Elena Vitiello POV:
The heavy mahogany front doors of the villa exploded inward. The concussive blast of C4 shattered every remaining window on the ground floor. Plaster dust and thick, gray smoke poured into the grand foyer, followed closely by fifteen heavily armed men.
Dante and I stood back-to-back at the top of the grand sweeping staircase. We held the high ground.
"Now," Dante growled.
We opened fire simultaneously. The muzzle flashes of our assault rifles lit up the dark landing like strobe lights. Bullets rained down into the foyer. An antique Ming vase shattered into a million pieces. A massive crystal chandelier took a stray round and crashed down onto three of the assassins, crushing them under a mountain of glass and brass.
I didn't spray wildly. I controlled my breathing, firing in tight, three-round bursts. Every time I pulled the trigger, a man below dropped, clutching his throat or his chest. My mind was eerily quiet.
Dante was a force of pure destruction. He fired one-handed, leaning over the marble banister, sweeping his rifle back and forth like a scythe cutting through wheat.
One of the surviving assassins behind a flipped velvet sofa pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade. He pulled his arm back to throw.
Dante didn't hesitate. He snapped his rifle up and fired a single shot. The bullet shattered the man's wrist. The grenade dropped straight into the cluster of assassins.
"Down!" Dante roared.
He grabbed my waist and dragged me to the floor just as the grenade detonated.
The shockwave rushed up the stairs, blowing hot air and debris over our heads. The blast knocked me backward slightly, but Dante’s massive arm was already locked around my lower back, anchoring me to the marble floor.
"Move to the roof terrace," Dante ordered, pulling me up.
We sprinted down the second-floor corridor, taking the spiral metal stairs up to the expansive rooftop. The Mediterranean wind whipped my wet hair across my face.
The moment we stepped onto the tiles, two assassins vaulted over the stone parapet. They had used grappling hooks to scale the cliffside. They drew jagged combat knives and lunged straight at me.
I didn't raise my rifle. I sidestepped the first man’s thrust, grabbed his wrist, and twisted hard, using his own momentum against him. I dropped my center of gravity and threw him over my hip. He flew over the low stone wall, screaming as he plummeted two hundred feet into the crashing waves below.
Dante dropped his empty rifle. He drew his combat knife, ducked under the second assassin’s swing, and drove his blade deep into the man’s neck. He ripped the blade sideways. A fountain of arterial blood sprayed across the white stone tiles.
It was over. Less than ten minutes, and the villa was a graveyard.
The metallic smell of blood completely overpowered the salt air. Dante stood over the twitching body, his chest heaving violently. He slowly turned his head to look at me.
My white terrycloth robe was splattered with crimson blood, blooming like dark red roses across the fabric. I dropped my empty rifle. It clattered against the stone.
Dante’s eyes darkened with a mixture of awe, pride, and an intense, twisted lust. He closed the distance between us in two massive strides, grabbed the lapels of my bloody robe, and hauled me against his chest.
He crashed his mouth onto mine. We kissed frantically under the cold moonlight, surrounded by corpses, tasting the cordite and blood on each other’s lips. It was a sick, beautiful madness, and I was entirely consumed by it.
When he finally pulled back, Dante walked over to the only assassin still breathing. He pressed the heavy heel of his boot directly into the man’s shattered thigh wound.
The man screamed like a slaughtered pig.
"Who sent you?" Dante asked, twisting his boot.
"Rome!" the man sobbed, spitting blood. "The old families! They said you were taking too much!"
Dante drew his pistol and put a bullet through the man’s forehead. He turned to me, holstering his weapon. "The honeymoon is over."
I shrugged, stepping over a puddle of blood. "I'd rather watch old men go bankrupt and jump out of windows than sit on a beach anyway."
***
Four hours later, we were washed, dressed, and back on the Gulfstream jet heading to New York.
Dante sat at the mahogany conference table, staring into the lens of an encrypted laptop. The screen was split into a dozen squares, showing the faces of the Outfit’s top capos.
"Operation Scavenger is a go," Dante ordered, his voice cold. "I want every asset, every soldier, every business tied to the Roman families in America burned to the ground."
The capos exchanged nervous glances. One cleared his throat. "Boss, Rome has deep pockets. They can fund a war of attrition for years."
I stood up from my seat by the window, wearing a black silk pantsuit. I walked over to the table, slid my own encrypted laptop in front of Dante, and hit the enter key.
The screen mirrored to the video call. It displayed a massive web of offshore accounts, shell companies, and routing numbers in Swiss banks.
"I already breached their primary banking servers while we were in the air," I said, my voice deadpan. "I've frozen seventy percent of their liquid assets and rerouted their defense funds into our dummy accounts. They are broke."
The capos on the screen gasped. They stared at me, the disbelief in their eyes rapidly shifting into absolute, terrified reverence. I wasn't just the Boss's wife anymore. I held the keys to the kingdom.
Dante looked up at me, a proud, lethal smirk playing on his lips. He turned back to the screen. "You heard the Donna. Kill them all. Tonight."
I looked out the window. The glittering lights of the New York skyline were just coming into view through the clouds.
"Let the hunt begin."
