Aria's POV
I don't sleep.
All night I stare at my phone, at that message. Check his desk drawer. Bottom left.
By the time the sun rises, I've made my decision.
I have to know.
At 6 AM, I hear Dante moving around the penthouse. Shower running. Coffee machine beeping. Normal morning sounds from a man who's anything but normal.
I force myself out of bed, splash cold water on my face, and head to the kitchen.
Dante's there, drinking espresso and reading something on his tablet. He looks up when I enter.
"You look terrible," he says.
"Good morning to you too."
A tiny smile. "Did you sleep?"
"Not really." I pour myself coffee, hands shaking slightly. "Hard to sleep when your whole life is a lie."
His smile fades. "Aria—"
"I'm fine." I cut him off. "What's on the schedule today?"
He studies me for a long moment, then shifts back to business mode. "Three meetings. One shipment arrival at the docks that I need to oversee personally. And tonight, the Ricci family is hosting a dinner. We're invited."
"The Ricci family?" My stomach drops. "Isn't that—"
"Isabela's family. Yes." He sets down his cup. "It's a peace summit. All five families will be there. Refusing the invitation would be seen as a declaration of war."
"So we're going into enemy territory."
"We're going to smile, shake hands, and pretend we're all civilized." His eyes glint. "Should be fun."
I almost laugh. Almost.
The morning passes in a blur of phone calls and paperwork. I manage Dante's schedule like I was actually hired to do, setting up meetings, confirming appointments, taking messages.
It's weird. Playing assistant to a mafia boss. Knowing he knows I'm not really Rebecca Barrett. Knowing I know he's been investigating my parents' murder.
Everything feels like a performance where we're both pretending we don't know the other is acting.
At noon, three men arrive for a meeting.
"Stay close," Dante tells me. "Take notes."
The men are scary. Tattoos, scars, eyes that have seen terrible things. They talk about shipments and territories and payments in code words that aren't really code.
I sit in the corner with my tablet, typing, listening, learning.
Then the mood shifts.
One man—bald, with a spider tattoo on his neck—leans forward. "We're short on the payment, Mr. Constantino. The shipment got delayed, and—"
"Delayed?" Dante's voice drops twenty degrees. "Or stolen?"
Spider-neck shifts nervously. "There was an issue with—"
"You stole from me." Not a question. A fact.
"No! Mr. Constantino, I swear—"
Dante moves so fast I almost miss it.
One second he's sitting calmly. The next, he's grabbed Spider-neck's arm, twisted it behind his back, and slammed the man's face into the desk.
CRACK.
I flinch at the sound.
"I don't accept excuses," Dante says, voice perfectly calm even as he applies more pressure. "I accept results. You took my money. You disrespected me. In my own home."
"Please—" Spider-neck is crying now. "Please, I'll get it back, I'll—"
SNAP.
The arm breaks.
Spider-neck screams.
I press back into my chair, heart hammering. The other two men don't move. Don't even blink. Like watching their friend's arm get broken is just another Tuesday.
Dante releases him. Spider-neck collapses to the floor, cradling his broken arm, sobbing.
"You have forty-eight hours," Dante says, straightening his cuffs. "Return what you stole, plus interest. Or next time, it won't be your arm."
He looks at the other two men. "Get him out of here."
They drag Spider-neck away. The door closes.
Silence.
Dante turns to me. "Are you all right?"
I realize I'm shaking. Not from fear. From... something else. Something darker.
"You broke his arm," I whisper.
"Yes."
"Just like that."
"He stole from me. There are consequences." Dante walks to his desk, picks up a napkin, wipes blood from his knuckles. Casual. Like he does this every day.
Maybe he does.
"Does it bother you?" he asks. "What I am?"
I should say yes. Should be horrified. Disgusted.
But I remember Marco training me. Teaching me to fight, to hurt, to kill if necessary. Fifteen years of learning to be a weapon.
"No," I admit quietly. "It doesn't bother me. And that probably makes me a monster too."
Dante's expression shifts. Something warm flickers in those cold gray eyes.
