Chapter 3 - Dante's Promise Came With a Price
My mother fainted when she saw the photograph.
For the next forty minutes, the hospital room filled with nurses, monitors, and urgent voices. I stood against the wall feeling useless while doctors checked her heart, adjusted medication, and ordered everyone except immediate family to leave.
Dante did not argue.
He simply stepped into the hallway with Marco and waited.
I stayed beside my mother's bed until her breathing steadied.
When she finally opened her eyes, she looked at me with an exhaustion that seemed older than either of us.
"He can't be alive," she whispered.
"Maybe the photo is old."
"No."
Her eyes filled.
"He would have come for us."
I wanted to believe that too.
But twenty-six years was a long time.
People changed.
Fear changed them.
Power changed them.
Sometimes love did not survive what people needed to do to stay alive.
The doctor insisted my mother rest, so I stepped into the hallway.
Dante was waiting near the window.
He had already arranged two Moretti security men outside the room and another at the elevator.
"How is she?"
"Stable."
He nodded.
"Good."
Marco approached carrying a tablet.
"We pulled hospital cameras. The man who delivered the envelope wore a baseball cap and medical mask. He entered through the east lobby, stayed four minutes, and left through the parking garage. No clean facial image."
Dante held out his hand.
Marco gave him the tablet.
Dante watched the footage twice.
I stood beside him.
"Can you find him?"
"Probably."
"That didn't sound confident."
He looked at me.
"I don't lie to you."
The words hit harder than they should have after everything I had learned that morning.
"Apparently everyone else does."
Dante's expression softened.
Marco cleared his throat.
"There's something else."
Of course there was.
"What?" Dante asked.
"The photograph was printed yesterday at a pharmacy in Queens. We got the transaction data. Paid cash, but the store has cameras."
"Send men."
"Already done."
Dante gave him a brief nod.
I crossed my arms.
"I want to go with them."
Both men looked at me.
"No," Dante said.
"You don't get to decide that."
"At the moment, I do."
Anger flared.
"Because I'm your employee?"
"Because someone just walked into your mother's hospital using the name of a dead man and left proof that the father you believed was dead may be alive. Until I know who is behind it, you are not walking into an unknown location in Queens."
"It's my life."
"Which is exactly why I'm protecting it."
I stepped closer.
"You cannot protect me by keeping me ignorant."
His jaw tightened.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
His voice dropped.
"Better than you realize."
I stared at him.
"What does that mean?"
Dante looked toward Marco.
"Give us a minute."
Marco walked away.
Dante waited until he was out of earshot.
"My father died when I was twenty-five."
I knew that much.
"I was told he had a heart attack while traveling in Sicily. I believed it for three years."
I frowned.
"But that wasn't true?"
"No. He was shot."
I went still.
"By who?"
"Someone inside our family. Someone he trusted."
"Did you find out who?"
"Eventually."
There was something frightening in the calm way he said it.
I did not ask what happened to that person.
I didn't need to.
"Why did they lie to you?"
"Because they thought they were protecting me until I was ready to take control."
His gaze held mine.
"For three years, I made decisions based on a false version of my own history. I know exactly what it feels like to discover that the people who claimed to love you decided which truths you were allowed to survive."
My anger weakened.
"Then don't do that to me."
"I won't."
"Promise?"
He hesitated only a second.
"I promise."
An hour later, the promise was tested.
Marco returned with new information.
The pharmacy footage had captured the face of the man who printed the photograph.
He was not my father.
He was Richard Bennett.
Vanessa's father.
I stared at the frozen image on Marco's tablet.
There he was, wearing a navy coat and reading glasses, standing at a photo kiosk while the picture of the gray-haired man printed beside him.
"Why would Vanessa's father have a picture of Luca Moretti?" I asked.
Dante's expression had become dangerously still.
"That is what I intend to ask him."
Marco shook his head.
"You may not get the chance."
"Why?"
"Bennett's townhouse is empty. Staff dismissed. Cars gone. Private jet left Teterboro at five ten this morning. Flight plan filed for Montreal, but it changed course after takeoff."
"Where?"
"No transponder after northern Vermont."
I looked at Dante.
"He ran."
"Yes."
"Because you ended the engagement?"
"No."
Dante picked up the tablet again.
