Chapter 4 Public Face
After Rocco and the others left, the hospital room fell into heavy silence. Dante sat propped against pillows, staring at the ceiling tiles, counting the small perforations in the acoustic panels. Anything to keep his mind occupied. Anything to avoid the thoughts circling like vultures.
He was vulnerable. Weak. Dependent on a woman he barely knew for his continued survival.
The old Dante, the fifteen-year-old boy who'd crawled out from that closet covered in his family's blood, would have been terrified. Would have seen this weakness as a death sentence waiting to happen.
But Dante had learned something in twenty years of survival: fear was just information. Information could be used. Controlled. Weaponized.
His hand moved automatically to the small photograph he kept in the pocket of his jacket, the one Leone had retrieved from his ruined clothes and placed on the bedside table. The edges were worn soft from years of handling. The image was faded but still clear enough.
Angelina.
Eight years old in this picture, taken three months before she died. Dark curls falling past her shoulders, gap-toothed smile bright enough to light up the world. She'd lost that front tooth playing soccer with Dante in their backyard, had cried for ten minutes, then laughed when Dante told her the tooth fairy would bring extra money for teeth lost during heroic sporting events.
She'd believed him. Believed everything he told him. Thought her big brother could protect her from anything.
She'd been wrong.
Dante's fingers traced the edge of the photograph. "I'm sorry, piccola," he whispered to the empty room. "I should have saved you. I should have done something."
But he'd been fifteen. Unarmed. Outnumbered. And so terrified he'd pissed himself hiding in that closet, listening to his family die.
The guilt was old, familiar, a constant weight he'd carried for two decades. It didn't get lighter. You just got stronger carrying it.
A soft knock interrupted his thoughts.
"Come in," Dante said, tucking the photograph back into his jacket pocket.
Marco "Ghost" Ferraro entered, laptop bag slung over his shoulder, looking energized despite the late hour. At twenty-eight, Marco was the youngest of Dante's inner circle, but the sharpest when it came to intelligence gathering. He'd earned his nickname honestly, the man could disappear into digital systems like smoke, find information that didn't want to be found, and erase evidence that needed erasing.
"Boss." Relief flooded Marco's face. "Good to see you awake and talking. Rocco said you were doing better, but seeing it myself..." He trailed off, setting his laptop on the rolling table. "How are you really feeling?"
"Like I got shot twice and had my chest cracked open," Dante said. "But alive. Thanks to Dr. Salvini."
"Speaking of which." Marco pulled up a chair, opening his laptop with practiced efficiency. "You asked me to run a full background check on her. It took some digging, but I got everything."
Dante shifted carefully, ignoring the pull of stitches. "Tell me."
Marco's fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up files and documents with the ease of someone who'd hacked into more secure systems than he could count. "Dr. Aria Salvini. I am twenty-five years old. Born and raised in Rome. Medical prodigy, basically. Top of every class she's ever been in."
He pulled up a photo, professional headshot from the hospital website. Aria in her white coat, short dark hair framing her face, slight smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. She looked competent, serious, and younger than twenty-five.
"Works insane hours," Marco continued. "Takes on the hardest cases, has the best success rate in the cardiac department. Some of the older doctors resent her for being young and better than them." He scrolled through shift schedules. "Personal life is basically nonexistent. Lives alone in Trastevere. Small friend circle. Two ex-boyfriends, both relationships ended because she chose her career over them. Currently single, no prospects."
"Criminal record?"
"Clean. Not even a parking ticket. No debts beyond student loans. No scandals, no controversies." Marco's tone held a note of respect. "She's exactly what she appears to be, boss. A dedicated, brilliant surgeon who saves lives and goes home alone."
"Everyone has darkness," Dante said quietly. "You just haven't looked deep enough."
"Maybe. Or maybe some people really are just good." Marco's fingers hesitated on the keyboard. "She saved your life, Dante. Spent six hours in surgery putting you back together. But she fought for you."
"I know."
"So what are we doing here? Why the background check?"
Dante didn't answer immediately. He stared at Aria's photo on the screen, at that slight smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"She knows too much," he said finally. "About my condition. About my weakness. That makes her a liability."
Marco's expression tightened. "She's bound by doctor-patient confidentiality."
"Laws don't matter when someone wants leverage badly enough." Dante's voice was cold, logical, empty of emotion. "I need to know everything about Dr. Salvini. Her routine, her vulnerabilities, her pressure points. So when the time comes, I can handle it."
They sat in uncomfortable silence. Outside the hospital room, footsteps echoed in the hallway. A nurse laughed at something. Normal sounds from a normal world that Dante had stopped being part of twenty years ago.
