Chapter 5 - The Man Who Came to Claim Her
The war began quietly.
I didn’t return to Bay Four.
I was moved into the penthouse suite above the garage, a sprawling loft of exposed brick, bulletproof glass, and luxury that stood in stark contrast to the grit below.
For the first week, I healed.
Dante sent up a private doctor who asked no questions, stitched my shoulder, and left.
Dante visited every evening.
He didn’t ask me to bind my chest, and he didn’t call me Eli.
He treated me with a guarded fascination.
We sat by the massive fireplace, drinking scotch, and he made me tell him everything.
I told him about my father’s gambling debts.
I told him how Marcus Bellamy had bought those debts, using them to force my father into signing over our estates and, ultimately, me.
I told him about the night I ran, the scissors, the cold drive into the city.
“He expects obedience,” I told Dante one night, staring into the flames.
“He likes breaking things.
If he gets me back now, after I’ve humiliated him…” I shuddered, unable to finish the thought.
Dante sat in the armchair opposite me, swirling the amber liquid in his glass.
“He won’t get you back.”
“You don’t know that.
If he finds out—”
“Let him find out,” Dante interrupted softly.
I looked at him, stunned.
“Are you insane?
You said yourself it would start a war.”
“A war I am fully prepared to win,” Dante stated with terrifying confidence.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.
“Your father is weak, Elena.
Marcus is arrogant.
Arrogance is a disease that makes men sloppy.
For seven months, Marcus has been bleeding money, paying off cops, funding private investigators.
His organization is distracted.
Vulnerable.”
“Why do you care?”
I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“Why risk your empire for a mechanic who lied to you?”
Dante held my gaze.
The intensity in his dark eyes made my breath hitch.
It was the same look he had given me the first day he noticed me, but magnified.
“Because you fixed my Mustang,” he said, a faint smirk playing on his lips.
“And good mechanics are hard to find.”
Before I could respond, the heavy steel door of the penthouse opened.
Tony burst in, breathless and pale.
He didn’t even knock.
“Boss,” Tony gasped, glancing at me before looking back to Dante.
“We have a problem.”
Dante didn’t raise his voice.
“Report.”
“Bellamy’s men.
Three SUVs just pulled up to the front gates.
Heavy hitters.
Marcus is in the lead car.”
Tony swallowed hard.
“They’re asking to search the premises.
They claim they tracked a burner phone signal to this block.”
My blood turned to ice.
The phone.
Before the shooting, I had used a cheap burner to call my father’s estate, just to hear if the maid, Maria, was okay.
I hadn’t spoken, just listened, but the call lasted thirty seconds.
Enough to trace a cell tower ping.
“They can’t come in here,” I panicked, standing up, my hand instinctively going to my wounded shoulder.
“Dante, I have to hide.
The basement—”
“Sit down, Elena,” Dante commanded.
He stood up, buttoning his suit jacket with a terrifying calm.
He checked the clip of his weapon and slid it into his shoulder holster.
“Dante, there are three cars of them,” I pleaded.
“Let them in,” Dante told Tony.
Tony’s eyes went wide.
“Boss, if they see her—”
“I said, let them in.
Open the main garage doors.
Tell Marcus I will meet him on the floor.”
Dante turned to me.
“Go to the bedroom.
There is a suit in the closet.
Black silk.
Put it on.
Fix your hair.”
“What?
You want me to dress up?”
“I want you to look like exactly who you are,” Dante said.
“You aren’t Eli Ross cowering in the shadows anymore.
You are Elena Russo.
And you are standing beside me.”
“He’ll take me,” I whispered, terrified.
Dante crossed the room in three strides.
He cupped my face in his large, warm hands.
His thumbs brushed over my cheekbones, wiping away a tear I hadn’t realized I shed.
“No one is taking you anywhere,” he vowed, his voice a low, fierce rumble.
“Do you trust me?”
I looked into the eyes of Chicago’s most feared crime boss.
I thought of the way he had protected me, patched my wounds, and sat with me in the dark.
“Yes,” I breathed.
May you like
“Then get dressed.
And come downstairs.”
