Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Mountain and the Shadows in the RainThe rain didn't just fall on the winding cliffside road above Boston; it lashed against the jagged granite walls like handfuls of gravel, hissing in the heat of my car’s overworked engine. My knuckles were white against the steering wheel, locked in a death grip as my tires fought for traction against slick asphalt and black ice.
They weren't state troopers. They weren't paramedics.
They were Dante Moretti’s men.
My breath came in ragged, trembling gasps. My chest ached from the sheer adrenaline dump of the last twenty minutes, and my hands—scratched, bleeding from the jagged tree bark, and stained dark with Dante’s blood—were shaking so violently I could barely keep the car steady.
Just minutes ago, down in the ravine, I had planted my heels into the mud, screamed until my vocal cords tore, and dragged the most feared mafia boss on the East Coast out of a dangling wreck just a heartbeat before his luxury sedan tore away from its snag and plunged into the abyss.
And now, kneeling in the downpour with half a dozen submachine guns pointed directly at my forehead, Dante Moretti—bleeding, soaked to the bone, his expensive suit ruined, and his gray eyes burning with cold, predatory intelligence—had looked up at me and asked the one question that could get me killed faster than a cliff crash.
“How did you know my brakes were going to fail?”
The silence in the freezing night air was absolute, save for the steady drumbeat of the rain and the clicking of hot metal cooling under the hoods of the encircling SUVs.
“Boss!” A voice cut through the darkness, heavy with panic and panic-fueled authority. Leo, Dante’s massive, stone-faced security chief, pushed his way through the circle of armed guards, his weapon still drawn. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his boss lying on the wet mud, and me—a twenty-seven-year-old minimum-wage waitress—straddling him to keep him from rolling down the slope.
“Boss, are you alright? We lost the rear guard when—”
“Put the gun down, Leo,” Dante growled, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated through the mud. He didn't break eye contact with me. His slate-gray eyes were terrifyingly sharp, stripping away every ounce of my defenses. “I said, put the guns down. All of you.”
The tactical weapons lowered by fractions of an inch, though no one relaxed. The men in black suits looked at me like I was either an assassin or a ghost.
Dante slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows, wincing as a sharp pain flared in his ribs. A thin line of crimson ran from his temple down his jawline, mingling with the rain. He stared at my bleeding hands, then up at my face, taking in my cheap, soaked polyester restaurant uniform under my ruined winter coat.
“You followed me,” Dante said, stating it not as a question, but as a chilling realization. “From Bellini’s. All the way up the Old Mill Road.”
“I tried to warn you!” I snapped back, the terror suddenly giving way to a hot, blinding surge of furious adrenaline. I didn't care that he was a mafia boss. I didn't care that his men could turn me into Swiss cheese with a twitch of their index fingers. “I flashed my headlights! I honked until my horn gave out! If you hadn't been driving like a stubborn lunatic trying to outrun your own thoughts, you would have pulled over!”
Leo gasped, taking a sharp step forward. “Watch your tone, girl—do you know who you’re talking to?”
“I know exactly who I’m talking to!” I yelled back, tears mixing with the rain on my cheeks. “I’m talking to the idiot who didn't check his own car before my ears heard your precious wife whispering with her lover about how they clipped your brake lines!”
The name hung in the freezing mountain air like a live grenade.
Vanessa.
Dante’s entire body went rigidly still. The fierce, burning intensity in his gray eyes shifted into something infinitely more dangerous—something dark, hollow, and utterly lethal.
“What did you say?” Dante whispered, the temperature of his voice dropping so low it made my blood run colder than the rain.
“You heard me,” I panted, kneeling back in the mud as the weight of what I knew finally settled over my shoulders. “Vanessa and that blonde guy with the expensive suit—they were sitting in booth four behind the partition at Bellini’s. I was clearing the dessert plates. I heard him say it was done. She laughed, Dante. She laughed and said by midnight she’d be a grieving widow.”
The silence that followed was heavier than the wreckage at the bottom of the cliff.
Dante slowly rose to his feet, ignoring Leo’s outstretched hand. He towered over me, a dark, imposing monolith of pure vengeance wrapped in wet Italian wool. He didn't look like a man who had just cheated death by thirty seconds. He looked like a god of war waking up from a long sleep.
“Leo,” Dante said softly, never taking his eyes off me.
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“Boss?”
“Bring the cars around. We’re going home.” Dante looked down at me, extending a large, blood-stained hand. “And help the lady up. She’s coming with us.”
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