Chapter 4
"Leave the box," the synthesized voice rasped. It echoed off the checkered marble floor, cold and omnipotent, dropping the temperature in the foyer by ten degrees. "Luca Marcone is a minor footnote. Gentlemen, look to the gallery."
Movement caught my eye at the top of the stairs.
Elena stepped out from the shadows of the second-floor landing. She wasn't wearing her silk robe anymore. She was dressed in mourning black—a high-necked wool dress that swallowed her from throat to ankle, making her face look stark, pale, and shockingly fragile under the chandelier light. Her hands rested on the mahogany balustrade.
She didn't look at the Capos. Her emerald eyes dropped straight to me, locking onto the bloodstains dried across my chest.
"For three years, the five families have whispered that the Bellandi throne is rotting," the machine droned through the walls. "Today, we silence the whispers. We do not merely bleed our rivals. We swallow them."
Carmine, the oldest of the Capos, stepped forward, his gray head bowed toward the nearest speaker. "A truce, Boss?"
"An alliance," the voice corrected with a mechanical click. "Sealed in the old way. By Sunday night, the Castellano syndicate will fold their port operations into ours. In exchange, Enzo Castellano will take my daughter’s hand at the altar of Saint Jude’s."
The air left my lungs as if I had taken a shotgun slug to the center of my vest.
Enzo Castellano.
A murmur rippled through the Capos, quickly stifled. Even hardened killers looked uneasy at the name. Castellano wasn't a businessman; he was a butcher with a trust fund. The street knew what happened to the women who went into his Manhattan penthouse. Two brides in five years—one had fallen from a fortieth-floor balcony after months of brutal isolation, and the other had taken her own life before their first anniversary. He broke whatever he touched.
My boots felt welded to the marble. My vision tunneled until the only thing I could see was Elena’s pale hand gripping the banister above me. Her knuckles were white.
"Papa," she whispered.
It wasn't the defiant, reckless voice from the library. It was small. Broken. The sound of a lamb realizing the butcher had finally opened the gate.
"Silence, little bird," the speaker hissed. "You have lived in luxury while men died for your name. Now your blood will buy our peace."
"He’s an animal," Elena cried out, leaning over the railing, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders. For the first time in her life, she looked terrified in front of the family. "You know what happened to the Rossi girl! You're throwing me to a butcher!"
My right hand twitched toward my holster. Every instinct screaming in my skull told me to draw my weapon, shoot out the cameras in the chandelier, take Elena, and fight my way through the front gates.
"Dante."
The synthesized voice snapped my spine straight before my fingers could touch the grip of my Kimber.
"Yes, Don Bellandi," I forced out. The words tasted like broken glass.
"My daughter is displeased with her duty," the machine stated flatly. "She is prone to foolishness. From this hour until she walks down the aisle on Sunday, you are relieved of street operations. You will stand outside her door. You will escort her to her fittings. You will ensure she does not harm a single hair on the body Enzo Castellano has paid for. If she runs, or if she spoils the merchandise before the vows are spoken... I will have the Capos end your life on this very floor."
A sick, suffocating heat rose in my throat. He wasn't just giving her away. He was making me carry her to the slaughterhouse.
I looked up at Elena. A single tear spilled over her lower lashes, tracking down her cheek. Yet, even as her shoulders shook with silent distress, her eyes held mine with a terrifying, scorching demand. *Look at what you're doing to me,* those green eyes said. *Look at what your loyalty costs.*
"Do you understand your orders, Hound?" the intercom crackled.
I bowed my head, staring at the reflection of the chandelier in the polished black marble at my feet. My fists were clenched so hard the leather of my gloves creaked.
"Understood, Boss," I said.
***
By ten that night, the estate had settled into a tomb-like quiet, save for the wind rattling the bulletproof panes of the east wing.
I stood inside Elena’s bedroom suite, my back pressed against the closed double doors.
The Don had altered the protocols. Standing in the hallway wasn't enough; he wanted me inside the room, under the cold, unblinking eye of the dome camera mounted in the plaster rosette above her four-poster bed. A bridal veil made of antique lace hung from a headless mannequin in the corner, looking like a shroud in the dim amber glow of the bedside lamps.
Elena sat at her vanity, brushing her hair.
Slow, rhythmic, hypnotic. She wore a thin black slip that left her arms and shoulders bare. In the mirror, she wasn't watching her own reflection. She was watching me.
"Take off the coat, Dante," she said softly, setting the silver hairbrush down with a sharp clack. "You smell like dead men."
"I remain in full kit while on duty," I replied, staring straight ahead at the wallpaper above her bed.
She stood up. Her bare feet whispered across the carpet as she walked toward the mannequin. She reached out, her fingers tangling in the delicate white lace of the wedding veil.
"Do you know what Enzo did to his first wife?" she asked conversationally.
"Elena. Don't."
"She locked her bedroom door against him on their second night," she continued, her voice floating across the quiet room like smoke. "By morning, she was in a private clinic, and six months later she fell off his terrace."
She ripped the veil off the mannequin.
The dry, ancient lace tore with a loud hiss.
I took two steps forward before I could stop myself. "Put that down. He's watching."
"I know he's watching!" she hissed, spinning around to face me. The torn veil was balled up in her fists. Her chest was heaving, her eyes wild and brilliant in the amber light. She stalked toward me, stopping only when the tips of her toes brushed the steel caps of my boots. "Why don't you care? You dragged me out of the gallery twelve hours ago, and now you're going to drive me to the church and hand me to a man who will destroy me?"
"I don't have a choice," I ground out, looking over her head at the black plastic dome in the ceiling. The tiny red LED inside it was glowing steadily.
"You have a gun!" She slammed both palms against the ballistic plate of my chest. The impact barely registered against the heavy Kevlar, yet it felt like a battering ram against my ribs. Her hands stayed there, burning through my shirt. "You killed five men in Brooklyn before breakfast! You're the deadliest thing in New York, Dante, and you're letting a voice in a box trade me away!"
"Keep your voice down," I warned, the iron control in my jaw splintering.
