I Left the Don Who Used Me as Bait

The confirmation popped up on my screen just as Dante pushed open the carved doors to the great room.

He found me slumped on the couch, making no move to get up.

He checked his watch and frowned, already impatient.

"Any other business we need to discuss tonight? It's almost midnight. I have to get to the West Wing."

I studied the hard lines of his face for two seconds, then shook my head.

"No. Nothing."

He gave me a curt nod.

"Fine. Get some sleep."

He didn't notice how pale I was or that my hands were shaking. He turned and headed down the private corridor to the West Wing.

I sat there for a while, staring at nothing.

I was about to get up when the dark screen of the house comm unit flashed red. It was Elena's private channel.

And then there was Dante.

The ruthless Don had forbidden all visitors, calls, and business after midnight. Yet he answered her call at once.

As if he couldn't bear to keep her waiting.

I let out a bitter laugh.

How considerate. Too bad I'd never been the one he broke his rules for, despite being his wife.

I went back to our room.

And I finally let myself notice the things I'd always ignored.

Like the backup radio he kept in our bedroom, its volume turned all the way down.

Like the receiver he kept on him day and night, locked to the West Wing's frequency.

I turned off the light. In the suffocating dark, I opened an encrypted message from my Russian contact, Alexei Volkov.

Last week, he'd offered me a job in Moscow running a new shipping route.

I'd turned him down. Things were more dangerous than ever, and I hadn't wanted to leave Dante.

But now it was over. All of it.

Alexei's reply came almost immediately.

"Are you sure? Once you're on that icebreaker to Moscow, you don't belong to Sicily anymore. It sails in two days."

I typed back a single word. "Yes."

Outside, a cold wind moved through the treetops. Elena was probably sleeping like a baby in the West Wing right now.

I got under the covers.

An invisible trench seemed to divide our bed in two.

My mind drifted back to a rainy night two years earlier, when a fight over territory had nearly gotten us killed.

Dante, who never let anything shake him, had thrown me to the ground and shielded me with his body. As he held me in the dark, I felt his arm trembling, just barely. It was the same arm that held a gun steadier than anyone's.

"Don't be scared. I'm here." His voice was low and urgent, betraying how worried he was about me.

That was the night I started falling for him.

Back then, I'd believed we would be happy together for the rest of our lives.

I sighed and closed my eyes. Nightmares dragged me under.

When I woke up the next morning, Dante was standing at the gun bench by the walk-in closet.

I got up and touched his tactical tablet.

It was burning hot.

Before I left, I had to destroy the Rinaldi family's coded files. I fed them into the shredder, then headed for the door without looking at him.

I'd almost made it past him.

Dante turned his head, caught off guard, and called after me.

"You're not going to sight in my Beretta for me?"

I gave him a small smile.

"Nope. Not anymore.

"You can read the manual and figure it out yourself."

I paused. "Or have your private doctor do it for you."

Dante set down the magazine he was loading and came over, his eyes narrowing as he studied me.

"You mean Elena?"

The moment her name left his lips, all that frightening menace drained out of him.

For a second, his cold eyes almost smiled.

"She knows her way around guns. She's careful. But what does that have to do with you sighting in mine?"

I just looked at him.

He acted like it was perfectly obvious, and I couldn't be bothered to say more than I had to.

"It doesn't. I just don't feel like doing it anymore."

Dante's mouth tightened. He clearly wasn't happy.

"Suit yourself. And don't bring lunch to the meeting room today. Elena said she's bringing me one of her healthy meals."

My fingers tightened on the door handle.

"Fine."

Dante's stomach had been badly damaged in a shootout years ago. No matter how many assassination attempts I faced, I'd always made his special liquid meals myself and gotten them to him on time.

Well. That suited me just fine.

One less thing to carry.

That settled it. I gave up any thought of looking after him, gave a one-word reply, and slammed the door behind me.

I went to a hidden outpost run by the Santoni family, who controlled Corsica, and got their highest-level travel seal.

On the way back, I stopped by the armory and wiped every fingerprint record they had on me.

I dropped my badge into a bag and sealed it.

I stood in the blinding Sicilian sun and watched the coastline stretch into the distance.

For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

Then I remembered something.

I took out my handheld, logged into the estate's security system, and erased Dante's master access code.

From that moment on, he was locked out.

The system would never take orders from him again.