Chapter 62 Weight of Want

Chapter 62 Weight of Want
The warehouse district on the South Side had been dead for decades. Empty factories, shattered windows, streets that swallowed sound and held it captive. At midnight, it was the loneliest place in Chicago. Which made it the perfect place for two people who needed to disappear temporarily.

Bella arrived first.

She killed the engine three blocks out and walked the rest, her heels clicking against broken concrete, her breath misting in the December cold.

She came alone, no bodyguards.

The building she approached had once manufactured something, she'd never bothered to learn what. Now it was just walls and shadows and a single room on the second floor where she'd had a mattress, a heater, and a lock installed two months ago.

A place for them. Only for them.

She climbed the stairs, her body already responding to what waited above. The anticipation was physical, a tightness in her chest, a warmth beneath her skin, a need that had nothing to do with power or politics or the endless game of survival she played every waking hour.

At the top of the stairs, she stopped. Listened. Nothing but the wind and the distant hum of a city that didn't know she existed in this moment.

She pushed open the door.

The room was sparse, mattress on the floor, space heater glowing in the corner, a single candle flickering on a crate. But it was warm. Private. Theirs.

Bella shed her coat, her gloves, the careful armor she wore in the world. She sat on the edge of the mattress and waited, her heart beating a rhythm that had nothing to do with fear.

He would come. He always came.

Dante moved through the darkness like the devil he'd been named for. Silent. Certain. Hungry.

He'd parked even farther than Bella, a half mile out, in the lot of a shuttered auto body shop. The walk gave him time to shed the day's weight: the memory of Franco's empty chair at his father's table, the weight of the gun in his jacket, the knowledge that somewhere in this city, his sister was waiting for a rescue that might never come.

But tonight, for a few hours, he would let himself forget. He would let himself be human.

He climbed the stairs, saw the glow of candlelight through the cracked door, and felt something in his chest loosen for the first time in days.

She was there. Waiting. His.

He pushed open the door, and the world narrowed to just her face.

They didn't speak at first.

Dante crossed the room in three steps, pulled her from the mattress, and kissed her like a man who had been drowning and finally found air. Bella's hands fisted in his jacket, pulling him closer, closer, as if she could merge them into one person and end the agony of separation.

His mouth traced her jaw, her throat, the collarbone exposed by the shirt she'd unbuttoned while waiting. Her head fell back, a sound escaping her, half gasp, half surrender.

"I missed you," she whispered. "God, I missed you."

"Three weeks," he said against her skin. "Three weeks too long."

"My office. The building. There are eyes everywhere. Derek..."

"I know." His hands found her waist, her hips, the heat of her through clothes that were suddenly too much. "I know. But not here. Not now. Here, it's just us."

She pulled back just enough to look at him. In the candlelight, his face was all sharp angles and shadows, the face of a man who had killed and would kill again. But his eyes, his eyes held something else entirely. Something that belonged only to her.

"Just us," she repeated. And then she pulled him down to the mattress, and the world outside ceased to exist. Only pleasure prevailed at this point.

Later, minutes or hours, neither could say, they lay tangled in each other, the space heater casting long shadows across the walls. Bella's head rested on Dante's chest, her fingers tracing patterns on his skin, his hand absently stroking her hair.

"I heard about the massacre," Dante said quietly. "Yes, they put a new detective on the case. His name is George King." Bella said.

Bella nodded against him. "Victor told me about an IT guy," Bella scracted her head, before snapping her fingers. "Prescott. About the chase." She lifted her head, meeting his eyes. " Victor said that according to his contacts, the detective saw someone on the scene."

"Could it have been Derek?"

Bella squinted at him. "Why do you ask?" Dante shrugged.

"Instinct. Do you think am wrong?"

"I don't know. You may be right. That's the problem." She lay back down, her cheek against his heartbeat. "He's too perfect, Dante. Too efficient. And the other day, he asked me..." She stopped.

"Asked you what?"

"If I would want to know something important, even if it came from someone I didn't trust." She felt his chest tighten beneath her. "He's hiding something. I can feel it."

"Then why keep him close?"

"Because if I fire him, I lose the ability to watch him. And if he's working for someone else..." She let the sentence hang.

