Chapter 5 Silver platter
Marco's expression shifted. "The art dealing is his public face. But that's not where his real money comes from. He runs money laundering operations through the gallery. Also involved in smuggling high-value items, artifacts, stolen art, occasionally weapons. Some contract work on the side.
He's connected to several crime families across Italy, though he doesn't pledge loyalty to any single organization. Positions himself as a neutral facilitator who can move money and arrange deals without complications.”
Dante's heart, his traitorous, defective heart started beating faster. Bruno Salvini. That name triggered some violent flashbacks buried deep in his memory, something that had been festering for twenty years.
"Pull up his photo," Dante ordered. "Now.”
Marco swapped screens, turned the laptop toward him.
The moment Dante saw that face, his entire world stopped.
He knew that face. Had it burned into his memory. Had spent twenty years searching for it in every crowd, every shadow, every fucking nightmare that jerked him awake covered in cold sweat.
the temples, lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before. But unmistakably, undeniably the same man.
The man who had ordered the hit on Dante's family.
The man responsible for destroying everything.
"That's him," Dante said, his voice completely flat, devoid of all emotion. Every feeling was locked behind iron control, buried so deep it couldn't touch him. "That's the man who had my family killed."
Silence filled the hospital room like a physical weight.
Marco's face went pale. "Cristo."
Rocco, who'd been standing by the window, went very still. "You're certain?”
"I'm certain." Dante's hands clenched into fists despite the pain it caused. "Twenty years. Twenty fucking years I've been looking for him. And now fate delivers him to me on a silver platter.”
More silence. Heavy, thick with implications neither Marco nor Rocco wanted to voice.
Dante's mind was already racing, already calculating, already planning. Twenty years since he was fifteen years old, hiding in a closet in his family's home.
Twenty years since he'd watched through a crack in the door as Bruno Salvini's men executed his mother, his father, and his eight-year-old sister Angelina.
Twenty years of building power, creating an empire, making himself strong enough and dangerous enough and ruthless enough to exact the revenge that had been burning in his chest since childhood.
And now the universe had handed him something even better than Bruno Salvini himself and his daughter.
Dante looked at Aria's photo on Marco's laptop screen. Her smile. Her kind eyes. Her dedication to saving lives. Everything about her screamed innocence, goodness.
Then he thought about Angelina. Eight years old with dark curls and a gap-toothed smile. Begging for her life in a small, terrified voice. Shot in cold blood while Dante watched, helpless and hidden and drowning in the sound of his own heartbeat.
The rage that rose up in him was old, familiar, almost comforting in its intensity.
"I need you to find out everything about Bruno Salvini's current operations," Dante said, his voice cold and precise. "Who he works with, where his money flows, what deals he's running, who his allies are, who his enemies are. Everything."
"On it," Marco said immediately.
"And I need complete surveillance on Dr. Aria Salvini. Where she goes, who she talks to, what her routine is. But subtly she doesn't know she's being watched."
Marco's fingers were already flying across his keyboard. "Consider it done."
Dante turned to Rocco. "The Calabrians tried to kill me. That requires a response. But it can wait until I'm healed. Right now, Bruno Salvini is the priority."
"What's the plan?" Rocco asked carefully.
Dante stared at Aria's photo. At that smile. At the face of the woman who'd saved his life, who now held his continued survival in her skilled hands.
"First, I will eliminate my weakness," he said. "I got the treatment protocol figured out. Learn everything I need to know about managing this heart condition. And then..." His smile was cold, predatory.
"Then I eliminate the witness. Dr. Salvini dies, and my weakness dies with her. Clean and efficient.”
"And Bruno?"
"Bruno Salvini gets to watch me destroy everything he's built. His business, his reputation, his standing in our world. I'll take it all apart piece by piece." Dante's voice was arctic. "And then, when he has nothing left, when he's broken and desperate, I'll tell him exactly who I am.
I'll make sure he understands that his destruction came from the boy he tried to kill twenty years ago. And then I'll put a bullet in his head."
Marco shifted uncomfortably. "What about the daughter? She's innocent in all this.”
"She saved my life. That buys her safety from the initial plan." Dante's expression didn't change. "But she's still a liability. She knows about my heart condition.
That's information I can't afford to have walking around. So once I'm stable, once I don't need her anymore, she becomes a loose end that needs tying up.”
"That's cold, Dante," Rocco said quietly. "Even for you.”
"That's survival." Dante closed his eyes, exhaustion pulling at him. "Bruno Salvini took my family. Killed them like they were nothing. Like their lives meant nothing. I've waited twenty years for this. I'm not going to let sentiment or gratitude fuck it up now.”
After Marco and Rocco left, Dante lay in the dark hospital room, staring at the ceiling.
Two bullets in his body. A genetic heart condition that made him vulnerable. And a doctor who now held both his life and his biggest secret in her capable hands.
The smart play was obvious. Use her for treatment. Learn everything he needs to know. And then eliminate her before she could become a problem.
It wasn't personal. It was just business.
Just like Bruno Salvini had said twenty years ago when his men murdered an entire family for money.
Nothing personal. Just business.
Dante could live with that. He'd been living with worse for two decades.