Chapter 4

Dante told me he was getting engaged to Bianca De Luca while he was cutting the steak on my plate.

The rain had stopped, though streaks of water still clung to the dining room windows. He sat across from me at the long table, finished cutting the last piece of meat, and slid the plate back as he casually mentioned that the De Lucas would be coming to the estate on Saturday. There was something the two families needed to announce together.

I watched him push the plate toward me and understood almost immediately.

After the Morettis fell, there weren't many families left in Chicago powerful enough to sit across from Russo and negotiate as equals.

And Carlo De Luca had only one daughter.

"You're getting engaged to Bianca."

Dante didn't deny it.

He was remarkably calm, and he didn't even seem to be studying my reaction. It was as if the marriage had already been laid out on some invisible negotiating table beside ports, shipping routes, and political connections, weighed against everything else until it became the most practical choice.

I picked up my fork without touching the food.

"When did you decide?"

"A while ago."

"That explains why I've been hearing the De Luca name around your docks more often."

Dante looked up at me.

I smiled faintly. "Don't look at me like that. Your men have gotten comfortable discussing business in front of a woman in a wheelchair."

That kept him quiet for a moment.

He didn't deny that either.

I didn't ask when the engagement had been settled, who had proposed the arrangement, or what each family was getting in return. Those were the kinds of decisions Dante understood perfectly. If his family needed something, he acquired it, and as long as someone's unhappiness didn't interfere with the result, he rarely saw a reason to change course.

There was something else I wanted to know.

"What about me?"

Dante's hand stilled beside his wineglass.

I held his gaze. "What exactly happens to me after you get married?"

His brows drew together slightly, as though the question itself didn't make sense to him.

"Nothing has to change."

He said it so naturally that it took me a few seconds to understand what he meant.

The doctors would keep coming. I would keep living in the room upstairs. Anything I needed would still be brought to me. Bianca would become his wife, while I stayed exactly where I'd been for the past several months—looked after, protected, and kept in whatever place Dante had decided was safest for me.

To him, there was no contradiction in any of it.

"Bianca knows I'm staying here?"

"She knows you're at the estate."

"She accepted that quickly."

"She knows what kind of marriage this is."

I looked down at the steak slowly cooling on my plate.

That explained enough.

Bianca would get the position of Mrs. Russo. The De Lucas would get an alliance and access to Russo's ports. Dante would get the political leverage he needed.

And me?

He had never put me on the negotiating table at all.

Because in his mind, there was nothing about my situation that needed to be renegotiated.

I was already here.

"So you think nothing between us has to change after you get married."

Dante watched me for a moment.

"I'm not throwing you out because of this marriage."

I looked up.

"You're very good at answering questions I didn't ask."

His expression darkened.

The old Dante would have ended the conversation the moment he no longer wanted to have it. These days, he seemed to have more patience with me, probably because I no longer smashed glasses, ripped needles from my arm, or tried to climb out windows.

He had gotten used to this version of me.

Quiet. Cooperative. Unable to leave a room without someone pushing my wheelchair.

"This marriage is for Russo," he said. "Bianca understands that. So do I. It doesn't affect you."

I almost laughed.

"You actually believe that."

"Because it's true."

He looked at me without the slightest trace of guilt.

That was the absurd part.

If Dante had simply been lying to me, at least it would have meant he understood there was something wrong with what he was doing. Instead, he genuinely believed everything could stay exactly as it was. He could marry Bianca, continue taking care of me, and keep me inside this estate, because as long as he still loved me, there was nothing he thought needed explaining.

For a long time, I'd tried to understand whether Dante still loved me.

Eventually, I realized the answer mattered far less than I'd thought.

Of course Dante could love me.

He could love me and still kill my father, destroy the Morettis, and decide where I was allowed to live.

None of those things contradicted each other in his mind.

"What if I don't want to stay?"

For the first time during the entire meal, I truly made him pause.

The dining room was silent. Outside, rainwater slipped from the edge of the roof and struck the stone steps below.

Dante watched me for a moment before answering.

"You need this place right now."

"That wasn't what I asked."

His gaze slowly hardened.

I didn't push him.

Eventually, he came around the table and stopped beside me, pulling the blanket that had slipped toward my knee back into place with the same careful hands as always.

"You're safest here."

"Protection again."

"Elena."

His hand rested on the arm of my wheelchair.

"You belong here."

I looked at him.

This time, he didn't look away.

Suddenly I remembered an apartment we'd secretly shared years ago on the north side of the city, and Dante standing behind me with his arms around my waist, murmuring into my ear:

"You're mine."

Back then, I'd taken it for romance.

Now he didn't even need to say those three words.

They meant exactly the same thing.

Footsteps sounded outside the dining room.

The house manager stopped in the doorway.

"Boss. Miss De Luca is here."

Dante turned, clearly not expecting her this early.

A few seconds later, the measured click of heels crossed the marble hallway and stopped outside the dining room.

Bianca De Luca appeared in a charcoal-gray coat, her dark hair pinned back simply. She looked at Dante first, then turned her attention to me.

There was no surprise on her face.

Which meant she'd known all along that I was here.

"Elena Moretti."

She knew exactly who I was.

"Bianca."

A faint smile touched her lips, neither friendly nor hostile.

"Looks like we're finally meeting."

Dante stood between us.

For some reason, I found the picture almost amusing.

The future Mrs. Russo stood in the doorway.

The Moretti daughter whose family he'd destroyed sat in a wheelchair across from her.

And Dante somehow believed nothing had to change.