Chapter 8
1011words
"Marco." I stood beside the antique globe, my fingertip trailing across South America's contours. "It's time to end this game."
Marco materialized behind me, silent as a shadow. "Your orders, Madam?" His voice betrayed no emotion.
"Dispatch our best hunters," I said with casual detachment, as if ordering lunch. "Bring our lovers back from South America. Alive and untouched, mind you."
"Understood." Marco nodded once, asking nothing.
I turned to face him, studying his granite profile. "Three days. No longer."
Three days later, the message arrived precisely on schedule: "Targets secured. En route to Chicago."
A cold smile played at the corner of my mouth. The hunt was over.
Dante and Valentina weren't welcomed to the mansion they once called paradise. Instead, they were dumped in an abandoned warehouse that reeked of rust and rot.
This place had once served as the Rossi Family's disposal site for "problems." Now it made the perfect reception hall for its former master.
I didn't rush to see them. I let them stew on that cold concrete floor for twenty-four hours—no food, no water, nothing but darkness and mounting dread. Fear would eat away their courage like acid on metal.
I waited until the following afternoon to make my entrance.
The warehouse's iron door groaned open, flooding the space with harsh light that silhouetted my figure. I wore a razor-sharp black suit with flawless makeup, Marco and several stone-faced guards at my heels. My stilettos struck the concrete like a countdown to execution.
In the corner, Dante and Valentina huddled together like frightened animals. They looked up, and when recognition dawned, that brief flicker of hope in their eyes froze into terror. Their bodies began to shake uncontrollably.
This Dante bore no resemblance to the commanding don I'd once known. His filthy t-shirt hung from his frame, his hair a greasy tangle. His once-handsome face had hollowed from hunger and fear, leaving nothing in his eyes but raw terror and bottomless despair.
"Look what you've become, Dante." I approached slowly, gazing down at him like a curator examining a disappointing exhibit. "This is what happens when you betray the Rossi Family."
My voice was barely above a whisper, yet it cut through him like a poisoned blade.
His legs gave out. He collapsed before me with a dull thud, a puppet with cut strings.
"Isabella… no, Madam, I was wrong—God, I was so wrong!" He sobbed, crawling toward my feet. "Please, have mercy! I'll do anything—anything at all!"
Valentina had retreated into herself, curled into a tight ball against the wall, crying silently with her face buried in her knees.
His groveling bored me. I raised my hand slightly.
Marco caught my signal and motioned to a guard, who brought forward a heavy wooden chest. He opened it before me, revealing Dante's most treasured possessions—the family signet ring that symbolized ultimate authority, his collection of bespoke suits, and photographs of us together. Artifacts of his former glory.
"Do these look familiar?" I lifted the ring, dangling it before his eyes.
He stared transfixed, reaching toward it with trembling fingers, his eyes swimming with regret and desperate longing.
I smiled and opened my fingers, letting the ring fall into the brazier below.
The flames leapt hungrily, consuming the metal with a hiss. I continued methodically—a suit jacket into the fire, then another, and finally our wedding portrait. In it, I smiled adoringly while he stood tall and confident. Now the image blackened and curled in the flames, crumbling to ash.
Dante's sobs escalated to howls of anguish. He lunged forward only to be slammed to the ground by my guards, forced to watch helplessly as I incinerated every symbol of his former life.
"I'm not going to kill you, Dante." I crouched to meet his hollow gaze, my voice a soft, intimate whisper meant for him alone. "Death would be far too kind."
"I want you to live. To exist as a beggar, drowning in poverty, shame, and terror. I want every morning's first thought to be everything you've lost."
I rose to my full height, resuming my regal bearing, and spoke loudly enough for my voice to echo through the warehouse: "I've put out a global alert to every criminal organization worth mentioning. Your faces are on it. The name 'Dante Rossi' will forever mean 'traitor' and 'coward.' You'll never know peace—just the life of a hunted animal until your dying day."
This was my true sentence. Far crueler than death: an endless living hell.
Dante shattered completely. He melted to the floor like spilled water, beyond even the strength to cry.
I turned and strode toward the exit, tossing my final instructions over my shoulder: "Give them a hundred bucks and a one-way ticket to the border. Drop them in the worst slum in Chicago."
"Give them options," I paused, half-turning with a cold, mesmerizing smile. "They can spend their lives running, always looking over their shoulders—or they can come back and let me personally end their misery."
That night, witnesses spotted a ragged couple boarding a midnight bus bound for the border. They vanished from Chicago like smoke in the wind.
I stood on the hill overlooking the warehouse, night air rippling through my hair. I watched the bus disappear into the darkness at the city's edge, then lit a slim cigarette with steady hands.
"Madam, why not just eliminate them?" Marco finally voiced the question that had clearly been troubling him.
I drew deeply on the cigarette, exhaling a stream of smoke toward Chicago's glittering skyline.
"Letting them live—waking each day wondering if I'll find them, seeing news of my success while they wallow in filth," my voice carried a note of lazy satisfaction. "Marco, that's infinitely more satisfying than a bullet to the head."