"Men like Richard Bennett don't disappear because their daughter's wedding is canceled."
Marco nodded.
"He expected us to find something."
A chill moved through me.
"Maybe he wanted us to find the photo."
Both men looked at me.
I continued.
"He printed it where cameras would see him. He used his own face. If he wanted to hide, why do that?"
Marco's eyes narrowed.
"She's right."
Dante handed the tablet back.
"It's a message."
"Or bait," Marco said.
"Same difference."
I hated how easily they spoke that language.
Message. Bait. Target.
Words from a world I had spent two years dusting around without ever truly entering.
Dante turned to me.
"You're coming back to the mansion."
"I need to stay with my mother."
"She is safer here with security than she would be anywhere else."
"I don't want to leave her."
"Then I will move into the hospital hallway with you."
I almost smiled despite everything.
"That sounds uncomfortable."
"I've been uncomfortable before."
"I'm sure the hospital administration would love having the head of the Moretti family sleeping next to the vending machines."
"They'll survive."
The fact that he was serious finally made me laugh.
It was small and tired and completely wrong for the moment.
But he looked at me as though hearing it mattered.
That frightened me in a different way.
By evening, my mother was stable enough for the doctors to insist I go home and sleep.
Home.
For the past two years, the servants' wing of the Moretti mansion had been home.
But when we returned, Dante did not let me go there.
"Your room is being moved," he said.
I stopped in the foyer.
"What?"
"Temporarily."
"To where?"
"The east wing."
I stared at him.
The east wing was private family space.
No household employee lived there.
"Absolutely not."
"Elena-"
"People already think-"
"I don't care what people think."
"I do."
His expression changed.
"Why?"
The question was too direct.
I looked away.
"Because I work here."
"For now."
I looked back sharply.
"Are you firing me?"
"No."
He rubbed a hand over his jaw.
"I'm trying to stop pretending that our relationship is normal employer-and-employee business when it hasn't been for a long time."
My heart thudded.
"Dante..."
"You asked me why I do these things. I'm answering you now."
He stepped closer.
The foyer seemed suddenly too quiet.
"I know what coffee you drink. I know which nights you call the hospital before bed. I know you hum when you polish silver and that you hate roses because your first boyfriend gave them to you after cheating."
I blinked.
"How do you know that?"
"You told Mrs. Alvarez in the kitchen six months ago."
"You were listening?"
"I was trying not to."
Despite myself, I almost laughed again.
He continued.
"I know you read crime novels but skip the violent parts. I know you send half your salary to your mother's account and pretend you don't. I know that when you're scared, you become polite enough to make me nervous."
My throat tightened.
"And I know that when Vanessa announced our engagement, you did not look at me for three days."
I could not breathe.
He stopped less than two feet away.
"Do you still want me to explain why I care?"
I whispered, "You were going to marry her."
His face hardened with regret.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I thought duty was simpler than wanting something I wasn't certain I had the right to want."
Tears burned behind my eyes.
"And now?"
He lifted one hand, then stopped before touching me.
That restraint nearly undid me.
"Now I know marrying Vanessa would have been a lie."
"That doesn't mean you love me."
His gaze did not move.
"No."
The single word hurt.
Then he added, "Loving you means I love you."
I forgot how to breathe.
The clock in the hall ticked once.
Twice.
He lowered his hand.
"You do not have to answer."
I stared at him.
"You can't say something like that and then tell me not to answer."
"I can if you're exhausted, frightened, and dealing with the possibility that your father is alive."
"That's annoyingly reasonable."
"I have rare moments."
I looked down because if I kept looking at him, I might do something reckless.
Like tell him the truth.
Like tell him I had loved him for months.
Before I could decide, the front doors opened.
Marco entered quickly.
His expression erased everything else.
"We have a problem."
Dante turned.
"What?"
Marco held out his phone.
"A message came through one of the old Moretti emergency channels. No one has used it since your father died."
Dante took the phone.
I watched his face.
Whatever he read made him go completely still.
"What does it say?" I asked.
He looked at me.
Then he turned the screen so I could read it.
There were only two lines.
Dante,
If Elena is in your house, she is already in danger. Bring her to Saint Michael's Cemetery tomorrow at noon. Come alone.
May you like
Below it was a name.
Luca Moretti.
