Mag-log inDante POV Elena told me everything Isabella had said at the banquet. I spent the night turning her words over instead of sleeping, replaying every conversation, every look, every move I'd dismissed for the wrong reason. By morning, I knew where I'd gone wrong. I had spent weeks hunting a woman I thought wanted me back. She didn't. Maybe she never had. The woman who'd walked into that banquet wasn't fighting for a marriage or a man. She was campaigning for an empire she'd already decided belonged to her. "She's not trying to hurt me," I said, planting both hands on the map spread across the war room table. My untouched coffee had long since gone cold beside it. "She's trying to replace me. There's a difference, and I've been fighting the wrong war." Luca studied the routes marked in red before lifting his eyes to mine. "So what changes?" "Everything." I tapped the first circle on the map, then another. "These routes. These warehouses. Every man she's convinced the future belon
Elena POV The banquet hall smelled like money trying to disguise itself as tradition, candle wax and old wine and too many roses crammed into too few vases. I stood beside Dante near the entrance, my hand resting lightly on his arm. Within seconds, I felt the weight of the room settle on us. "They're staring," I murmured. Dante didn't even glance around. "They're always staring," he said. "Tonight, they just have more reasons to." Ricci reached us first. His smile was polite enough, but his eyes swept over me with open appraisal, lingering on my dress, my posture, my face, as though he were assessing an investment. "Dante," he said smoothly. "And the lovely Elena. I didn't realize the Board banquet had become the place for personal displays." "Elena isn't a display," Dante replied evenly. "Watch how you speak about her." For the briefest moment, Ricci's smile tightened. Then he inclined his head. "My mistake." He moved on without another word. I let out a slow
Dante POV The financial report was still running when Ricci cut in. "Skip ahead," he said, waving a hand at the man reading numbers off a tablet at the end of the table. "We didn't come here for shipping manifests. We came here to talk about Isabella." The aide looked at me. I nodded once, and he sat down without another word. "Isabella isn't Board business," I said. "She's mine to deal with." "Everything that threatens this family is Board business." Cavallo said it without looking up from the ledger in front of him, tracing a column of numbers with one finger like he was double-checking arithmetic instead of picking a fight. "Territory revenue down across three districts this quarter. That's Board business. A dead lieutenant who talked before he died. Also Board business." "James talked because he was already dying," I shot back. "That's not a security failure, that's a man choosing his last words." "Semantics," Vincenzo said, not bothering to look up from his phone. "The poi
Isabella POV The feed from the warehouse camera was grainy, but I didn't need clarity to know how it would end. I watched Dante's men clear the building room by room, weapons raised at nothing, and I let myself enjoy exactly thirty seconds of it before I closed the laptop. James's message was still drying when they found it. Good. I wanted it fresh enough that Dante would know I'd been standing in that room hours before he was. "You could have let him live," Konstantin said from the doorway. He always waited a second longer than necessary before entering, like he needed permission he'd never actually ask for. "I could have." I poured two glasses of wine and handed him one without looking up. "He was useful." Konstantin muttered. "He was expendable." I sat down across from him, crossing one leg over the other. "There's a difference, and I would have thought you'd know it by now. James served his purpose the moment Dante's men started digging through that warehouse instead of di
Dante POV James's voice kept looping in my head on the drive back. “You’re already too late.” A dead man's last words shouldn't carry that much weight, but they did, sitting in my chest like a stone I couldn't put down. I called Luca before we'd even reached the gates. "Pull everyone in," I said. "Now." By the time Elena and I walked into the war room, six men were already at the table and more were coming. Maps of the industrial district south of the river covered half the surface, weighted down at the corners with empty coffee cups. Luca had a red circle drawn around a warehouse three blocks off the water. "James gave up the location before he died," Luca said, tapping the circle. "Old textile building. She's had it for months, according to him." "According to him," one of my men repeated, skeptical. "He wasn't lying," Elena said. Everyone looked at her. She didn't flinch. "I watched his face. He knew he was already dead. Men like that don't lie when there's nothing
Elena POV James was on his knees in front of us, hands tied behind his back, breathing hard through a split lip. The weak overhead light made the blood on his face look almost black. He didn't look like the man who used to guard Dante's back at family dinners, the one who always let me have the last piece of bread without anyone noticing. He looked small. I stood a few feet away, the gun heavy in my hand. Dante had given it to me without a word. He was right behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat of his body, but he wasn't stepping in. This was mine to do. James looked up, eyes wide and desperate. "Elena, please. you don't have to do this. You're not like them. You can still walk away from all of it." His voice cracked on the last word, and for a second I remembered him bringing me water on my second night here, back when he was just the quiet one who never met my eyes. But he had pressed a gun to my head on that boat. He had laughed while Dante bled out on the do
The hallway felt colder the moment Dante stepped into it. I followed him before I could stop myself. "Elena," he said sharply without turning, "I told you to stay inside." "And I told you yesterday I'm stubborn." That earned me a brief glance over his shoulder—dark eyes, unreadable. Then he
The mansion had fallen eerily silent after the conversation with Dante. Even the servants moved cautiously, like they were stepping through a house where danger could appear from any shadow. My thoughts, however, were anything but quiet. Every word Dante had said, every look, every intensity behind
The doors closed behind me with a soft, final click that seemed to echo longer than it should have. Suddenly the world outside felt distant, cut off, and the one I had just entered felt smaller, sharper, and far more dangerous. The air inside the mansion was cool and carried the faint scent of leath
The room felt suffocating as I followed Dante out of the auction hall. Every step I took made my chest tighten, every echo of my heels against the floor reminded me constantly that I had no real choice anymore. My mind was a mess of questions, panic, and a deep, heavy fear. Why me? Why him of all pe

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