Waitress Slipped a Note to the Mafia Boss — “Your Girlfriend Sold You Out. They’re in Position.”

Dante slid the balcony door open. The crisp October wind ruffled his dark hair as he looked down at the phone clutched tightly in Clara’s white-knuckled hand.

"Who was that?" Dante asked, his voice deceptively calm.

Clara’s heart hammered against her ribs. In her mind, she saw the sniper lens trained on Maya’s brownstone. She also saw the ruthless precision with which Dante had pinned Camilla to the floor the night before. If Dante thought she was even considering betraying him, would he protect Maya? Or would he write her friend off as acceptable collateral damage?

Yet looking up into Dante’s intense gray eyes, Clara remembered him shielding her body with his own beneath a hail of submachine-gun fire.

She held the phone out to him, screen unlocked, showing the photo of Maya and Viktor’s text.

"Viktor," Clara said, her voice trembling but clear. "He somehow got the number to this phone. Which means your rat didn't just tap the downstairs landline—someone on your security detail cloned the phones you handed out this morning."

Dante took the phone. As he read the message and examined the photo of Maya, a terrifying stillness settled over his features. The muscle in his jaw clenched so hard it looked like it might shatter.

He looked up from the screen, his gaze locking onto hers with sudden, fierce heat.

"He offered you a way out," Dante said softly. "Half a million. Clean passports. Your brother’s life. And you handed me the phone within ten seconds of hanging up."

"I'm not Camilla," Clara whispered fiercely. "And I don't make deals with men who try to burn my brother alive. Help me save my friend, Dante. Please. Maya has a four-year-old daughter. She doesn't deserve to die because of me."

For a long moment, Dante just stared at her. Then, unexpectedly, he reached out, his warm thumb brushing against her wind-chilled cheekbone. The gentleness of the touch from a man so lethal made Clara’s breath hitch in her throat.

"Nobody touches your friend," Dante murmured, his thumb lingering against her skin for a heartbeat longer before he dropped his hand and pulled out his personal encrypted phone. "And Viktor just handed me the rope I need to hang both him and the traitor under my roof."

He dialed Luca, who answered on the first ring.

"Take two men you trust with your life—none of Uncle Enzo’s crew—and pick up Maya Perez from her apartment in Brooklyn," Dante ordered quietly. "Watch the rooftops opposite her brownstone. Viktor has a spotter on her. Take the spotter alive. Bring the girl here."

He ended the call and looked down at the cloned phone in his palm.

"What about midnight?" Clara asked. "Viktor expects me to transmit the flash drive from your desk."

"Then that’s exactly what you’re going to do," Dante said, a cold, predatory smile curving his mouth. "Only in order to convince our traitor downstairs that you’ve cracked under the pressure, we need to give them a show."

"A show?" Clara echoed nervously.