"Rinaldi."

"Or my uncle." Bella's voice hardened. "Benito isn't dead, Dante. I know it. I feel it. The recordings you found, the conspiracy with my father, it all leads back to him. He's been pulling strings from the beginning."

Dante was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. "If Benito is alive, he's the most dangerous man in this city. More dangerous than my father. More dangerous than Rinaldi or Tucci. Because no one knows he's playing."

"Everyone thinks he's dead. Everyone's moved on, positioned themselves, made alliances based on a world without him." Bella sat up, the sheet falling away, her eyes bright with the fire that made her the Iron Rose. "And while they're all looking at each other, he's been building something. Watching. Waiting."

"For what?"

"The right moment." She turned to face him fully. "The Speedway. The mayor. Prescott. It's all connected somehow. He's eliminating everyone who could make his existence known, everyone who knows too much, everyone who might stand in his way."

"And then?"

Bella's smile was cold. "And then he emerges from hiding, and the city is his for the taking. Because there's no one left to stop him."

Dante reached for her hand, his grip strong. "There's us."

"Us." She squeezed back. "But we need proof. We need to find him before he finds us."

"The recordings..."

"Show that my father wants me dead. He wants Elena to replace him, and not me."

Bella's eyes widened. "He will have to kill me first!"

Her outburst made Dante to smile. "Have i told you that i am the luckiest man on earth, because i have you?"

Bella giggled. "No you haven't. I will always have your back."

Dante's eyes narrowed as he smiled. "Speaking of having my back, did you know that a man followed you here tonight."

Bella froze. "What?"

"I saw him. Three blocks back, when I was walking in. A figure, staying in shadows, watching your car." Dante's voice was calm, but his body had gone still, coiled. "I thought it was my paranoia. Now..."

"Now you think someone followed me from the office." Bella's mind raced. "Was it Benito's people. Watching me. Reporting back."

"Bella, it could be anyone, which means they now know about this place. About us." Dante was already reaching for his clothes. "We need to leave. Now."

Bella grabbed his arm. "Wait. If he's watching, he already knows we're here. Running won't change that. But maybe..." She looked toward the door, her expression calculating. "Maybe we can use it."

"Use it how?"

"Let him watch. Let him report. Let Benito or whoever he's reporting to think we're exactly where he expects us to be." Bella's voice dropped. "And while he's watching us, he's not watching whatever we're really planning."

Dante studied her face, seeing the strategist beneath the lover. "You have something we are planning?"

"I always have something am planning." She kissed him, quick and fierce. "But first, we need to leave. Together. Let him see us. Let him follow. And then..." She smiled.

"Then we see who's really hunting who."

They dressed in silence, the warmth of the room fading as they pulled on coats and gloves and the armor of their public selves. At the door, Dante paused, pulling her close one last time.

"If Benito or the families are watching..."

"Then let him watch." Bella kissed him softly. "Let him see that we're not afraid. Let him see that we're together. And let him wonder what we'll do next."

They walked out into the night, hand in hand, descending the stairs to the street below.

Neither of them saw the figure in the shadows of the building across the way. Neither of them saw the phone raised, the camera clicking, the images captured and sent.

The man entered his car and drove to somewhere across the city. In a private room in a hospital that didn't exist on any map, a man who was supposed to be in a coma, watched the photographs on his phone and smiled.

So, Lorenzo Moretti thought. This boy won't leave my niece alone. Let him keep poking the bear, until i make him sleep with the fishes.

He set the phone down and looked at the man standing beside his bed, the same man who had followed Bella from her office, who had watched her climb those stairs, who had photographed every moment of her reunion with the Devil's son.

"Keep watching," Don Moretti said. "And when the time is right..." He smiled again, and it was the coldest thing in the room. "We'll show them what happens to children who don't listen to their elders."

The man nodded and disappeared into the shadows.

Don Moretti leaned back against his pillows, his body still healing from wounds that should have killed him, his mind already ten moves ahead.

He looked at the clock in his room, it was 11:34 pm. He picked up his phone and dialed the fifth number on his call log.

"In five days, take the city, kill everyone." The person on the other end of the call said nothing, but just ended the call.

The game wasn't over. It was just entering another phase.