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Chapter 3

Author: Bryn
Dante immediately took out his phone.

“Enzo, find out what happened in tonight’s attack. Send every duty log to my study.”

He paused.

“And keep this contained. Until we know what happened, no one is to tell anyone outside the family that my wife was attacked.”

He ended the call and came over to me.

“What did the doctor say?”

“That I’m not dying. Not yet.”

“Viola.”

He did not like it when I spoke that way.

In the past, whenever he said my name in that tone, I would be the first to give ground.

Not tonight.

“Luca is dead.”

His jaw tightened.

“I’ll take care of his family.”

“There were supposed to be three cars with me tonight.”

Dante was silent for a moment.

I watched him.

“Were you the one who sent the other two away?”

“The lakeside estate needed more men.”

“There were already more than twenty guards there.”

“Selena received a threatening letter.”

I stared at him, suddenly unable to speak.

He seemed to realize how cruel those words sounded. He reached for my shoulder.

“I didn’t know they would go after you.”

I moved away.

His hand stopped in midair.

“I didn’t order them to withdraw all your protection. Luca’s car was armored, and the route home had been cleared.”

“But he still died.”

Silence settled over the room.

I took out my phone and played the video.

Lucia’s voice calling him Daddy filled the space between us.

Dante reached over and turned off the screen.

“She’s a little girl.”

“And?”

“Her father isn’t around. Selena hasn’t had an easy time raising her alone.”

I lowered my eyes to the dried, dark-red blood on my skirt.

“I didn’t have an easy time tonight, either.”

My voice was calm.

But Dante reacted as though something had struck him.

At last, he really looked at me.

Not at the bandage on my forehead.

At the blood on my clothes. My trembling hands. The shoes I still had not taken off.

“Vee…”

He bent down to hold me.

But an unfamiliar perfume reached me first.

My stomach lurched. I shoved him away and rushed into the bathroom.

Cold water ran over my fingers.

I braced both hands against the sink and fought back the dry heaves.

In the mirror, Dante stood in the doorway.

His gaze moved from my face to the hand shielding my abdomen.

“Are you hurting anywhere else?”

I stiffened, then slowly lowered my hand.

“The doctor said it’s a reaction to the impact.”

He was about to speak when his phone rang.

Selena.

He glanced at the screen and answered.

A woman’s frantic sobbing came through the speaker.

“Dante, the lights outside suddenly went out. Lulu keeps saying someone is standing outside the window. I don’t know if it’s whoever sent the letter…”

Dante turned to leave.

I caught his sleeve.

He stopped and looked back.

I could not remember the last time I had begged him for anything.

“Don’t leave tonight.”

Dante looked down at my hand.

“I’ll send the family doctor over. Enzo will bring men to guard the house.”

“I’m not asking who’s going to guard the house.”

On the phone, Lucia cried for her daddy.

His expression changed.

“I have to go and check.”

I slowly let go.

After Dante left, the bedroom door remained slightly open.

The light from the hallway fell across the floor like a narrow crack.

Two years earlier, we had survived another attack.

Dante had only just taken over the family. Several of the old guard who refused to accept him had joined forces to set a trap.

When gunmen burst into the restaurant, he had already reached the emergency exit.

But he came back.

He pushed me beneath a table.

A bullet grazed his shoulder.

Bleeding, he still reached out and covered my ears.

“Look at me, Vee.”

“I’m here.”

After that, he promised that as long as he was in the city, he would come home every night.

I had lived on that promise for two years.

Only tonight did I learn—

Even promises had to make way for certain people.

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