When they finally reached the fortified estate, hidden deep within a perimeter of pine trees and snow-draped fences, Dante carried her to the master suite. He didn’t speak until he had cleaned the wound himself, his large, calloused hands moving with a reverence that made Nora’s breath catch.
“You were terrified,” she whispered, watching the tension in his shoulders.
“When the glass broke,” he admitted, his voice rough, stripped of its usual polished cadence. “Men like me are terrified constantly, Nora. We just call it strategy.”
“I’m just a contract,” she said, the old insecurities flaring up in the quiet of the room. “I’m supposed to be invisible. That’s why you picked me.”
Dante stopped, his hands framing her face, forcing her to meet his dark, intense gaze. “I thought you would be easy to ignore,” he confessed, his thumb gently tracing the line of her jaw. “Instead, I notice everything. I notice when you pretend not to be cold. I notice how you lift your chin when you’re scared. When that window shattered, I didn’t think about the commission, or my father’s seat, or Silas Thorne. I only thought that the world would end if you weren’t in it.”
The confession hung in the air, heavy and transformative. Nora kissed him first, a soft, questioning press of lips that Dante answered with a desperate, starving intensity. It wasn’t the kiss of a mafia boss claiming a prize; it was the kiss of a man who had finally found his anchor.
The fragile peace lasted less than twenty-four hours.
The next afternoon, while Dante was confined to the underground war room coordinating security sweeps, Nora went to the kitchen for water. The housekeeper, a timid woman named Maria, bumped into her while scrubbing the counter. As Maria stepped back, Nora felt the distinct weight of a cheap plastic burner phone slip into her cardigan pocket.
“Bathroom,” Maria whispered, her eyes wide with panic. “He said he’ll kill him.”
Locking herself in the powder room, Nora turned on the phone. A single photo loaded on the screen. It was Toby. Her brother. He was tied to a rusted metal chair, his face bruised and swollen, bleeding from a cut above his eye. The background was unmistakable—the abandoned Finkel Steel plant on the south side.
PART 3