Chapter 5
"Deal," I told Marco.
The enforcer looked at Dante one last time, a silent, desperate plea written across his weathered face.
Dante gave a single, imperceptible nod.
The cards shot across the polished marble, sliding with a quiet hiss. Five cards to me. Five cards to Dante.
My fingers hovered over the edge of the first card. In poker, information was blood. You never touched your cards until you had evaluated the opponent's physical tells—the dilation of the pupils, the tension in the trapezius, the timing of the draw.
I watched Dante.
He didn't hesitate. He gathered his five cards in one smooth motion, fanning them out casually before his chest. He didn't cup them against his shirt to hide them from the overhead light. He didn't even use his thumb to shield the indices.
He held them so loosely, with such careless, reckless negligence, that the faint reflection of his second card—a king of diamonds—flashed clearly in the polished brass bezel of the card stand right behind his left shoulder.
My breath caught.
*He’s showing me his hand.*
It was subtle, an angle of forty-five degrees that an amateur player would never notice, but to anyone trained in the Rossi family’s private parlors, it was as loud as a gunshot.
*Why?*
Was it arrogance? Did he believe he was so far ahead that he didn't care if I saw his king? Or was it an intentional leak—a poisoned breadcrumb designed to lure me into a reckless bluff?
I picked up my cards, peeling them slowly against the palm of my hand.
Seven of clubs. Seven of diamonds. Nine of spades. Jack of hearts. Ace of clubs.
A pair of sevens. A mediocre starting hand.
Under normal circumstances, you discarded the nine, jack, and ace, fishing for three of a kind or two pair. But Dante was showing a king. And from the slight lift of his index finger as he surveyed his own hand, I could see the edge of another red paint card. A pair of kings, or king-queen suited.
If I played standard strategy, my pair of sevens would get shredded.
"The draw," Dante said, his voice flat, devoid of any poker theatrics. "How many cards, Elena?"
I stared at him, searching his face.
The silver scar across his eyebrow pulled slightly as he met my gaze. There was no mockery in his expression now. The cruel smirk had vanished. Instead, his dark eyes held a strange, ferocious gravity—an intensity so absolute, so suffocating, that it felt as though the entire room had collapsed down to the two feet of air between our faces.
"Three cards," I said evenly.
I slid the nine, jack, and ace toward Marco.
Marco picked them up with tongs—syndicate procedure for high-stakes treaty disputes, preventing any claim of dealer palming. He burned a card and slid three fresh rectangles of cardstock across the felt.
I didn't pick them up immediately. I kept my eyes locked on Dante. "And you?"
"I'll take one," Dante said.
He discarded his fifth card—a black four—tossing it into the muck.
*He took one card.*
That meant he was holding four cards to a straight, four to a flush, or two pair. If he had two pair with kings high, he was already holding an insurmountable lead over my pair of sevens.
Marco slid a single card to Dante.
Dante didn't even look at it. He didn't slide it under the other four to squeeze the corner. He picked it up and slapped it directly into the center of his hand, face down, leaving it completely uninspected.
The move was so offensively negligent that my blood flared hot.
"You're not even going to look at it?" I hissed.
"I don't need to," Dante replied, his voice dropping into that dark, velvety register that sent a shiver straight down my spine. "Whatever is on that card, it's already decided. You're holding your cards like they're a shield, Elena. Just like you used to hold that silver cross your mother gave you."
My throat tightened. "Leave my mother out of this."
"She was a smart woman," he said softly, his gaze tracing the bare slope of my shoulder, the hollow of my throat, before coming back to my eyes. "She knew when a war was lost. When your father wanted to raid the North Side docks six years ago, she came to my house. She asked me to keep you out of the crossfire."
"And you did a wonderful job," I spat, bitterness coating my tongue like ash. "You shot my brother in the head and left my father to rot in a nursing home."
"Your brother walked into a trap meant for me," Dante said, his jaw tightening until the muscle clicked. "He took twenty grand from the Genovese family to plant C4 under my car. He was twenty-two, stupid, and greedy. I gave him three chances to walk away from Chicago, Elena. Three. He came back with a hit squad. What was I supposed to do? Let him kill me to prove my love to you?"
The raw violence in his words struck me like an open-handed slap.
In all the years since the war began, Dante had never spoken of that night. The syndicate narrative was simple: the Morettis had wiped out the Rossi vanguard in a ruthless ambush. That was the story I had fed on, the poison that had kept me warm through five years of grief and isolation.
"You're lying," I whispered, though my voice sounded hollow even to my own ears.
"I have never lied to you," Dante said, leaning closer across the black marble.
His eyes were burning, raw and stripped of the Underboss's cold mask. For a second, the five years of blood and corpses between us vanished, and all that remained was the boy who used to pull me behind the stone pillars of St. Michael's church, pressing his forehead against mine, swearing he would tear the whole city down before he let our fathers use us as pawns.
"I have killed men," Dante whispered, the words vibrating against my skin. "I have burned warehouses and bought judges. But I have never, in my entire life, spoken an untrue word to you, Elena. Not when we were kids. Not when we made love on the deck of your father’s yacht. And not tonight."
My heart hammered against my ribs, frantic and disoriented. The heat coming off him was intoxicating, a dangerous gravity that pulled me toward the edge of an abyss.
I wanted to believe him. God help me, some broken, desperate part of me wanted nothing more than to believe that the monster across from me was still the boy who had loved me.
*No,* I screamed internally, wrenching my mind back from the ledge. *It's a play. He's trying to shake your concentration. He knows you're holding a weak hand and he's breaking your focus so you fold.*
I looked down at the three cards Marco had dealt me.
I peeled the corners back one by one.
King of spades.
Eight of hearts.
Seven of spades.
My breath stalled.
A third seven.
Three of a kind. Three sevens.
