Chapter 1 - The Blood on the AsphaltThe crimson glare of the SUVs' high beams pierced through the driving rain, casting long, writhing shadows across the muddy ravine edge. My hands were slick with Dante Moretti's blood mixed with the red clay of the mountain pass. My lungs burned from the raw, freezing air, and every muscle in my body throbbed from the sheer, impossible adrenaline of dragging a two-hundred-pound mafia kingpin out of a wreckage seconds before it plunged into the abyss.
Dante’s gray eyes—sharp, calculating, and utterly unreadable—peered down at me from where he lay on the soaked earth. His chest heaved with heavy, ragged breaths, but his gaze never left my face.
The circle of armed men grew tighter around us. Black tactical boots crunched on the gravel. Weapons were trained squarely on my back, safety clicks echoing in the damp night air like tiny metallic heartbeats.
"How did you know my brakes were going to fail?" Dante repeated, his voice dangerously low, cutting through the roar of the wind.
Before I could form a coherent sentence, a massive man with a jagged scar across his jaw—whom I recognized from old newspaper clippings as Mateo, Dante’s primary enforcer—shoved his way through the perimeter. He raised his pistol, leveling it right at my forehead.
"Boss, she’s a civilian. Could be a plant. Could be part of the hit," Mateo snarled, his finger twitching against the trigger. "Look at her. She’s wearing a Bellini's apron underneath that coat. No way she just happened to be driving behind you on a private mountain road at midnight."
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked through my veins. I looked down at my uniform—the black vest covered in mud, the nametag reading Cara.
"I wasn't part of any hit!" I gasped, holding my bleeding hands up defensively. "I was clearing table twelve at Bellini's. I heard her! I heard Vanessa talking to her lover in the private booth. They planned it. They cut your brake lines!"
Dante slowly pushed himself up onto one elbow. The movement made him wince, a dark grimace crossing his aristocratic features as he clutched his bruised ribs. He stared at me, searching my eyes for any flicker of deceit, any micro-expression that would betray a lie.
In our world—the world of tips, minimum wage, and scraping by to pay a landlord who threatened eviction every month—people lied constantly to survive. But in Dante Moretti’s world, a lie meant an immediate execution in a shallow grave.
"Vanessa," Dante murmured, the name tasting like poison on his tongue.
"She said by midnight she'd be a grieving widow," I rushed out, talking twice as fast as my fear threatened to choke me. "Her lover—I didn't see his face, but he said you were leaving in ten minutes. I tried to call your number. I tried to flag you down. I saved your life, you son of a bitch! You think I risked my neck sliding down a collapsing tree for a target?"
Mateo scoffed, cocking his weapon further. "Boss, she's spinning a fairy tale. Let me deal with—"
"Lower your weapon, Mateo," Dante commanded.
The order was spoken quietly, but it carried the absolute, crushing weight of absolute authority. Mateo froze. Slowly, grudgingly, the enforcer lowered his barrel toward the wet dirt.
May you like
Dante stood up with Mateo’s help, brushing mud off his charcoal suit jacket. He towered over me, a dark silhouette against the flashing red and blue lights of a suddenly appearing state trooper siren echoing far down the switchbacks.
"Get her in the lead car," Dante instructed, casting one final, lingering look down at the ravine where his car had vanished into the blackness. "And someone call Dr. Russo. We’re going home."
