Chapter 3 - The Ashes of Moretti
The roar of the flames was muffled by the heavy, soundproofed brick walls of L'Étoile Noir, but the smell of scorched sugar, expensive walnut paneling, and burning velvet drifted up into the night air as Viktor calmly poured a second canister of industrial accelerant across the hostess stand.
Outside, the rain had turned into a steady, freezing downpour, washing the neon glow of the streetlamps across the wet pavement of Fifth Avenue.
Elena sat quietly in the passenger seat of my bulletproof Maybach, wrapped in my cashmere overcoat. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap, her knuckles white. She hadn't spoken a single word since we left the restaurant. The shock of the past twenty minutes—the violence, the revelations, the sudden, impossible resurrection of a brother she thought she lost in a burning car twenty-two years ago—had left her entirely hollowed out.
Marcus slid into the driver’s seat, shaking the rain from his broad shoulders.
"Moretti’s men scattered like roaches the second we hit the alley, Boss," Marcus reported, slotting the car into drive. "The fire department’s on their way, but with the traffic on the bridge, the dining room’s going to be a total loss before the hoses even hit the curb."
"Good," I said softly, watching the dark silhouette of the restaurant recede in the side mirror as we pulled away from the curb. "Send Moretti’s bill to his Cayman account."
I turned my attention to the passenger seat. Elena was staring out the window, her reflection ghosted against the dark glass, the cut on her cheek stark and angry under the amber streetlights.
"Are you in pain?" I asked, my voice as gentle as I could make it—a tone I hadn't used with anyone since my mother died.
Elena slowly turned her head. Her hazel eyes, swimming with unshed tears, searched my face with a desperate, heartbreaking fragility.
"You're... you're really Dante?" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the engine. "You're not... you're not playing some cruel game?"
I reached across the console, gently covering her small, cold hand with my own. My palm was calloused from decades of handling weapons and fighting for survival, but her skin felt impossibly delicate beneath it.
"I'm Dante, El," I said, using the childhood nickname I hadn't spoken aloud in two decades. "I have the scar on my left collarbone from when you bit me during the measles quarantine. I have the silver locket our mother gave us, the one with her portrait inside, sitting in my safe at home."
Her lower lip trembled. The last of her defenses crumbled.
She let out a ragged, broken sob, throwing her arms around my neck and burying her face against my shoulder. She cried for all the years of running, for the cold nights, for the abusive foster homes she had bounced through after the crash, for the exhaustion of working seventy hours a week just to pay rent in a city that treated her like garbage.
I held her tightly, one hand resting on the back of her dark hair, my eyes fixed on the rain-streaked window.
May you like
In that moment, every enemy I had crushed, every dollar I had extorted, every violent act I had committed to build the Valenti syndicate felt small and meaningless compared to the fragile, shivering weight of my little sister in my arms.
"I've got you," I murmured against her hair, the old promise rising from the ashes of my childhood. "Nobody will ever hurt you again. I swear it on our mother's grave."
