Chapter 3: Caught in the Dark

The darkness didn’t last.

A hand clamped over my mouth before I could draw a breath to scream, the grip iron-hard and smelling faintly of gunpowder and expensive cologne. I thrashed, my heels skidding against marble, but whoever held me was immovable. The cold muzzle of a gun pressed against my temple, and every ounce of fight in me turned to ice.

“Scream, and I’ll put a bullet through that pretty head before your precious Dante even blinks,” the stranger murmured against my ear. His voice was calm. Almost bored. That terrified me more than the shouting would have.

My heart hammered so violently I was sure he could feel it through his palm.

Then—light. Red emergency lights flickered along the corridor ceiling, painting everything in bloody shadows. And in that glow, I saw him.

Dante.

He stood at the far end of the hallway, still as a statue, his dark hair disheveled from the gala, his tuxedo jacket gone, sleeves rolled to his elbows. In his right hand hung a matte-black pistol. His eyes found me first—wide, wild, checking for blood—then slid to the man holding me, and something in his face shifted. It wasn't fear. It was something far more dangerous. A quiet, lethal calm that made the hair on my arms rise.

“Let her go, Viktor,” Dante said. His voice was low, controlled. The kind of control a man only has when he’s one breath away from slaughter.

Viktor laughed, the sound vibrating through my spine. “You think I’d come all this way just to hand her back? She’s worth more than you know, Moretti. The Bratva has been looking for her family’s ledger for six years. And now—” He tightened his arm around my waist, hauling me against his chest. “—she’s going to walk out of here with me, or she dies. Your choice.”

My family’s ledger. The words landed like stones in my stomach. I didn’t know what ledger. I didn’t know anything. My father had been a quiet man, a professor, dead two years now. He’d never mentioned anything to me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I gasped against Viktor’s palm.

“Shut up,” he snapped, and the gun dug harder into my temple.

Dante took a single step forward.

Viktor cocked the hammer. The click echoed like a gunshot in the silent hall.

Dante stopped. But the calm didn’t break. His jaw tightened, a muscle feathering, and his eyes locked onto mine. Hold on, they seemed to say. Just hold on.

“You’re making a mistake, Viktor,” Dante said. “Even if you get out of this building, you won’t get out of this city. Every road out is mine. Every bridge. Every dock. You’ll be dead before sunrise.”

“Then I’ll take her with me,” Viktor said easily. “A dead bride is still a message.”

My knees buckled. I couldn’t help it. The word bride rattled around my skull—the wedding, the ring, the vows I’d said under duress three hours ago. I was a pawn in a game I hadn’t even known I was playing. And now men were pointing guns at each other with my life as the wager.

Suddenly, the corridor went dark again—this time not from a fuse, but from a shadow moving so fast I barely registered it. A shape dropped from the ceiling vent above Viktor. He grunted, his arm loosening for half a second.

That half a second was all I needed.

I wrenched sideways, throwing my weight toward the floor. A gunshot cracked—so loud my ears rang—and I felt the heat of the bullet tear past my shoulder. Then hands were on me, hauling me up, and I was running before my brain caught up, dragged by a man in black who smelled like Dante.

“Left,” Dante barked from somewhere behind me. “Stairwell. Now.”

I ran. My heels were gone. My dress was torn. My feet slapped against cold marble as the man—one of Dante’s soldiers—shoved me through a heavy steel door and into a concrete stairwell. Behind us, more shots. A scream. Then silence.

I stumbled down the stairs, my chest heaving, and then we hit the landing and the soldier pushed me against the wall and held a finger to his lips. I nodded, gulping air, tasting blood where I’d bitten my cheek.

Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Coming down from above.

The soldier raised his gun. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Stand down, Marco.”

Dante’s voice. I opened my eyes. He was walking down the stairs, his shirt splattered with red—not his own, I realized—and his pistol still in his hand. His gaze swept over me, head to toe, cataloging every bruise and tear. When he reached me, he didn’t stop. He kept walking until I was pressed against the wall, his body a wall of heat and fury inches from mine.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. Low. Rough.

“No,” I whispered. My voice shook. “I’m not—I’m fine.”

“You’re lying. You’re shaking.” His hand came up, fingers brushing the hair back from my face. His knuckles were split, bloodied. He didn’t seem to notice. “He touched you.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Dante—”

“He put a gun to your head.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and somehow that was worse. “He put his hands on what’s mine.”

My breath caught. “I’m not yours.”

The words came out before I could stop them. A rebellion I couldn’t afford. But I was tired of being passed between men like currency. I was tired of being the prize in a war I never asked to fight.

Dante’s eyes darkened. For a heartbeat, I thought he might hit the wall beside my head. Instead, he leaned in, his mouth brushing the shell of my ear.

“You are mine, Alessia,” he said softly. “You became mine the moment you said ‘I do.’ And if you ever try to run from me again—” He pulled back, and his gaze dropped to my lips, then lower, to the shattered neckline of my dress. “—I’ll remind you exactly who you belong to.”

I should have pushed him away. I should have screamed. Instead, I stood there, frozen, my heart slamming against my ribs, my skin burning where he’d touched me.

“Viktor?” I managed.

“Dead,” Dante said flatly.

“He said—he said my family has a ledger. Something the Bratva wants.”

Something flickered in Dante’s expression. A shadow. A secret. Then it was gone.

“He was lying,” he said. “Trying to get in your head.”

But I saw it. The lie. The way his thumb rubbed against his index finger, the way he’d looked away for half a breath. Dante Moretti was hiding something. And whatever it was, it had put a target on my back the day I was born.

I opened my mouth to demand the truth.

Then Marco’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and his face went pale. He stepped forward, holding it out to Dante. “Boss. You need to see this.”

Dante took the phone. Read the screen. And for the first time since I’d met him, he went completely still.

“What is it?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He just turned the screen toward me.

A photo. A woman with my face—my exact face—lying in a pool of blood. With a date stamp from ten years ago.

The caption read: *Alessia Vitale. Declared dead. 2014.*

My knees hit the concrete. The world tilted.

And somewhere above us, in the dark, I heard footsteps.