Chapter 7 - Unmasked
The cleanup was swift and merciless.
By sunrise, the ballroom on the first floor had been completely sanitized. The shattered crystal, the poisoned wine, and the blood had been scrubbed away by a professional remediation crew. To the outside world, the Sterling-Moretti alliance had simply dissolved overnight due to "irreconcilable contractual breaches."
In reality, Dante had absorbed their entire shipping empire before breakfast.
I woke up in an enormous king-sized bed wrapped in eight-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. The master bedroom smelled of cedar, crisp winter air, and Dante.
I looked down at myself. Someone—likely the female medical staff—had changed me into an oversized, impossibly soft black cashmere sweater that fell past my mid-thighs. My shoulder was bandaged neatly, the pain reduced to a dull, manageable ache.
The heavy oak door swung open.
Dante walked in carrying a silver tray. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, dark slacks, and no shoes. Seeing the terrifying don of the Five Families carrying a tray of scrambled eggs, toasted sourdough, and black coffee was a cognitive dissonance I couldn't immediately process.
“You’re awake,” he said, setting the tray across my lap as he sat on the edge of the mattress. The bed dipped under his immense weight.
“Mr. Moretti, this is improper,” I said, instinctively pulling the cashmere tighter around my chest. “I should be reporting to the house manager for the morning shift.”
“The house manager has been instructed that if you lift a single broom, she will spend the winter sweeping the runway at our private hangar,” Dante said smoothly, pouring a cup of coffee and handing it to me. “And stop calling me Mr. Moretti. My name is Dante.”
I took the cup, the warmth seeping into my hands. “You can’t keep me here, Dante. I’m a liability. Julian’s loyalists will know that I was the catalyst for their downfall.”
“Julian’s loyalists are currently being rounded up by my lieutenants across four boroughs,” Dante said, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His gaze was heavy, deliberate, and entirely unashamed as it traced the curves of my body beneath the cashmere. “You are not a liability, Clara. You are the only person in this city who looked at a five-hundred-pound falling iron beam five years ago and decided to throw her body over mine instead of running for the exit.”
I lowered my eyes to the dark coffee. “I didn't know who you were back then. I just saw a man trapped under timber.”
“And last night?” Dante pressed, his voice dropping into that low, intoxicating timber that made my breath hitch. “You knew exactly who I was. You knew I was a monster who runs an empire with an iron fist. Why didn't you let me drink the wine?”
I swallowed hard, the memory of his hand catching the crop flashing through my mind.
“Because you’re fair,” I whispered, looking up to meet his slate-gray eyes. “In eighteen months working in your cellar, I watched you execute three men who embezzled from the pension fund of the dockworkers’ union. You never allowed your men to extort the local shopkeepers. You’re ruthless, Dante... but you aren't cruel. Camila was cruel. Her brother was a parasite.”
Dante stared at me in silence for several long heartbeats. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he reached out and took the coffee cup from my trembling fingers, setting it onto the nightstand.
“Do you have any idea,” he whispered, his large hands moving to cup both sides of my face, his thumbs stroking over my cheekbones, “how many years I have spent surrounded by sycophants who would smile while pouring poison into my glass?”
“Dante...”
“They look at me and see power. They see money. Camila looked at me and saw a title she could parade in front of the Manhattan elite.” He leaned closer, his forehead resting gently against mine, his hot breath washing over my lips. “You saw a human being worth saving. Twice.”
“I’m not a socialite,” I said, one last desperate attempt to build a wall between us. “I’m a woman with calloused hands, scars on my back, and hips that Camila called a disease.”
Dante’s hands moved down from my face, sliding over my neck, down over my shoulders, and settling firmly, possessively on the curve of my waist. He squeezed, pulling me an inch closer, his eyes blazing with an intensity that burned away all my defenses.
“Camila was an empty, painted shell,” Dante growled softly against my mouth. “You are real. You are magnificent. And every single inch of your body belongs right here, beside me, running this empire.”
May you like
And then, he kissed me.
***
