Chapter 3 - The Price of Survival
"You kept me safe?" My voice shook, every syllable laced with eight years of devotion curdled into poison. "You threw me to the wolves of grief, Dante! I spent three years mourning a man who wasn't dead, waking up in cold sweats, thinking about you holding her in the bed you used to share with me!"
"I told you, she doesn't share my bed!" Dante snarled, his fingers curling into my hair, holding me steady as if he feared I would dissolve into the suffocating gloom of the service corridor. "She sleeps on the north side of the estate under armed guard. She is a hostage with a diamond on her finger, Elena. I took her company, I severed her financial pipelines to Moscow, and the day I eliminate Nikolai Volkov, I will strip her of the Moretti name and cast her into the street."
"And what was I?" I pushed against him, my hands flattening against his broad, armored chest. His heart was hammering—a wild, irregular cadence that betrayed the glacial exterior Chicago feared. "A civilian you couldn't be bothered to trust? You thought so little of me that you believed I would run straight into a Russian bullet?"
"I knew you loved your father enough to try and clean up his sins," Dante said, his dark eyes burning into mine. "The Bratva didn't just want Carter Logistics for smuggling routes, Elena. They wanted you. Volkov wanted to put a collar on you to humiliate your family. The moment I put my ring on Victoria, your value evaporated. You became irrelevant to them. You became untouchable."
The word struck me like a physical blow. *Untouchable.*
He had saved my life by shattering my soul. But while he had been playing chess with the Russian mob and orchestrating a bloodless war in the penthouses of the Gold Coast, I had been in an alpine clinic in Zurich, sweating through twenty-six hours of labor completely alone.
A sudden chill seized my spine.
*Leo.*
My son was waiting on the lower concourse with Clara, clutching his toy wooden train, unaware that the ghost who gave him his jawline and dark, storm-grey eyes was standing inches from me. If Dante looked out the glass doors, if his soldiers sweeping the terminal saw the boy—
"I have to go," I whispered, panic suddenly cutting through the ache in my chest.
"You're not leaving this airport alone," Dante said firmly, his thumb brushing my lower lip in a possessive gesture that made my pulse violently spike. "Victoria’s men tapped the manifest. They know you landed. If you walk out to the cab stand, you won’t make it past the highway."
"I am not your responsibility anymore, Dante!" I jerked my face away from his touch, fighting the traitorous warmth sinking into my skin. "Let me go. Whatever war you’re fighting with my sister, leave me out of it."
"You were never out of it," Dante growled, stepping closer until his tall, imposing silhouette blocked out the ambient light of the corridor. "You are the only reason I went to war in the first place."
Before he could reach for my wrist again, the service door behind him rattled violently. A sharp knock echoed—two rapid beats, then three slow.
"Boss," Luca’s muffled voice came through the metal. "We’ve got a situation on Level 2. Volkov’s spotters just pulled up to the terminal curbside. And Carter’s security team is already inside the baggage claim."
Dante cursed under his breath, his jaw tightening into rigid stone. He looked back at me, his eyes dark with an agonizing conflict between duty and obsession.
"Stay behind me," he ordered, drawing the suppressed semi-automatic from his tailored coat with fluid, terrifying grace. "We’re leaving through the tarmac."
"No," I gasped, backing away into the shadows of the secondary exit. "I have my own ride, Dante."
"Elena, don't be a fool—"
May you like
"I won't let you drag me back into your world!" I screamed, turning on my heel and hitting the emergency push-bar of the fire door. The alarm began to wail, a shrill, deafening siren that masked the sound of my running footsteps as I plunged into the concourse, desperate to reach my son before the monsters of Chicago found him first.
***
