Chapter 6 - THE WHISPER OF TREASON
The confession hung in the air of the restaurant like an unexploded bomb.
Alina’s breath caught in her throat. Her mind spun into a dizzying vortex of confusion and disbelief. Twenty-two years?
"That's impossible," Alina whispered, shaking her head frantically, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the leather check presenter against her stomach. "My mother told me... she warned me about your tattoo! She told me you were dangerous! She told me if you ever found me, you would take everything away!"
Dante closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, an expression of profound, unbearable grief carving deep grooves into his rugged features. He opened his mouth to answer, to speak the name that had been buried beneath twenty years of silence—
Before a single syllable could clear his lips, the large bodyguard in the black suit stepped forward.
The bodyguard did not look at Alina. His eyes were locked on the front perimeter of the restaurant, his posture tense, his hand pressed firmly against the earpiece in his right ear.
He leaned in close to Dante’s right shoulder, speaking in a hurried, urgent whisper that did not carry beyond the edge of Table 9:
"Boss. We have a visual at the perimeter. The surveillance car across the street just flagged an intercept. Look at the front glass."
Dante’s focus snapped instantly.
The grief on his face vanished, replaced in a split second by the lethal, hyper-focused vigilance of an apex predator sensing an ambush in his own territory. He turned his head slowly, looking past the crystal chandeliers, past the crowded tables of wealthy patrons, toward the grand, two-story glass entrance of Aurelia.
His face drained of what little color had returned.
His lips parted in absolute, paralyzed disbelief.
He didn't move an inch. He stood holding the baby securely against his chest, his muscular frame turned completely toward the front doors, his gray eyes wide with a shock that was far darker, far more dangerous than his initial recognition of Alina.
Alina tracked his gaze. She looked through the warm, golden light of the restaurant toward the revolving doors.
Outside, the Chicago rain was falling in thick, silver sheets, slicking the dark pavement of the avenue. Beneath the warm, amber glare of the high municipal streetlamps across the sidewalk, standing completely alone in the downpour, was a woman.
Dante slowly turned his head back to Alina.
The tenderness was gone, replaced by a cold, terrifying urgency that made the hairs on Alina’s neck stand on end. He leaned down slightly, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp, hushed command:
"Alina. Look at me."
Alina looked into his pale-gray eyes, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"Did Nora ever tell you why she changed your name?" Dante asked, his baritone flat, trembling with a dark, subterranean dread.
Alina froze.
May you like
The breath locked in her lungs.
"She..." Alina’s voice cracked, her mind racing back through twenty-five years of birth certificates, school enrollments, and tax forms. "She never told me she did."
