Chapter 10 – THE LAST THREAT

The velvet box felt heavy in Dante’s massive hand.

He didn’t drop to one knee. He didn’t make a grand speech. He just looked at me with a fierce, uncompromising love that took the breath right out of my lungs.

He popped the box open.

Inside sat a breathtaking, flawless, emerald-cut diamond ring, set in a vintage platinum band.

“It belonged to my grandmother,” Dante said softly. “It survived a world war, a trip across the Atlantic, and three generations of Salvatore men. It belongs to the woman who saved my family.”

I stared at the ring, tears blurring my vision. “Dante, if you marry me, the Commission will strip you of everything. You’ll lose your empire.”

“My empire is standing right in front of me,” Dante whispered, stepping closer. He gently pulled the ring from the box and slid it onto my trembling left finger. It fit perfectly, sparkling next to the gold bracelet he had given me months ago.

“Will you marry me, Clare?”

“Yes,” I choked out, throwing my arms around his neck. “Yes, absolutely yes.”

He kissed me, a deep, bruising, passionate kiss that sealed a promise the mob could never break.

An hour later, Dante called Lorenzo back to the Malibu house.

The underboss arrived looking smug, expecting Dante to have packed his bags for New York.

Instead, Dante met him in the driveway.

Dante reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, solid gold ring bearing the Salvatore family crest. The ring of the boss.

He tossed it.

Lorenzo barely caught it, looking down at the heavy gold in his palm with absolute shock.

“You’re the boss now, Lorenzo,” Dante said coldly. “I’m out. The syndicate is yours. The territory is yours. In exchange, me and my family are ghosts. Nobody looks for us, nobody contacts us.”

Lorenzo stared at Dante, unable to comprehend a man walking away from millions of dollars and absolute power just to play house in California.

“The Commission will accept this,” Lorenzo said slowly, slipping the ring into his pocket. “But there is one loose end, Dante. When you handed Richard Jensen over to the Morettis, you missed his shadow.”

Dante frowned. “What shadow?”

“Richard had a private cleaner. A hitman who wasn’t on the mafia books,” Lorenzo explained. “When Richard died, the hitman lost his payout. Word on the street is he’s in Los Angeles, looking to collect the debt from the woman who tore up the land deed.”

My blood ran cold. The man who had grabbed Maya on the plane. The man with the dead eyes. He was still out there.

“Consider it my severance package,” Dante said, his voice dropping to a lethal calm.

Lorenzo nodded, got back in his car, and drove away, leaving Dante completely unmoored from the mafia for the first time in his life.

That night, Silas fortified the house. He locked every door, primed the perimeter alarms, and sat in the dark living room with his rifle across his lap.

I put Maya and Leo to bed in the master suite, locking the heavy oak door. Dante sat on the edge of the bed, methodically cleaning his pistol.

At 2:00 AM, the power to the house cut out.

The silence was deafening. The only sound was the crashing of the ocean outside the window.

Then, a single gunshot shattered the quiet, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor downstairs.

Dante sprang up, pushing me behind the bed. “Stay here.”

He slipped out into the dark hallway. I clutched Maya to my chest, terrified.

Minutes ticked by like hours. Then, I heard a wet, gurgling cough from the hallway.

I couldn’t stay hidden. I grabbed the heavy flashlight from the nightstand and cracked the door open.

Silas was slumped against the wall in the corridor, clutching his side. Dark blood pooled rapidly beneath him.

“Silas!” I whispered, running to him.

I pressed the flashlight between my neck and shoulder, using both hands to apply massive pressure to the bullet wound in his abdomen. My nursing instincts took over entirely.

“Hold still,” I ordered, ripping the hem of my shirt to pack the wound.

Silas coughed, a bloody smile on his lips. “I got him, Clare. The hitman is dead in the foyer. Boss is clearing the rest of the house.”

“Don’t talk. Save your strength,” I said, keeping my weight on his wound.

Dante ran up the stairs, his weapon drawn. When he saw me saving his best friend’s life, a profound relief washed over his face.

The hitman was dead. The threat was neutralized.

But as the paramedics arrived to take Silas to a private, discrete doctor, Silas pressed something into Dante’s hand.

It was a bloody matchbook the hitman had dropped.

Dante opened it. It wasn’t a bar or a restaurant. It was an address in Beverly Hills.

“The hitman wasn’t working alone,” Dante realized, his eyes narrowing as he read the address. “He had a local employer funding him.”

I looked at the matchbook. “Who is it?”

Dante looked up at me, the final vestige of the mafia boss flaring to life one last time.

“The man who originally ordered the bomb on my wife,” Dante whispered.