoming call.
Unknown number.
Dante picked it up before I could move.
I stood too quickly and gasped as pain ripped across my back.
He looked at me sharply.
“Put it on speaker,” I said.
He hesitated.
“Dante.”
He pressed accept.
At first, there was only static.
Then a man’s voice, familiar enough to make my blood turn cold.
“Clara, baby. You always did know how to get attention.”
Michael.
My ex-fiancé.
The man who had pawned my engagement ring.
The man who had left debts in my name.
The man I had spent two years trying not to find.
My hand gripped the chair.
Dante’s face became murderously calm.
Michael laughed softly. “Tell your new boyfriend thanks for ruining a clean job.”
My stomach dropped.
Dante said nothing.
Michael continued, voice smooth and cruel. “You should’ve stayed invisible, Clara. Now everybody wants to know why a nobody waitress was in exactly the right place at exactly the wrong time.”
I found my voice.
“What did you do?”
“I survived. Same thing you do.”
“Michael.”
“Here’s the thing, baby. Moretti thinks this is about his kid. It’s not.”
Dante’s eyes locked onto mine.
Michael’s voice lowered.
“It’s about what your mother hid before she died.”
The room tilted.
“My mother has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, she has everything to do with it. Ask Dante about Sofia. Ask him what was missing from her car after the crash. Ask him why your mother’s name appears in a file that should have burned seven years ago.”
My skin went numb.
Dante was no longer looking at me.
He was looking through me, into some past neither of us understood.
Michael laughed again.
“Tick-tock, Clara.”
The line went dead.
For a long second, the room held only Matteo’s sleeping breaths.
Then Dante spoke, voice low and deadly.
“What was your mother’s name?”
I stared at him.
“Evelyn Hayes.”
Dante closed his eyes.
Just once.
May you like
But it was enough.
He knew her.
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