"You're not a monster, Aria. You're a survivor." He pauses. "But I need to know—can you handle this world? Really handle it? Because it gets worse than broken arms."
I meet his gaze. "I watched my parents die. I spent fifteen years training to kill you. I think I can handle broken bones."
A slow smile spreads across his face. "Good."
Evening comes too fast.
I'm back in my room, trying to find something appropriate to wear to a mafia dinner party, when I remember.
The drawer.
Bottom left.
Dante's in the shower. I can hear the water running.
This is my chance.
My heart pounds as I slip out of my room, down the hall, into his office.
The desk looms in front of me. Dark wood. Expensive. Hiding secrets.
I kneel down, reach for the bottom left drawer.
It's locked.
Of course it is.
I pull a hairpin from my pocket—Marco taught me to pick locks when I was ten—and work the mechanism. Thirty seconds later, it clicks open.
Inside is a single folder.
My hands shake as I pull it out, open it.
Photos spill across my lap.
Pictures of me.
Hundreds of them.
Me at age eight, playing in a park. Age twelve, walking to school. Fifteen, training with Marco. Eighteen, at college. Last month, at a coffee shop.
Every year. Every age. Every moment of my life.
Dante has been watching me since I was a child.
My stomach heaves.
There are notes too, in his handwriting. Aria, age 10, moved to new safe house in Boston. Uncle enrolled her in martial arts. She's getting stronger.
Aria, age 16, accepted to NYU. Smart. Determined. Still has nightmares.
Aria, age 20, started researching my family. She's ready. Almost time.
Almost time for what?
My hands find another photo, this one recent. Me sleeping in my bed. In THIS penthouse.
He took this. While I slept.
"Find what you were looking for?"
I scream and spin around.
Dante stands in the doorway, hair wet from the shower, expression unreadable.
"You've been stalking me," I breathe. "Since I was a child. You KNEW everything. You watched me grow up like... like..."
"Like I was protecting you," he finishes. "Yes."
"That's not protection! That's obsession!"
"Is it?" He steps into the office. "The Syndicate wanted you dead, Aria. Marco was supposed to kill you fifteen years ago. He didn't—but others tried. Three times someone came for you. Three times I stopped them."
I blink. "What?"
"Age nine, a man tried to grab you from the playground. Age thirteen, poison in your school lunch. Age eighteen, a car that would have hit you if I hadn't called in a warning to Marco." He pulls out his phone, shows me messages. Dates, times, warnings sent to my uncle.
"You..." I can't breathe. "You saved my life?"
"Multiple times. And I'd do it again." He kneels beside me, right there among the scattered photos. "I know how this looks. I know it's not normal. But from the moment I learned you existed—that there was a little girl who survived the same thing that took my mother—I couldn't let them kill you too."
"But why keep watching? Why follow me for years?"
"Because I needed to know if you'd come for me." His voice is raw. Honest. "I needed to know if Marco was turning you into an assassin. And when I saw that he was... I had to decide. Kill you first, or wait and see if you were worth saving."
"And?"
"The moment you walked into my penthouse, I knew." He touches my face, gentle despite everything. "You're worth saving, Aria Moretti. You've always been worth it."
I don't know what to say. This is insane. He's been watching me my whole life. Protecting me. Obsessing over me.
It should terrify me.
But instead, looking into his eyes, I see something I recognize.
Loneliness. Pain. Someone who lost everything and found something worth protecting in a little girl's survival.
"You're crazy," I whisper.
"Probably." A sad smile. "Does it change anything?"
Before I can answer, an explosion rocks the penthouse.
Glass shatters. Alarms scream.
Dante throws himself over me as the windows blow inward, covering us both in a shower of deadly fragments.
"They found us," he growls.
"Who?"
Through the smoke and chaos, figures in black tactical gear pour through the broken windows. At least ten of them. Armed. Professional.
And leading them, stepping through the destruction with a cold smile, is someone I never expecte
d to see.
My mother.
Sofia Moretti.
Alive.
"Hello, baby girl," she says, gun pointed at Dante's head. "Did you miss me