Getting back into the glass house was harder than getting out. Leo was in a state of barely contained panic, his phone pressed to his ear. The moment he saw her, relief and fury warred on his face.
"Where have you been?" he barked, ushering her inside roughly. "The Boss has turned the city upside down looking for you! He thinks you've been taken!"
"I'm here, Leo. I'm fine. I need to see Dante."
"He's not here. He's out with every soldier we have, tearing apart Moretti's warehouses because he thinks they have you!" Leo's voice dropped to a grave rumble. "You may have just started a war, signorina."
Horror dawned on Valentina. Her reckless move to prevent a war might have ignited one. She ran to Dante's study, grabbed the secure landline, and dialed the number she'd seen him use only in emergencies.
It rang once. "This had better be life or death," Dante's voice snarled, the sound of engines and shouting men in the background.
"Dante, it's me. I'm home. I'm safe."
A beat of dead, terrifying silence. "Where. Are. You." Each word was a bullet.
"In your study. Please, come home. I have it. I have the copy of the ledger."
Another silence, longer this time. "Do not move a muscle. If you are lying, if this is a trick…" He didn't finish the threat. The line went dead.
He arrived twenty minutes later, a tempest in human form. He burst into the study, his clothes disheveled, a fresh cut over his eyebrow, his eyes blazing with a fury so absolute it stole the air from the room. He didn't speak. He crossed the space in three strides, his hands shooting out to grip her upper arms.
"You left," he seethed, his voice trembling with rage. "You walked out of my protection, into the belly of the beast, after I told you it was a target on your back. Do you have any idea what I was about to do? The bodies I was ready to stack to find you?"
"I'm sorry," she whispered, tears in her eyes, not from pain but from the sheer terror she saw in his—terror for her. "I had to. I got a message from my father." She held up the USB drive. "This is it, Dante. The copy. Everything you need."
He stared at the drive as if it were a venomous snake, then back at her face. The fury slowly bled from his expression, replaced by a dawning, awestruck comprehension. "You went to get it. For me."
"For us."
He released her arms, his hands coming up to cup her face, his thumbs wiping away her tears. He rested his forehead against hers, his breath shuddering. "Mia pazza, coraggiosa ragazza. My crazy, brave girl. If anything had happened to you…" He pulled back, his gaze intense. "We will discuss your suicidal stupidity later. Now, we see what your father left us."
He inserted the drive into his secure, air-gapped computer. Files unfolded—bank records, encrypted emails, scanned documents, names, dates, amounts. It was a roadmap of corruption that stretched from City Hall to the Commission of the Five Families themselves. Moretti's name was everywhere.
Dante's eyes scanned the data, his strategist's mind already whirring. "This is more than I hoped for. This is a nuclear option."
"Mancini was there," Valentina said quietly. "He let me take it. He said to tell you he gives his blessing. And his warning. The storm is coming."
Dante's head snapped up. "He spoke to you?"
"He loved my mother. His quarrel died with my father."
A strange respect flickered in Dante's eyes. "Then the storm will not come from that direction." He leaned back, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. It was the most dangerous thing she'd ever seen. "Now, we control the weather. Moretti made a move tonight, thinking you were gone. He attacked two of my shipping yards. It was the excuse I needed."
"What are you going to do?"
He stood, pulling her up with him. "I am going to do what a Don does. I am going to end this. Once and for all." He kissed her, hard and fast. "You will stay here. With Leo and six other men. You will not leave this house. This is not a negotiation."
This time, she didn't argue. She nodded. "Come back to me."
He paused at the door, looking every inch the ruthless king returning to war. "Nothing in this world could keep me from you."
The door closed, and Valentina was left with the silence and the dreadful certainty that the final battle had begun. The ledger was the sword, but Dante still had to wield it. And in their world, even the victor bled.