Chapter 76 – You Don’t Joke About the Dead

Chapter 76 – You Don’t Joke About the Dead

Dante’s POV

I heard the door open before I saw him.

Gabriel stepped into my office like he hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth. Like he hadn’t left me scrambling through the wreckage he helped create. He looked older somehow, more worn, and a fresh bandage was wrapped around his right forearm.

“I heard you were looking for me,” he said coolly, like this was just another meeting.

I stared at him for a long second, my pulse thudding hard beneath my skin. “Where the fuck have you been?”

He sighed, dropped into the leather seat across from my desk like he had every right to be there. “Out. Handling some business with the Bratva. Got into a scuffle. Nothing serious.”

My eyes narrowed, landing on the bandage. “That from the ‘scuffle’?”

He nodded. “Bratva boys got a little too handsy with a shipment we were negotiating. One of them thought he could test me. He’s breathing through a tube now.”

I didn’t believe a word of it. Gabriel was lying. I could see it in the way he wouldn’t meet my eyes when he said it, in the way his hand trembled just slightly when he shifted in his seat.

“You told her,” I said.

He raised a brow. “Lucia?”

I nodded.

He leaned back, a flicker of amusement crossing his face. “What? I wasn’t even in town. How the hell would I have pulled that off?” He scoffed, shaking his head as if it was all some absurd joke. “Seriously? How did it even happen?”

I stared at him, studying every twitch, every flicker of his expression. “Then how the fuck did she find out? You’re the only other person who knows.”

He shrugged. “Maybe she’s known all along. Maybe she’s been waiting for the right moment to use it.”

“She didn’t use it,” I snapped. “She left. There’s a difference. She didn’t even know until recently!”

His smirk faded. “She left?”

I didn’t answer.

He watched me for a beat. “You let her go.”

It wasn’t a question. And I hated the way it sounded coming from him—like weakness. Like regret.

“She deserved to leave,” I said finally. “I took enough from her. Letting her walk away was the least I could do.”

He didn’t argue. Just sat there, quiet for once.

Then he said, “You shouldn’t have let her.”

My eyes flicked to him sharply. “What?”

“Lucia,” he said, too calm. “Now she has all the freedom and resources to take you down.”

For a moment, I didn’t speak.

Then I narrowed my eyes. “Lucia would never do anything like that.”

He shrugged. “She’d have said the same for you, but you killed her fiancé.”

My heart stopped.

I stared at him, cold creeping down my spine. “What did you just say?”

He met my gaze, too steady. Too knowing.

“I said what everyone’s thinking.”

I stepped forward, pulse hammering. “Not even Cassian knows what happened that night. The guards who cleaned it up were under strict orders. So tell me, Gabriel—how the fuck do you know?”

His smirk didn’t reach his eyes. “Doesn’t matter. Lucia figured it out, didn’t she?”

But I wasn’t listening anymore, I was watching him. Really watching.

And suddenly, I wasn’t sure if he had been gone… or hiding. There was no way he’d know about Daniel’s death… unless he was the masked man I shot that night. Unless he was the one who killed him.

But I let it slide. For now.

After he left, I poured myself a drink I didn’t even taste. The liquor burned, but it didn’t cut through the emptiness inside me.

Lucia was gone. And it felt like someone had jammed a crowbar between my ribs and cracked me open.

I drove to her fathers’s place two days later.

I shouldn’t have.

But I needed to see her.

To hear her voice, even if it was laced with hatred.

I stood at the front door for a long time before knocking. Antonio answered.

His eyes went hard the moment he saw me. “You have some fucking nerve showing up here.”

“Is she home?”

“I’m not answering that,” he snapped. “And you’re not stepping one damn foot in this house. Not after what you did.”

“I just want to talk to her.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.” He stepped forward, voice shaking with restrained fury. “You’re a killer, Dante. That’s all you’ll ever be.”

I’d been called worse. But never by someone who mattered. Not like this. I didn’t argue. I just nodded.

I turned and walked back to my car.

And I didn’t look back.

That night, I sat in my study with the lights off, watching the rain blur against the windows. I should’ve gone after her. Should’ve kept her here, caged or not. But what right did I have?

I destroyed her world. Set it on fire with my own hands.

Letting her go was the first selfless thing I’d ever really done.

But it felt like cutting out my own heart.

⸻——

The next day, I went to the quarterly Mafia assembly at the Ridotto, a dimly lit cigar lounge buried beneath one of the luxury hotels downtown. The meeting hall was lined with men who wore power like perfume—cologne of blood, money, and secrets.

The moment I stepped in, I felt it.

The absence of Lucia.

She’d come with me to the previous meetings. Men stared too long at her, and I enjoyed reminding them who she belonged to. But now… their eyes flicked to the empty seat beside me, curiosity veiled in polite silence.

Until Vincenzo opened his mouth.

“Didn’t bring your pet tonight, Dante?” he said with a smirk, swirling whiskey in his glass.

I ignored him.

He leaned closer. “She run off? Or maybe she ended up like that other girl of yours. What was her name? The one that died?”

My jaw locked.

Cassian shifted beside me, sensing the shift in air pressure—just before I lunged.

The glass in Vincenzo’s hand shattered as I slammed him against the wall, forearm digging into his throat. His eyes bulged.

“You think death is a fucking joke?” I hissed. “You talk about her again, I’ll gut you where you stand.”

Around us, chairs scraped. Guns twitched beneath jackets. But no one moved. No one dared.

Vincenzo wheezed, face turning red. “It was just a joke.”

I leaned in closer, my voice a blade. “An expensive one.”

I dropped him.

He hit the ground, coughing.

Cassian stepped between us, speaking low. “We should go.”

I nodded once, chest heaving, blood screaming in my ears. We walked out in silence.

Back at the estate, the fury didn’t fade, it grew. It had nowhere to go. Nothing to burn but me.

Everything felt wrong without her.

I was halfway through tearing apart my study when the door suddenly swung open.

I turned, heart hammering.

And froze.