Chapter 2 - Blood in the Concrete Tomb
|
Tessa’s vision blurred around the edges, dark spots dancing in front of her eyes as the cold November dampness seeped straight into her bones.
Somewhere in the frantic recesses of her mind, a voice was screaming that this had to be a hallucination—a stress-induced nightmare caused by hormones and exhaustion. Any second now, she would wake up gasping beneath her patchwork quilt in Back Bay, reach across the mattress, and find Dante sleeping peacefully beside her.
Except the bitter stench of harbor rot and exhaust fumes filling her lungs was real.
The distant rumble of freight trucks crossing the Tobin Bridge overhead was real.
And the dull, heavy black nine-millimeter pistol that the taller guard pulled from inside his suit jacket was horrifyingly, undeniably real.
"Wait—Dante, wait!" Julian rasped, lunging forward on his scraped knees toward Dante’s polished shoes, his voice cracking into a high, animal shriek of pure terror. "I can give you the names of the guys in New York! Please don't—"
The gunshot didn't sound like it did in the movies.
There was no Hollywood echo, no dramatic pause. It was a deafening, violent CRACK that punched straight through the underground air and detonated inside Tessa’s ribcage, stopping her heart for one infinite, suffocating second.
Julian’s body crumpled forward onto the grease-stained concrete without another sound. A dark, glistening pool began spreading rapidly toward the storm drain.
Dante Castellano did not flinch.
He didn't blink. He didn't turn his head away. He simply stood beneath the yellow light like an emperor carved from dark marble, reached down to adjust the silver cufflink at his wrist, and gave a slight nod to the two men holding tarps.
"Put him in the harbor before the tide turns," Dante said evenly. "And make sure his wife receives the life insurance payout through the Cayman account on Monday. His kids shouldn't starve because their father was an idiot."
A choked gasp tore from Tessa’s throat before she could clamp her palms over her mouth.
Horrified, she stumbled a step backward toward her car. The heel of her leather ankle boot caught on a loose piece of gravel, scraping loudly against the silent concrete floor.
It was a tiny sound—barely louder than a whisper—but in the dead, ringing hush that followed the execution, it sounded like a shattered window.
Dante’s head snapped toward the shadows.
Across thirty feet of dim, oil-stained garage, through a haze of blue gunsmoke and falling mist, his dark eyes locked directly onto hers.
For three agonizing seconds that stretched into an eternity, neither of them breathed.
Tessa watched the cold, ruthless mafia boss freeze in place. She watched the color drain from his sharp cheekbones as recognition hit him like a physical blow. The terrifying stranger in the cashmere coat vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by sheer, naked panic as he took a step toward her, his hand lifting slightly from his side.
"Tessa—" he breathed, her name echoing off the concrete walls like a prayer and a curse all at once.
Terror finally unlocked her frozen muscles.
Tessa spun on her heel and ran.
"Tessa, stop!" Dante’s voice roared behind her, heavy footsteps pounding across the concrete as he bolted after her. "Don't move! Let me—"
She didn't look back. Sobbing blindly, she threw herself into the driver’s seat of her idling car, slammed the gearshift into reverse before the door was even fully closed, and floored the gas pedal. Her tires screamed against the wet pavement as she backed wildly out of the ramp, narrowly missing a concrete pillar as Dante burst out of the garage entrance into the rain, his dark hair plastered to his forehead under the streetlights.
In her rearview mirror, she saw him standing in the middle of the empty street, ignoring his two armed guards as he stared after her fleeing taillights in the pouring rain.
She didn't remember the twenty-minute drive back across the city. She didn't remember running three red lights along Storrow Drive, or how her trembling fingers managed to jam her brass key into the front lock of her third-floor walk-up apartment.
May you like
She only knew that the man whose baby was growing inside her womb was not a real estate developer.
He was Dante Castellano—the ruthless head of the New England crime syndicate whose name made even the Boston police look the other way. And she had just witnessed him commit murder in the first degree.
