Chapter 20: The Community Center Project

Elena stared at the architectural renderings spread across the conference table, her heart hammering against her ribs. This couldn't be real.

"You want to do what?" Her voice came out sharper than intended, but she didn't care. The past three weeks had been a whirlwind of breakfast meetings and late-night phone calls, of Dante showing up at the center unannounced and staying for hours, of her carefully constructed walls crumbling piece by piece. And now this.

Dante stood at the head of the table in his office on the forty-second floor of Salvatore Tower, looking infuriatingly calm in his tailored charcoal suit. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Chicago sprawled beneath them like a kingdom waiting to be claimed. "I want to rebuild it. Completely. New structure, expanded facilities, state-of-the-art equipment."

"That's not what we agreed to." Elena's fingers curled into fists at her sides. "You said a donation. Funding for programs. Not... not this."

"The building is falling apart, Elena. The roof leaks. The foundation has cracks. You're one bad winter away from the city condemning it." His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. "I'm offering you a chance to actually make a difference instead of putting bandaids on bullet wounds."

The words hit too close to home. She'd spent five years applying bandaids, watching them peel away, reapplying them with increasingly desperate hope. But this... this was too much. Too fast. Too everything.

"And what do you get out of it?" She crossed her arms, hating how defensive she sounded. "Because men like you don't just throw away millions of failing community centers without an angle."

Something flickered in Dante's eyes. Hurt? Anger? It vanished before she could name it. "Maybe I believe in what you're doing."

"Or maybe you're trying to buy something you can't have."

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. Dante moved around the table with predatory grace, stopping close enough that she could smell his cologne, cedar and something darker. Close enough to see the golden flecks in his brown eyes. Close enough to make her pulse race.

"And what exactly do you think I'm trying to buy, Elena?"

Her breath caught. The space between them felt charged, dangerous. Over the past weeks, they'd fallen into a rhythm that terrified her. Morning coffees where he actually listened when she talked about the kids. Afternoons when he'd roll up his sleeves and help repair broken equipment. Evenings when his hand would brush hers and the world would tilt sideways.

She was falling for him. God help her, she was falling for a man who lived in a world so far removed from hers they might as well be on different planets.

"I don't know," she admitted quietly. "That's what scares me."

Dante's expression softened. He reached up, his fingers hovering near her face before he seemed to think better of it and dropped his hand. "I'm not trying to control you. Or change what you're doing. I'm trying to help you do it better."

"By tearing down everything I've built?"

"By giving you the resources to build something that lasts." His voice was low, intense. "You're brilliant, Elena. The work you do, the lives you change. But you're fighting with one hand tied behind your back. Let me untie it."

She wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust that this was really about the center and not about whatever was growing between them, complicated and messy and impossible to ignore. But trust was a luxury she'd learned to live without.

"How long?" she asked. "How long would construction take?"

"Eight months. Maybe ten."

"And where do the kids go during that time? Where do the programs run? You can't just shut down for a year, Dante. These kids need consistency. They need—"

"I've already thought of that." He moved back to the table, pulling up another folder. "There's a vacant warehouse three blocks from your current location. I'll lease it, we'll retrofit it as a temporary space. Full funding for all programs during the transition. When the new center opens, we'll convert the warehouse into a satellite location. Double your reach."

Elena's head spun. He'd thought of everything. Of course he had. Dante Salvatore didn't do anything halfway.

"This is insane," she whispered.

"This is necessary." He watched her with an intensity that made her skin prickle. "Unless you're going to stand there and tell me you don't want this. That you wouldn't kill for a space where the roof doesn't leak on the computers, where you have enough room for all the kids who need you, where you're not rationing supplies and begging for donations just to keep the lights on."

She couldn't. Because he was right. About all of it.

"I need time to think."

"Elena—"

"I said I need time." She grabbed her jacket from the chair, needing distance, needing air, needing to not be in this glass tower where everything felt too big and too possible and too terrifying. "This isn't just about money, Dante. This is about people's lives. If I say yes to this and something goes wrong, if you change your mind or lose interest or—"

"I won't."

"You don't know that." Her voice cracked. "You don't know what it's like to build something from nothing and watch it almost die a hundred times. You don't know what it's like to make promises to kids who've been let down by every adult in their lives and then have to keep those promises even when you're drowning."

Dante moved toward her, and this time when he reached for her face, he didn't stop. His hand cupped her cheek, warm and solid and real. "Then let me help carry the weight."

Elena's breath shuddered out. She should pull away. Should maintain the professional distance she'd been trying and failing to keep. But his touch made her forget all the reasons this was a terrible idea.

"Why do you care so much?" she asked. "Really. I want the truth."

For a long moment, Dante said nothing. Then, quietly: "Because I know what it's like to lose someone who needed help and not be able to save them."

The raw pain in his voice made her chest ache. There was a story there, something broken and buried deep. She saw it in the way his eyes darkened, in the tension that suddenly gripped his shoulders.

"Dante—"

His phone buzzed, sharp and insistent. He glanced at the screen and his entire body went rigid. "I have to take this."

"What's wrong?"

He was already moving toward his desk, his expression shuttering closed. "Marcus. What happened?"

Elena couldn't hear the response, but she watched Dante's face pale. I watched his free hand curl into a fist. I watched something cold and dangerous slide behind his eyes.

"When?" he demanded. "How many?"

A pause.

"I'm on my way." He ended the call and looked at Elena, and for just a second, she saw something in his face that made her blood run cold. Not the careful businessman or the passionate philanthropist. Something harder. Something lethal.

"I have to go," he said. "Emergency."

"What kind of emergency?"

"The kind I can't explain right now." He grabbed his jacket, already heading for the door. "Think about the proposal. Please. I'll call you tonight."

"Dante, wait—"

But he was gone, the door closing behind him with a soft click that felt like a wall slamming into place.

Elena stood alone in his office, surrounded by architectural dreams and unanswered questions, her cheek still warm from his touch. Something was wrong. Something beyond business emergencies and urgent calls. She'd seen it in his eyes, that flash of something dark and dangerous.

Who was Dante Salvatore, really?

Her phone buzzed. A text from Sarah: Turn on the news. South Side warehouse fire. Multiple casualties. Some of Miguel's old crew.

Elena's stomach dropped. She grabbed the remote and flipped on the television mounted on the wall. The news anchor's voice filled the room, grave and measured.

"...authorities are calling it arson. At least four confirmed dead, all believed to be members of the Kings street gang. Sources say this may be connected to a string of similar attacks targeting criminal operations throughout the city. The perpetrator, known only as 'The Sentinel,' remains at large..."

The Sentinel. Elena had heard whispers about him for months now. A vigilante operating in the shadows, taking down gang operations with surgical precision. The police denied his existence. The streets spoke of him like a ghost.

And Dante had just received a call about an emergency on the South Side.

No. That was crazy. Dante Salvatore was a billionaire, not some masked vigilante playing hero in the streets. The timing was a coincidence. It had to be.

But as Elena stared at the footage of the burning warehouse, at the covered bodies being loaded into ambulances, she couldn't shake the feeling that nothing about Dante Salvatore was coincidence.

Her phone rang. Unknown number.

"Hello?"

"Miss Moretti." The voice was mechanical, distorted. "You're getting close to something dangerous. Walk away from Dante Salvatore. While you still can."

The line went dead.

Elena's hand trembled as she lowered the phone. Outside, the city glittered in the afternoon sun, beautiful and brutal and full of secrets.

And somewhere in those streets, Dante Salvatore was keeping secrets that might destroy them both.