Chapter 7
"Nobody," Dante replied grimly. "There’s no name. Just a digital escrow confirmation code and a single note: *The first phase is complete. The second phase begins at Castiglione’s tomorrow night.* Renzo... Don Silvio didn't order this hit. A ghost did."
Renzo stood motionless in the center of the kitchen, his knuckles whitening around the phone. The air in the loft turned icy once more.
"Bring the dossier to the brownstone," Renzo commanded, his voice dead and cold. "Don't let anyone see it. Sweep the street twice before you come up."
He hung up the phone without waiting for a reply.
Slowly, Renzo turned back toward the living room. His amber eyes were no longer filled with soft, aching chivalry; they were dark, narrowed, and lethal once more. The master strategist of the Chicago syndicate was waking up to the reality of the game.
He looked at me, sitting small and wrapped in his coat on the sofa, clutching the linen towel to my bruised wrists like a frightened child.
"Renzo?" I asked, pitching my voice to that perfect, trembling register of civilian terror. "Is everything alright? Are those men coming back?"
Renzo walked toward me, his boots silent on the oak floor. He stopped at the edge of the rug, looking down at me with an expression torn between lethal focus and an overpowering, desperate need to keep me safe from the storm.
"No," Renzo said, his voice flat with an iron resolve that sent a shiver of triumph down my spine. "Nobody is coming for you, Clara. Tomorrow night, I end this. Whoever is pulling the strings in this city... they're about to find out what happens when you cross my family."
I looked up at him through my damp lashes, letting a fragile, grateful smile touch my lips, while beneath the heavy wool of his coat, my fingers flexed in quiet anticipation.
*Tomorrow night, my sweet prince,* I thought, watching the lethal fire in his eyes. *Tomorrow night, you find out who holds the leash.*
The rain had not stopped. If anything, it had turned vicious, drumming against the leaded glass windows of Castiglione’s with the steady, violent cadence of a firing squad.
Inside the private alcove at the rear of the steakhouse, the heavy crimson velvet drapes were pulled tight, shutting out the muted clatter of the half-empty dining room. The air smelled of burnt tallow from the tabletop candles, richChianti, and the faint, unmistakable tang of gun oil warming against tailored wool.
Across the blood-red tablecloth, Renzo looked like a man who had walked through an artillery barrage and was merely waiting for the shrapnel to work its way out of his chest.
He had not shaved. The dark stubble along his sharp jawline was rough, casting hollow shadows beneath his high cheekbones. His black dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, exposing the hollow of his throat and the dark Sicilian cross inked into the corded muscle beneath. Under his left arm, the familiar leather harness of his Kimber 1911 sat heavier tonight, balanced on the right side by two spare magazines tucked into his silk-lined vest.
He hadn’t touched his food. The dry-aged sirloin on his porcelain plate had gone cold twenty minutes ago, the rosemary butter congealing into a pale, waxy ring.
Instead, his amber eyes were locked onto me.
I sat with my hands tucked between my knees beneath the table, shivering with practiced precision. I wore an oversized cream cashmere sweater—soft, delicate, deliberately chosen to make my shoulders look small and breakable—and my dark hair fell around my face in loose, damp waves. I had used a touch of gray-brown pigment beneath my lower lashes before leaving the safehouse, giving my eyes that hollow, bruised appearance of someone who hadn't slept in thirty-six hours.
"Drink the broth, Clara," Renzo said. His voice was lower than usual, worn down to gravel and raw iron. "You haven't eaten three bites all day."
"I... I tried," I murmured, my voice trembling like a dry leaf caught in the draft. "Every time I close my eyes, I smell the warehouse. I smell the blood on that man's coat."
Renzo’s jaw tightened until the tendons stood out like wire along his neck. A flicker of savage, unadulterated guilt crossed his features—a look so painful, so gut-wrenching, that for a fleeting second, the cold machine inside my mind nearly skipped a gear.
He reached across the table. His hand hovered in the warm candlelight, hesitating, as if he still feared that his mere proximity might bruise me. Then, with an agonizing slowness, his thick, scarred fingers settled over mine.
His palm was calloused and fever-hot. He didn't squeeze; he simply rested his weight there, an anchor cast into a stormy sea.
"You're safe here," he said softly, each word weighted with desperate conviction. "I gave you my word. Nothing touches you while I’m breathing."
I lifted my eyes, letting them pool with fresh, shimmering moisture. "Your friend Dante came to the brownstone this morning while you were gone. He looked at me, Renzo. He looked at me like... like he wanted to put a bullet between my eyes."
Renzo’s thumb swept across my knuckles in a slow, soothing circle, but the muscles in his forearms locked tight.
"Dante follows orders," Renzo said, his tone chilling into pure ice. "And Dante knows that if he raises his hand against you, I’ll bury him under the river before his body hits the floor."
"What happened with your boss?" I asked, leaning forward just enough to let my sweater slip off one shoulder, exposing the faint yellowing bruise on my collarbone. "The Old Man... Don Silvio. You went to see him, didn't you?"
Renzo didn't answer immediately. He picked up his crystal tumbler of scotch, swirling the amber liquid once, twice, before setting it down without taking a sip.
The silence between us stretched, thick and suffocating, punctuated only by the furious lashing of the autumn gale against the brick exterior.
"Silvio knows Sal Valenti is dead," Renzo said quietly.
"Does he... does he know you did it?"
"He knows three of his top earners were butchered in forty seconds by someone using high-grade tactical suppression," Renzo replied, a grim, humorless smirk touching the corner of his lips. "There aren't many men in the Midwest who move like that, Clara. Silvio isn't stupid. He’s dying of lung cancer, but his mind is still sharp as a straight razor."
He leaned in closer across the table. In the flickering amber glow of the candle, the gold rings in his irises burned with dark, feral intensity.
"Silvio asked about the warehouse. He asked why I was down on the south docks when I was supposed to be running collections on the North Side. And then..." Renzo paused, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. "...he asked about the girl."
My heart gave a slow, deliberate thud against my ribs.
*Here it comes.*
"The girl?" I whispered, my voice shrinking into an octave of sheer terror. "He knows about me?"
"Someone talked," Renzo growled, the fury vibrating in his chest like distant thunder. "One of Valenti’s runners must have slipped out the back before the breachers hit the skylight. Word reached the Don that Sal had a hostage tied to an iron chair in the central bay. A witness."
