You’re Not Getting Rid of Me

Pinakabagong kabanata

• Way Out: Owned by the Mafia Boss   Black Echo

  Dante’s POVThe drive was smaller than a cigarette lighter. Nondescript. Matte black. The kind of thing most people would overlook.But I knew better.Vico had handed it to me without a word, his gloves still wet with Matteo’s blood. I hadn’t spoken since. Not during the extraction. Not during the silent ride up the service elevator into the penthouse. The only sound now was the soft hum of the decryption program working its way through layers of encryption Matteo clearly hadn’t set himself.The Bureau had touched this. Maybe others too. There were too many fingerprints.The screen flickered. The progress bar reached 100%. A soft chime.Unlocked.And just like that, everything changed.Lines of data exploded across the screen—case numbers, alias files, surveillance logs. The Bureau had compiled more than just background on me. This was an active case. Codenamed Black Echo.There were photos—some grainy, some with chilling clarity.Luca.Mira.My men.My penthouse.A map of the city wi

• Way Out: Owned by the Mafia Boss   Ghost Protocol

  Dante’s POVThe room was silent but alive—humming with tension and the quiet efficiency of men who had killed before and would kill again.My gloves were already on, black leather tight against my skin. Across the table, the schematics of the abandoned dockyard flickered on the tablet screen, blue light cutting sharp angles across my face. The team stood around me—Vico, Marcello, and Angelo—all men I trusted to follow orders without hesitation, especially when the orders came wrapped in blood.No one said Matteo Santoro’s name. Not out loud. Not here.But it was there—heavy between every breath, behind every command I gave.“Entry point is southwest access,” I said, tapping the tablet. “He’s using the lower-level storage area beneath the cranes—old maintenance tunnels under Dock 7. Heat scan confirms at least three bodies inside. One is him.”Angelo’s brow furrowed. “He’s expecting a move?”“He’s always expected it,” I said coldly. “We gave him five years of silence. He should’ve stay

• Way Out: Owned by the Mafia Boss   The Ghost with Dante’s Eyes

  Dante’s POVThe first sign came in silence.Not a noise. Not a shot.But the absence of something that should’ve been there.One of the penthouse’s outer surveillance nodes—camera 8B, facing the north rooftop—blinked offline at 3:14 a.m. That alone wouldn’t have rattled most. But for Dante Moretti, every system was a vein in his body. When one went dark, he felt it like a skipped heartbeat.He didn’t say a word. Just rose from his desk, walked to the control monitor, and rewound the feed.What he found wasn’t a glitch.It was a shadow. Tall. Lean. Confident.And gone in under four seconds.No face. No trace. Just a motion too deliberate to be random. A ghost brushing the edge of his world.He rewound it again. Slowed it. Enhanced it.The figure turned briefly—only for a breath—but it was enough.The gait. The tilt of the head. The slight delay in the left step, like a man who had once walked with a bullet lodged in his femur.Dante’s jaw clenched.Matteo Santoro.Dead men weren’t supp

• Way Out: Owned by the Mafia Boss   A Window That Never Closed

  Dante’s POVThe night was quiet—too quiet for a city like this.I stood in front of the old window on the top floor of the safehouse, the one no one used anymore. The paint had chipped, the hinges creaked, and the glass had long since cracked. I could see my breath against it, clouding the reflection that stared back at me.I hadn’t planned on coming here tonight. But something pulled me.The kind of pull that doesn’t come from logic. The kind that comes from memory.From pain.From him.I used to think love was a window you could close.Push it down, lock it, board it over. Pretend the light never shined through it in the first place.But standing here now, I realized something terrifying.That window—the one Luca had cracked open in me—had never truly shut.Not even after I’d watched him with Mira. Not even after I’d given the order.The safehouse was cold, the air sharp. My boots echoed through the narrow hallway as I moved toward the room I once used to interrogate traitors. Men w

• Way Out: Owned by the Mafia Boss   The Man Who Knew Too Much

  Dante’s POVThe room was dark, lit only by the slow pulse of screens lining the wall. The hum of processors was constant, low and meditative. A heartbeat made of wires and secrets.I stood in the middle of it all, still as a statue, watching Luca’s face on one of the monitors.He looked tired.He always did now.Restless. On edge. Like a man trying to solve a riddle that kept changing every time he got closer to the answer.He was getting close. Too close.But I wasn’t afraid.I was… waiting.And I was done waiting.The last few weeks had stripped me down to something colder than I’d ever been. Rage, betrayal, grief—they were emotions I’d worn like armor. Now I didn’t feel anything. Just clarity.Because Luca wasn’t the only one who could play both sides.And now?Now the game was mine again.I reached over and tapped the screen.Footage from three nights ago. Mira on Luca’s chest, tangled in his sheets, their limbs still entwined in the afterglow of something she’d once promised me s

• Way Out: Owned by the Mafia Boss   Crossed Lines and Fractures

  Luca’s POVI hadn’t slept in two nights.Not really. Just that shallow half-sleep, the kind that coils around your bones and makes you more tired when you wake than before you closed your eyes. The kind of sleep you get when you know someone’s watching you.Because I knew he was.I couldn’t prove it. Not yet. But the signs were there.Passwords resetting themselves. A shadow that passed behind the reflection of a car window. One of the burner phones I’d hidden in a duct vent… gone.Dante wasn’t just watching. He was circling.And he was getting closer.Mira noticed the change in me. She just didn’t say anything.She’d gotten quieter. Slower. Like she was emotionally treading water, and I was the one pulling her under.We were still sleeping in the same bed, still touching, still kissing.But it was starting to feel like habit, not hunger.And underneath it all, there was something else: a flicker of fear in her eyes when she looked at me too long. Not fear of me.Fear for me.Or maybe