Dante Pov
James calls while Dante is three blocks from her building.
Dante knows what his presence means. He has been meeting with a real estate contact to verify some property records related to the merger. He was supposed to be there for another hour. Instead he is in his car and his phone is ringing and James is telling him there has been an incident.
Window blown out. Her office. Three shots, he hears, before he stops listening to specifics and starts driving.
Twelve minutes from her building to her office. That is faster than it should be. That is the time it takes when someone already knows the route. When someone has run it before. When someone has driven it more times than is reasonable for a man whose marriage was supposed to be contractual.
He does not examine why he was already close to her building. He was in the area for a meeting. That is a sufficient explanation and he does not revisit it.
He parks illegally and takes the stairs instead of the elevator because elevators give people time to think and he does not want to think about what he is about to find.
What he finds is a woman who has been shot at and dealt with it herself.
She is standing with glass in her hair and blood on her sleeve cataloguing the damage with the expression of someone solving a puzzle they did not choose to solve. She is not trembling. She is not crying. She is not doing any of the things a woman is supposed to do after a bullet has moved through her office and nearly moved through her. She is slightly annoyed at his arrival.
He has known trained soldiers who came apart in less.
He does his check of her hands and face because the protocol requires it. This is his explanation to himself. The protocol requires him to check for glass cuts and injuries. The protocol requires it and nothing else requires it. Certainly not the thing in his chest that started the moment James said her office and has not stopped since.
She does not stop him from checking. She does not pull away. She stands there while his hands move across her face and her neck and her shoulders and she lets him do it and he notes this detail the way he notes everything. She is letting him touch her. She is letting him confirm that she is still alive and still whole and still here.
When he is certain she is not bleeding, he stands.
He identifies the bullet casing in twenty seconds.
Calabrese ammunition supplier. Specific alloy combination they use for professional jobs. He has seen this casing before. He has seen it at crime scenes and in evidence rooms and in the reports his people bring him when Calabrese decides to test the boundaries of Ricci territory. Victor Calabrese tried to kill his wife on a Tuesday afternoon.
His wife.
The thought comes with its own violence. Not my wife. Not the marriage I agreed to for the merger. His wife. The woman who negotiates contracts and writes in margins and checks for his light under doors at midnight when she thinks he does not notice.
The woman who nearly died four inches away from her chair.
She stares at the screen of her phone. The message about the Calabrese files. The message that tells him this was not random. This was not a test. This was a targeted strike by someone who knows exactly who she is and what she has been building for two years.
He understands, in that moment, that Victor Calabrese has done him a favor. He has made the choice for Dante. He has made the choice that the separate rooms and the separate finances and the exit clause will no longer work because now Zara Cole knows that being married to a Ricci makes her a target and now Dante Ricci knows that not protecting her is no longer an option.
The drive back to the penthouse is silent.
She does not speak. She sits in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap and stares out the window. She gives him her phone back when they arrive but she does not say anything. She walks into the penthouse and straight to her suite without looking back.
Dante stands in the hallway for a moment.
Then he walks to his office and closes the door.
He calls James at 9:47 PM.
"Find the shooter," he says. "Do not bring them to me. Bring me whoever gave the order to the shooter."
James asks no questions. James has worked for him long enough to know what that distinction means. Bring the shooter and Dante will interrogate them. Bring the man who gave the order and Dante will end this. Not with questions. Not with investigations. With a final solution that removes the problem from ever existing again.
After the call ends, Dante sits in his office in the dark for a long time.
He sits without turning on the lights. He sits with the knowledge that his wife is in another room and that the bullet came four inches from her head and that there will be another bullet if he does not move fast enough. He sits with the knowledge that he cannot keep her safe with the separate rooms agreement. He cannot keep her safe with the exit clause. He cannot keep her safe with anything except by making sure that Victor Calabrese and everyone who works for him understands that the cost of touching Zara is death.
He does something he has not done since his brother Marco died.
He is afraid.
He identifies the feeling precisely. It sits in his chest like something that has weight and temperature. It is fear that she will die. It is fear that the next bullet will be better aimed. It is fear that he cannot control this the way he controls everything else. It is fear of a future where she does not exist in his penthouse with her red pen margin notes and her midnight hallway obsessions and her refusal to be owned by anyone, including him.
He puts the fear somewhere it cannot affect his decisions.
This is a skill he has practiced for fifteen years. This is a skill he learned when Marco died and he realized that feeling things only slows down the process of solving problems. This is the skill that has made him effective. This is the skill that has made him dangerous. This is the skill that has let him survive in a world where people die when you are not paying attention.
This is also the skill he hates most about himself.
Because putting fear away means he cannot examine what it means that he is afraid for a woman he married three weeks ago. Putting fear away means he cannot think about what it means that the bullet coming four inches from her head has changed something inside him that will not change back. Putting fear away means he can function but it also means he cannot ask himself the question that is sitting at the bottom of the fear like something waiting to drown him.
What happens if he cannot protect her.
At 2:14 AM, Dante gets up and walks to her door.
He does not knock. He does not open it. He stands outside her suite in the dark hallway and he can see the light under her door is still on, which means she has not slept, which means she is also afraid. He wants to go inside. He wants to sit with her and tell her that he will kill whoever gave the order to kill her. He wants to tell her that she is not alone in this anymore and that the separate rooms do not matter and that the contract does not matter and that he will burn down every person Victor Calabrese has ever known if that is what it takes to keep her alive.
He does not open the door.
Instead he goes back to his office. He picks up his phone. He calls James again.
"How long until you have a name," he says.
"Six hours," James says. "Maybe less."
"Fast as possible."
"Yes, sir."
He hangs up. He opens his secure files. He begins to catalog every Calabrese operative, every connection, every point of leverage. By sunrise, Victor Calabrese will understand that he has made the last mistake he will ever make.