Chapter 26: Empty road

Alessandro

Olivia wouldn't stop talking.

She was recounting every triumphant detail of the match as I drove her back to her hotel, but the noise was irrelevant. Every word she spoke was muffled by the internal roar of my own failure. I could feel the cold, echoing space Bianca had left in the passenger seat beside me. I'd respected her boundaries, and in doing so, I had lost her, at least for tonight.

My knuckles ached from gripping the steering wheel. I was a man accustomed to control—market shares, hostile acquisitions, family politics. Yet, tonight, I felt utterly powerless. I had watched Bianca walk away, choosing a chaotic but honest walk over my controlled, protective ride. She was running from the darkness I represented, and I couldn't blame her.

"She's nothing like Jennifer, thank God," Olivia sighed from the seat next to me. "She fits with Max's family, Alessandro. She's real. I never understood what you saw in Jennifer, anyway."

"Olivia. Please." The command was thin, barely a whisper. I couldn't bear the casual comparisons. Jennifer was a strategic partner; Bianca was the air I needed to breathe.

Olivia fell silent, but I felt her perceptive gaze on me. She knew me too well, seeing the raw, panicked truth beneath the veneer of the controlled CEO.

"You're in love with her," she stated, the judgment absent, only sympathy filling her tone.

The dam broke. The words I’d kept locked down—the words that defined my vulnerability—spilled out, tasting like ash. "I've destroyed any chance I had. I lied to her. I used her. I offered her a gilded cage and then acted surprised when she demanded freedom."

"Maybe," Olivia countered softly. "But the way she looked at you tonight, when she thought no one was watching? That's not indifference, Alessandro. That's a woman fighting a current that's pulling her toward you. That is fear of feeling, not hate."

Hope. The word was a knife twisting in the wound of my pride. Hope was weakness. It made me reckless, willing to believe in a fragile happiness that the DeSanti name had never allowed.

I pulled up to her hotel. "Get some rest. Thank you for coming."

She kissed my cheek, her voice warm. "Call her. Even if she sends you to voicemail, she'll know you cared enough to check. Sometimes, the quiet gestures matter more than the grand ones."

I nodded, feeling the bitter truth of her advice. Calling her felt like inviting a rejection I might not survive.

As I pulled back into traffic, heading toward the resort, the phone sat accusingly silent. Call her. My pride was a massive, immovable obstacle, yet my worry—my protective instinct, honed by a lifetime of navigating my dangerous world—was eroding it piece by piece.

She had asked for space. A decent man respects that.

But my world was not decent. The worry became a cold, persistent dread. The stadium district was chaotic after a match. Bianca, for all her strength, didn't understand the invisible dangers that lurked in the shadows of the city I ruled—and the dangers that lurked in the shadows of me.

My world. The phrase was a stone in my gut. She was in danger because of me. Being associated with the DeSanti name made her a target, whether she accepted the role or not.

I pulled up her contact at a red light and dialed.

It rang. Once. Twice. Three times. Voicemail.

Her voice, bright and professional. The recording felt like a ghost, a reminder of the woman I had first met before I broke her trust. I hung up. She was rejecting me. I should respect that.

The prickle of instinct, the gut feeling my father had always taught me to trust, screamed otherwise. Something was wrong.

I called again. Voicemail.

Again. Voicemail.

"Pick up, Bianca," I muttered, turning the car away from the safety of the resort, driving back toward the danger. "Pick up the damn phone."

The fourth call rang once, then went straight to voicemail. The sound of a dead line. Or a destroyed one.

Cold dread washed over me, turning my blood to ice. I pressed the accelerator, my controlled persona shattering into a million sharp pieces. My mind raced through possibilities, dismissing the comfortable lies of a dead battery or a long shower. My instincts were shrieking: She is in danger. You wasted time.

My phone buzzed. A text from Marco.

Marco: Sir, you asked to be notified of any unusual activity. Vitale's men were spotted near the stadium district tonight.

Lorenzo Vitale. The name was a thunderclap. A rival who struck at family, who believed in messages written in blood. A man who wanted to ruin me, and Bianca was the perfect, shining vulnerability.

My entire body went cold, then hot with a blinding, absolute rage. I hadn't just let her walk away; I had delivered her into the hands of my enemies.

I called Marco, control utterly gone. "Find Bianca Morena. Now. I don't care how—hack every system, pull every camera feed. Find her location in the last hour and send it immediately."

"Sir, what's the problem—"

"FIND HER! Vitale's men are in the area, her phone is dead, and if you don't find her right now, I will burn this city to the ground!" The threat was real. I would.

"Yes, sir. Right away, sir."

I drove like a madman, the world blurring into a tunnel of panic and self-recrimination. Every second was a debt, every moment a failure.

Please, I begged the indifferent universe. Please let her be okay. Don't let me lose her because I was too proud to protect her.

My phone buzzed. Marco. A location pin. Last known location: a side street near the stadium. Timestamp: twenty-six minutes ago.

Twenty-six minutes. Long enough to grab her, hurt her, move her.

I slammed the brakes where the pin indicated, leaving the car running. I bolted into the shadowed street, my eyes scanning frantically.

There—on the pavement. A phone. Shattered screen, the familiar case. I picked it up with shaking hands. The screen was destroyed. And there—a small, dark smear of blood.

"No," I whispered, the sound torn from my throat. "No, no, no, please God, no."