Dante's POV
The night bled into morning without mercy.
The air outside was cold and wet, heavy with the metallic scent of rain and blood. Dante stood in the courtyard, his coat open, breath fogging in the pale dawn light. The man they'd caught knelt before him, bound and bruised with his head hanging low.
The guards waited nearby, silently watching for orders.
"Name" Dante said.
The man coughed, spitting blood onto the stone. "Does it matter?"
Dante's jaw tightened. "It does if you want to leave here breathing."
The man's laugh came out as a broken sound. "You think this changes anything? There's nowhere she can hide. We'll find her. Just like we found…."
He didn't finish.
Dante didn't need him to.
He nodded once to Marco, his right hand man. Marco's fist connected sharply with the intruder's ribs. The sound echoed against the stone walls followed by a pained gasp.
"You'll tell me who sent you," Dante said quietly, almost gently. "And you'll do it soon. Because I'm a patient man but my men aren't."
The intruder's defiance faltered then a flicker of fear crossing his eyes.
"She's not worth this" he muttered.
Dante's expression didn't change but something inside him did, a slow, dangerous shift. "You're wrong about that."
He turned away signaling to Marco. "Keep him alive. I'll deal with him later."
As Dante walked back toward the house the first light of dawn crept over the walls. He felt its warmth on his skin but none of it reached inside. The breach wasn't random. Someone had fed them information. Someone close.
And if there was one thing Dante Moretti despised more than enemies, it was betrayal.
Elena's POV
She felt the shift before she heard it.
A tension hummed through the air, subtle but unmistakable. The guards in the halls moved differently, faster, more alert. Voices carried in low tones through the corridors. Something had happened.
Lucia appeared at her door midmorning, pale but composed. "Mr. Moretti asks that you remain upstairs until further notice."
Elena frowned. "What's going on?"
Lucia's eyes flickered toward Mateo who was playing quietly with a toy car on the rug. "It's better you don't ask."
That only made her more determined to know.
When Lucia left Elena waited a full ten minutes before slipping into the hallway. She moved quietly, her bare feet silent against the polished floor. Every door she passed was closed, every sound muffled. The house felt like it was holding its breath.
At the end of the corridor she found a narrow staircase she hadn't noticed before. It led down toward the eastern wing, the side where the windows were shuttered and the light seemed thinner.
She followed it.
The smell hit her first, damp stone and smoke. Then she heard voices. Men's voices. One of them was his.
She crept closer pressing herself against the wall near a half-open door. The voice that spoke was rough, strained. "You're wasting your time Moretti."
Her pulse jumped.
He was interrogating someone.
Elena leaned closer, just enough to catch fragments.
"…someone on the inside… not just one of yours…"
"…orders came from higher up…"
"…you can't protect her forever…"
Then the sound of a fist hitting flesh, hard enough to make her flinch.
Silence.
Her stomach turned, a knot of fear and guilt tightening inside her. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't want to know but she couldn't pull herself away.
When she finally stepped back she bumped into something solid.
She froze.
A hand closed gently around her wrist, firm, familiar. "You shouldn't be down here."
Her breath caught. Dante stood behind her with his expression unreadable, the faintest trace of blood on his knuckles.
"I heard…." she began.
"Enough" he said quietly. "Go back upstairs."
"I'm not a child" she snapped.
"No" he said, eyes steady on hers. "You're a mother. Which means you should be smarter than this."
The words stung but beneath them was something else, fear, sharp and genuine.
He released her wrist but didn't step back. They stood there inches apart, tension thick enough to drown in.
"You hurt him" she whispered.
"He came here to hurt you."
"I don't want people dying because of me."
His voice dropped lower. "You think I do?"
Her throat tightened. "Then why do this? Why risk everything for someone you barely know?"
For a long moment he said nothing. Then softly, "Because someone has to."
The simplicity of it undid her. For all his darkness there was conviction in his voice, something unbreakable. She looked into his eyes and saw no monster there, only a man carrying too much weight.
"Please" he said and the word sounded foreign on his tongue. "Go back upstairs."
This time she did.
Dante's POV
She shouldn't have been there.
The thought burned through him long after she left. He could still feel her pulse beneath his fingers, the tremor of her breath when she'd looked at him. She'd seen more than he wanted her to, not of the violence but of the man beneath it.
That was dangerous. For both of them.
He went back to the room where the intruder sat slumped in a chair, blood drying on his skin. Marco looked up. "He's done talking."
Dante stared at the man for a long moment. "Get rid of him. Quietly."
When Marco left to carry out the order Dante walked to the window. The sky was pale now, streaked with gold. Somewhere beyond the walls the city was waking up, oblivious to what happened here.
He pulled out his phone and dialed a number he hadn't used in years.
"It's Moretti" he said when the voice answered. "I need information on a name. Someone's feeding intel from inside. Find out who."
The voice hesitated. "You think it's one of your own?"
"I think it's someone close."
He hung up before the reply could come.
For the first time in years Dante felt something he hadn't felt since his father's death, the sense that his control was slipping. The world he built, the fortress he'd forged was no longer safe and the reason for that lay upstairs, asleep beside her son.
Elena's POV
When Dante didn't return that night the house seemed to grow colder.
Lucia brought dinner but said little. The guards outside her door were different now, more of them, faces harder. Mateo asked why they couldn't go outside and she told him it was raining even though it wasn't.
When he finally fell asleep Elena went to the window. The gardens looked different in the dark, the lanterns burning lower. She caught movement by the outer wall, shadows shifting or maybe just her imagination.
She pressed a hand to the glass.
Somewhere out there men were willing to die to reach her. Somewhere inside a man was willing to kill to keep her safe.
She didn't know which scared her more.
The door opened quietly behind her. She turned to see Dante in the doorway, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up, exhaustion shadowing his face.
"You're still awake" he said.
"So are you."
He crossed the room, stopping near her. The air between them felt charged, alive.
"It's over for tonight" he said. "He's gone."
She wanted to ask what that meant but part of her didn't want to know. "And tomorrow?"
His eyes met hers, dark and unyielding. "Tomorrow we start looking inward."
He looked toward Mateo's sleeping form then back at her. Something in his expression softened.
"You should get some rest," he murmured. "You'll need it."
Before she could reply he reached out, a small, instinctive gesture and brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. His fingers lingered for half a heartbeat too long.
Then he stepped back.
"Goodnight Elena."
When he left the echo of his touch stayed, light as a ghost, heavy as a promise.