Chapter 8 - The Price of a Crest
Eli’s heart stopped.
She shoved the torn fabric back up her arm, her fingers frantically trying to cover the tattoo, her eyes darting across the bay to see if Tony or the other mechanics had noticed.
They hadn't. They were still staring at the Aston Martin’s screaming exhaust, shaking their heads in disbelief at the sound of the engine.
But from the metal landing at the top of the mezzanine stairs, someone had seen.
Dante Moretti was standing by the iron railing. He had come out of his office the moment the straight-six engine roared to life, but his gaze was not on the carburetors. He was looking through a pair of high-magnification field glasses he had retrieved from his desk, his eyes locked with surgical precision onto Bay Seven.
He had seen the tear. He had seen the crest.
Dante lowered the glasses. A slow, terrifying realization washed over his features, followed by a profound, dark amusement that made his jaw tighten beneath his stubble.
Russo.
Not just a mechanic. Not just an orphan running from a debt.
The missing Russo princess. Salvatore’s runaway niece. The girl who had vanished three weeks ago, sparking an undercover manhunt that had half the city’s dirty cops kicking down doors in Cicero. Salvatore had offered a quarter of a million dollars for her safe return before the wedding date—and twenty-five thousand to anyone who brought him the name of whoever was hiding her.
And she was standing in Dante’s fifth bay, wearing forty-dollar coveralls, covered in 10W-40, tuning thirty-thousand-dollar carburetors with her bare hands.
Dante turned on his heel, walked down the metal stairs, his heavy strides cutting through the noise of the garage with an authority that silenced the bay once more.
He didn't stop until he was standing inside Bay Seven, right behind Eli.
The Aston Martin was still humming its velvet idle, the aluminum pipes glowing hot near the headers.
“Shut it down,” Dante commanded softly.
Eli turned, her left arm clamped tightly against her ribs, her right hand reaching through the window to cut the ignition. The straight-six engine wound down to a smooth, silent stop, the metallic tick-tick-tick of hot exhaust headers the only sound left in the bay.
Dante stepped forward. He didn't look at the carburetors. He looked down at her, his six-foot-two frame crowding her against the Aston Martin’s fender, his dark eyes burning with an unholy, lethal light.
Without warning, his large right hand shot out.
His scarred fingers clamped around her left wrist like an iron vise.
Eli gasped, a sharp, feminine sound that slipped out before she could lower her voice. She pulled back with all the strength in her slender body, trying to twist her arm free, but Dante’s grip was an absolute, immovable wall of bone and muscle.
With slow, terrifying deliberation, Dante’s thumb hooked into the torn seam of her blue-gray coverall.
He pulled the fabric back.
The purple ink of the Russo family crest lay fully exposed beneath the stark white halogen light.
Dante stared at the tattoo for three long seconds. Then, his thumb slowly traced the outline of the eagle’s wing, feeling the soft, smooth, feminine skin beneath the grease, feeling the rapid, terrified flutter of her pulse hammering like a bird against his palm.
May you like
He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto hers, stripping away the cap, the grease, and the disguise in a single, devastating glance.
“Elena,” Dante murmured, speaking her true name with a soft, velvet reverence that made her entire world dissolve into ice. “Your uncle offered two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the man who finds you.”