Finally, Marco opened his laptop again. "There's one more thing. About her family."
Something in his tone made Dante's instincts prickle. "Go on."
"Her mother, Camilla Salvini, died when Aria was ten. The official cause was a car accident. Single vehicle collision on a rainy night." Marco pulled up police files. "But I dug deeper. Camilla had been preparing to file for divorce three days before she died. She'd contacted a lawyer, gathering evidence of her husband's criminal activities for custody proceedings."
Dante leaned forward despite the pain. "You think the father killed her."
"The timing is suspicious. And the detective who closed the case? Retired five years later with a villa in Tuscany. Lives well above what a police pension provides." Marco's expression was grim. "Aria doesn't know. She genuinely believes her mother died in an accident. Bruno's kept her in the dark about everything."
Dante processed this. A ten-year-old girl losing her mother, never knowing her father was responsible.
"Tell me about the father," he said. "Bruno Salvini."
"Owns a high-end art gallery near Piazza Navona. Deals in expensive pieces for private collectors across Europe." Marco pulled up new files, surveillance photos of a sophisticated gallery. "But the art dealing is his public face. His real business is money laundering. The gallery is perfect for it, art sales are easy to manipulate. He also runs smuggling operations, high-value items, stolen artifacts, occasionally weapons."
Marco switched screens, pulled up a surveillance photo. A man in his late fifties, well-dressed, graying at the temples, distinguished in that way wealthy criminals often were. He was smiling at someone off-camera, relaxed and confident.
The moment Dante saw that face, everything inside him went very still.
He knew that face.
Had it burned into his memory like a brand. I had seen it in nightmares for twenty years. Older now, more distinguished, with lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before. But unmistakably, undeniably the same man.
The man who'd stood in the doorway of the Moretti family home that terrible night and given the order with casual indifference.
The man who'd destroyed everything.
"That's him," Dante said. His voice came out flat, completely devoid of emotion. Every feeling was locked down, buried under iron control. "That's the man who had my family killed."
The silence that followed was deafening.
Marco's face went pale. "Cristo santo."
"You're certain?" The question came from the doorway. Rocco had returned, had heard enough to understand what was happening.
"I'm certain." Dante couldn't look away from Bruno Salvini's photo. "Twenty years. Twenty years I've been searching for him. And fate just delivered him to me."
His hands clenched into fists despite the pain shooting through his injured shoulder. The rage rising in his chest was old and familiar, almost comforting in its intensity.
Marco and Rocco exchanged glances, neither knowing what to say.
Dante's mind was already working, already calculating. Twenty years since he'd watched through a crack in the door as men with guns executed his mother, his father, his baby sister who'd been begging for her life.
Twenty years of building himself into someone strong enough, dangerous enough, ruthless enough to exact revenge.
And now the universe had handed him something even better than Bruno Salvini himself.
His daughter.
Dante looked at Aria's photo on Marco's screen one more time. Her smile. Her kind eyes. Her dedication to saving lives. Everything about her screamed innocence, goodness, light.
Then he thought about Angelina. Eight years old with dark curls and a gap-toothed smile. Shot in cold blood while Dante watched, helpless and hidden.
The rage that consumed him was perfect. Pure.
"I want everything on Bruno Salvini," Dante said, his voice arctic. "His operations, his money, his allies, his enemies. Everything."
"And the daughter?" Marco asked carefully.
Dante stared at Aria's photo. At the woman who'd saved his life. At Bruno Salvini's precious daughter who had no idea her father was a monster.
A cold smile curved his lips.
"Bruno Salvini is going to watch me destroy everything he loves," Dante said softly. "His business. His reputation. His standing. And most of all, his daughter's heart."
He looked up at Marco and Rocco, and neither man had ever seen such calculated cruelty in his eyes.
"I'm going to make her fall in love with me. Make her choose me over everything, her father, her career, her principles. And then, when she's completely mine, when Bruno is watching his perfect daughter give herself to the son he tried to murder..." Dante's smile was arctic. "That's when I'll tell them both exactly who I am. That's when I'll make him understand that everything he's losing is payment for what he took from me."
"That's cold, Dante," Rocco said quietly. "Even for you."
"That's justice." Dante closed his eyes, exhaustion pulling at him. "He took my family. I'm going to take him. And I'm going to make sure he suffers every single day knowing it's his fault."
After they left, Dante lay in the darkness, staring at nothing.
Somewhere in this hospital, Dr. Aria Salvini was probably saving another life, completely unaware that she'd just become the centerpiece of a revenge twenty years in the making.
He should feel guilt. Remorse. Something human.
But all Dante felt was the cold satisfaction of a hunter who'd finally found his prey.
And the prey had no idea she was already caught.