Chapter 4: A Glimpse Behind the Mask

Elena should have been asleep.

Instead, she stood at her apartment window at two in the morning, staring down at the street where a black SUV had been parked for the past three hours. The same SUV that had followed her home from the community center. The same one she'd noticed outside the hospital when she'd visited Miguel earlier that evening.

She'd tried to convince herself it was paranoia. That the stress of the past few days was making her see threats where none existed. But Elena had grown up in South Chicago. She knew the difference between coincidence and surveillance.

Someone was watching her.

The question was why.

Her phone buzzed on the counter, and she jumped, heart hammering. At this hour, a call meant an emergency. Hospital. Police. Bad news delivered in clinical tones by strangers paid to care.

But the number on the screen made her breath catch for an entirely different reason.

Dante Salvatore.

Her finger hovered over the decline button. No good conversation happened at two in the morning. Nothing that couldn't wait for daylight. But something made her answer, some instinct she couldn't name.

"Hello?"

"You're awake." His voice was rough, like he'd been drinking whiskey or hadn't slept in days. Maybe both.

"So are you," Elena said, keeping her tone neutral. "Is there a reason you're calling me at this hour, Mr. Salvatore?"

A pause. Long enough that she almost thought he'd hung up. Then: "Are you looking out your window right now?"

Ice flooded her veins. Elena stepped back from the glass instinctively, her free hand clutching the curtain. "How did you—"

"The SUV outside your building. It's mine."

"You're having me?" Anger surged through her shock, hot and righteous. "What gives you the right—"

"There was an incident tonight." His voice cut through hers, sharp with urgency. "At the warehouse district near your center. Three men were hospitalized. They're members of the Viper Kings."

The gang that had put Miguel in the hospital. Elena's grip tightened on the phone. "What does that have to do with me?"

"Before the ambulance arrived, someone spray painted a message on the wall." Another pause. "It said 'Stay away from the Moretti woman.'"

The room tilted. Elena sat down hard on her couch, her legs suddenly unable to support her weight. "I don't understand."

"Someone intervened on your behalf. Someone who knew those men were planning to target you next."

"Target me? Why would they—" But she knew. Of course she knew. Miguel had tried to leave the gang. She'd helped him apply to a program that would have gotten him out of the city, away from the violence. The Vipers saw that as betrayal, and Elena as the catalyst.

She'd made herself a problem that needed solving.

"Miss Moretti." Dante's voice softened, and somehow that was more unsettling than his earlier sharpness. "Elena. You're in danger. Real danger. And whoever took down those men tonight... they knew exactly what they were doing."

"How do you know all this?" The question came out shakier than she intended. "The police haven't even contacted me."

"I have resources. Connections. I make it my business to know what happens in this city."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I can give you right now." Fabric rustled on his end, like he was moving. "The security detail outside your building will remain until we can assess the full extent of the threat. I'm also having additional cameras installed at the community center tomorrow."

"I didn't agree to any of this." But even as she protested, Elena knew she should feel grateful. Terrified, yes, but also grateful that someone with resources was taking this seriously. "You can't just make decisions about my safety without consulting me."

"Would you have agreed if I'd asked?"

She wanted to say yes. Wanted to maintain the illusion that she was in control of her own life, her own choices. But they both knew the truth.

"No," she admitted quietly.

"Then consider this me not asking." A door closed on his end. Footsteps echoed, hollow and distant. "There's something else. Something I need to tell you, but not over the phone. Can you meet me?"

"Now? It's two in the morning."

"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

Elena closed her eyes. Every instinct screamed at her to refuse. To maintain boundaries, to not get more entangled with a man who was already upending her carefully controlled world. But curiosity gnawed at her, and beneath that, something else. Something that felt dangerously close to trust.

"Where?"

"There's a diner on Fifth. Murphy's. It's neutral ground, public, safe. Twenty minutes."

He ended the call before she could change her mind.

Elena sat in the silence of her apartment, listening to the hum of Mrs. Chen's refrigerator through the thin walls and the distant wail of sirens that never really stopped in this neighborhood. Then she stood, grabbed her jacket, and headed for the door.

The security guard in the SUV straightened when she emerged from the building, speaking rapidly into a radio. She ignored him, climbed into her Honda, and drove through empty streets toward whatever revelation Dante Salvatore thought was worth dragging her out of bed for.

Murphy's Diner was a relic from another era, all chrome and red vinyl and windows that never quite got clean. At this hour, it held only ghosts and insomniacs: a tired waitress refilling coffee, a trucker eating eggs at the counter, and Dante Salvatore sitting alone in a corner booth.

He looked different than he had at the center or the restaurant. Less polished. His suit jacket was gone, his shirt sleeves rolled up, revealing forearms marked with scars that looked too deliberately placed to be accidents. His hair was disheveled like he'd been running his hands through it, and shadows pooled under his eyes.

He looked, Elena realized with a start, almost human.

"Thank you for coming," he said as she slid into the booth across from him. A cup of coffee sat in front of him, untouched and probably cold.

"You said it was important."

"It is." He leaned back, studying her with an intensity that made her want to look away. But she held his gaze, refusing to be the first to break. "What do you know about the Sentinel?"

The question threw her. "The vigilante? Only what everyone knows. Someone's been taking down gang operations across the South Side for the past two years. The police can't catch him. The gangs are terrified of him." She frowned. "What does that have to do with—"

Understanding hit her like ice water.

"The men who were hospitalized tonight," she said slowly. "The ones who were planning to come after me. The Sentinel did that."

Dante's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. Acknowledgment. Warning.

"Why are you telling me this?" Elena's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Why do you care about some vigilante protecting me?"

"Because you need to understand the situation you're in. The Vipers won't forget what happened tonight. They'll see it as a challenge, a declaration of war. And you're at the center of it now, whether you want to be or not."

"Then I'll go to the police. Get proper protection."

"The police can't protect you from this." His hand moved across the table, not touching her but close enough that she felt the heat of his skin. "The Vipers have cops on their payroll. Politicians. Judges. The system you want to trust is compromised from the inside."

"And you're what? My white knight? My savior?" Anger crept into her voice, bitter and sharp. "I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask for your donations or your security or your midnight meetings. I just want to do my work and help kids who need it."

"I know." And the way he said it, soft and almost sad, made her pause. "But wanting something and having it are two different things. You made yourself visible, Elena. You made yourself matter. And in this city, that makes you a target."

She wanted to argue. Wanted to throw his words back in his face and walk out of this diner and pretend none of this was happening. But the truth settled heavy in her chest.

He was right.

"What do I do?" she asked finally.

"You let me help you. You accept the security. You should be careful." He paused, something unreadable crossing his face. "And you trust that there are people in this city who want to protect what's good, even if they have to work outside the law to do it."

"People like the Sentinel."

"People like the Sentinel," he agreed.

Elena studied him, this billionaire philanthropist with his scarred forearms and his exhausted eyes and his knowledge of things he shouldn't know. And she wondered, not for the first time, what secrets lived behind that carefully constructed facade.

"There's more you're not telling me," she said.

"There always is." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "The question is whether you want to know."

Before Elena could answer, his phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and his entire demeanor changed. Every muscle tensed, his jaw tightening into something hard and dangerous.

"What?" Elena leaned forward. "What's wrong?"

Dante stood abruptly, throwing money on the table. "Someone just broke into your community center. They're destroying everything."