The rough skin of Dante’s thumb holds my jaw in a vice grip, the absolute certainty in his amber eyes wrapping around me like a physical weight.
The silence in the bakery is deafening, broken only by the low hum of the refrigerators and the frantic, shallow rhythm of my own breathing.
"Your wife?" I breathe, the word tasting foreign, heavy, and terrifying on my tongue. "You don't want a wife, Dante. You want a shield against the Commission."
"I want what is mine," Dante rumbles, his voice dropping into that dark, razor-sharp purr that seems to dictate the very air in my lungs. He releases my chin, but his hand doesn't go far.
His long, calloused fingers slide down the column of my throat, his palm resting right over my collarbone, trapping the frantic flutter of my pulse beneath his skin.
"The Romano ledger makes you the most valuable target in this city. Inside my gates, you’re untouchable.
Outside, you’re a corpse. It’s simple arithmetic, little baker."
I step backward, breaking the contact, my boots sticking slightly to the flour-dusted floor. I press my lower back against the heavy wooden prep table, desperate for a pocket of space he refuses to give me.
Dante follows, his massive frame closing the distance instantly, his shadow swallowing me whole.
"And if I refuse?" I challenge, lifting my chin, trying to find the fire my father always said I inherited from the Romano line. "If I take my chances on the street?"
A low, predatory chuckle rattles deep in Dante's chest.
The tiny pale scar through his left eyebrow shifts as his jaw sets into a rigid sheet of unyielding marble.
"Then I walk out that door, and I let the Commission’s clean-up crew have their way with 4th Street," he murmurs, leaning down until his hot breath brushes the sensitive skin of my ear, sending a violent, inescapable shiver straight down my spine.
"They won't just look for the book, Gianna. They’ll burn this shop to ash, and they’ll bury your cousin Leo under the floorboards. Is that the risk you want to take?"
I look past his broad shoulder, out the frosted glass window where the black armored SUV sits idling, a grim reminder of the clock ticking down to midnight.
My father thought his secrets could buy our freedom, but all he did was build a beautiful cage with a target painted on the door.
Dante reaches into his charcoal overcoat, his movements slow and deliberate. When his hand emerges, he places a heavy, cold gold key onto the marble pastry slab between us. It hits the stone with a sharp, definitive click.
"The key to the North Avenue estate," Dante commands softly, his amber eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that leaves me breathless.
"The caravan leaves in ten minutes. You can either be in the back seat with your father’s ledger, or you can stay here and wait for the fire."
He steps back, giving me my first breath of cold air since he entered the shop, but the trap is already sprung.
I look at the gold key glittering in the gray morning light, then down at my flour-stained apron. The life I knew is already dead.
I reach out, my fingers trembling as they close around the cold metal of the key. "I need to get my coat."
A dark, intensely satisfied smile cuts across Dante's handsome face. He watches me, the predator observing his prize, knowing he has just rewritten the map of Chicago.
"Put on your coat, Gianna," he whispers, his voice cutting through the quiet room like a blade. "Your perimeter just changed.”