Sienna POV
The cabin of the armored SUV was a mixture of tanned leather and the dry chill of the air conditioner, a combination that felt like a damp wad of cotton pressed into the sinuses. The tinted windows blocked out the city lights, trapping me in the dark with the man who had lied to me for four years.
Dante sat across from me. His large hands were wrapped securely around Serafina's white marble urn. He held it with a twisted, possessive reverence. The posture might have suggested paternal love, but the quality of the silence that radiated from him was a clear and present threat.
I reached across the leather seat. I tried to take the urn from his hands.
Dante shifted his broad shoulders, evading my reach. "We are returning to the estate," he murmured, his voice a low, resonant sound. "You have made a sufficient public display for one day."
My hands dropped to my lap. I looked straight into his dark, calculating eyes.
"Tell me, Dante," I whispered, my voice trembling with a venom I did not know I possessed. "Have you held our dead daughter's ashes more times than you have held your living bastard?"
Dante's face froze. The muscles in his jaw ticked. His silence was louder than a gunshot.
He leaned forward, the leather creaking under his weight. "Do not forget who controls the funding for the private sanatorium where your mother resides," he warned, his tone dangerously soft. "Or whose soldiers provide the security for her wing."
He was flexing his power. He was quietly enforcing my total dependence on the Rossi Syndicate.
I felt a bitter laugh rise in my throat. "Is this your method for calming me?" I choked out, the sound hollow and broken. "To freeze my accounts? To deploy your men to intercept me at an airport? To weaponize my paralyzed mother?"
I stared at the urn in his hands. "Is using our dead daughter's ashes as a hostage merely a part of Family business now?"
"What is the boy's name?" I demanded.
Dante stared out the window. He refused to speak.
A sickening realization washed over me. The dates aligned in my head. Serafina died in the winter. We went to Iceland every winter.
"Iceland," I breathed, the betrayal a physical pain in my chest. "Those trips were never for her anniversary, were they? You timed them for his birthday. One flight, two purposes. Is that where you have been hiding them all this time?"
Dante closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. That tiny movement was all the confirmation I needed. One itinerary. Two fulfillments for the Don. A mourning trip for the wife, a birthday celebration for the secret family.
"Take me to my mother," I demanded, my voice cracking. "Immediately."
Dante opened his eyes. He stared at me for a long time before he knocked on the privacy glass. "Enzo. Drive to the sanatorium."
I slumped back against the seat. Dante's phone rested on the center console. The screen lit up with a new notification.
It was another message from Valentina. It read: Angelo is making a wish that his Papa won't bring the lady to see the aurora next time. We are boarding the private jet to New York now, just as you ordered.
I was just the lady. I was the inconvenience intruding on their family vacation, and now he was evacuating them to my city to maintain his control.
The SUV pulled up to the heavily guarded gates of the Rossi-owned sanatorium. I got out before the car even fully stopped. Dante followed closely behind me, his presence a heavy shadow at my back.
The facility Director was waiting in the lobby. He looked nervous, wiping at the sweat on his brow with a handkerchief as he greeted the Don.
I ignored the pleasantries and walked straight toward the elevators to go to my mother's room.
The Director stepped in my path. He awkwardly cleared his throat. "Signora," he stammered. "Your mother, Rosa... she was transferred to another facility three days ago."
I stopped dead in my tracks. I turned to look at Dante.
"It was done under the Don's direct orders," the Director quickly added, shrinking under my gaze.
I pushed past the Director, ignoring his protests, and pulled out my burner phone. Luca had already sent me the facility's restricted blueprints through our encrypted channel—a channel I had built in the dark, one message at a time, while Dante slept beside me. I bypassed the main elevators, sprinting down a hidden stairwell that led to the underground VIP medical wing—a secure sector solely controlled by the Don. I pushed open the heavy security door to my mother's former room. The hospital bed was stripped bare. The medical equipment was gone. The room was sterile and empty.
I walked slowly toward the window. Sitting on the sill was a child's paper airplane, folded from a piece of coloring book paper.
I picked it up. Scrawled across the wing in messy crayon were the words: Papa says this is where Mama will live now.
Dante hadn't just relocated my mother. He had let his mistress’s son mark the territory first.
