Chapter 4 - The Cuff LinkChapter 4: A Bullet in the GlassThe emergency sirens began two minutes after the gunfire.
By then, Dante had already searched the room twice, checked the windows, and ordered every entrance sealed. Leo had been taken upstairs by Mara, but the baby screamed until Dante demanded that Alina accompany them.
She carried Leo through the grand hallway while men with guns moved around her. The mansion had changed from a wealthy home into a fortified compound. Doors slammed. Radios crackled. Shoes struck marble.
Dante walked beside her with one hand pressed to the cut in his palm. He had torn it open while removing the cuff link from Leo’s fingers.
“Where did it come from?” Alina asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It was inside the room.”
“The room has been secured for six months.”
“Then someone placed it there.”
Dante’s eyes shifted toward her. “You think I don’t understand that?”
“I think you understand violence better than you understand what your son was holding.”
His expression tightened.
They reached the nursery. It was a bright, carefully designed room with white curtains, wooden stars, and a painted mural of the night sky. Dante handed Leo to Mara, but the baby instantly began to cry again.
Alina stepped forward.
“He wants me.”
“He doesn’t know what he wants,” Dante said.
“He knows enough.”
Mara passed Leo back to her. The child quieted at once.
Dante stood near the door, watching.
“He has never done that,” Mara said softly.
“You said that at the restaurant.”
“Because it’s true.”
Alina lowered herself into the rocking chair. Leo curled against her chest, one hand resting beneath her chin. The intimacy of the moment frightened her almost as much as the gunfire.
Dante’s phone rang.
He answered without looking away from her. “Speak.”
Enzo’s voice came through the speaker. “The shooter used a suppressed rifle from the garden wall. He was gone before our outer team reached the position. We found a second cuff link in the mud.”
“Any prints?”
“None.”
“What about the camera system?”
“The blackout was triggered from inside the house.”
Dante’s eyes became lethal.
“Find the traitor.”
He ended the call.
Alina looked toward him. “You have someone inside.”
“I always have someone inside.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Leo’s eyelids drooped. Alina gently rocked him while Dante approached the chair.
“Show me your hand,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because the cut is still bleeding.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“You have a baby and a house full of armed men. Try not to drip blood on the nursery floor.”
For the first time, something almost like amusement touched his eyes.
He extended his hand.
Alina pulled a clean cloth from the supplies on the changing table and wrapped it around his palm. His hand was enormous compared with hers, the knuckles scarred and rough. She noticed a second tattoo beneath his sleeve: a line of Latin words around a small compass.
“You collect them,” she murmured.
“They remind me where I came from.”
“Your dragon reminds me where my family died.”
His gaze dropped to her fingers.
“My father’s symbol,” he said.
“A symbol doesn’t murder people. The men who use it do.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
She tied the cloth and released him.
“My father discovered the shipments at the docks. He tried to expose them. One evening, he came home with a cut across his throat and told my mother to take me and leave.”
“And you didn’t?”
“We tried.”
Her voice thinned.
“Victor Hale found us before we reached the car. He had two men with him. My father fought. My mother pushed me into a storage closet. I heard the gunshot. Then the fire started.”
Dante’s face did not change, but the room seemed to grow colder.
“How did you survive?”
“A neighbor broke the back door. I escaped through the alley.”
“Your mother?”
Alina looked down at Leo.
“She never came out.”
The baby’s soft breathing filled the silence.
Dante stood beside the rocking chair, his wounded hand hanging at his side.
“I was sixteen,” Alina continued. “I spent the next year in shelters. Then I changed my name and disappeared.”
“Alina Valdez is not a changed name.”
“It is the name my mother gave me. I kept it because I didn’t want the people who hurt us to own everything.”
Dante looked at her for a long time.
“Why did you say Rafael Vale killed your father?”
“Because Victor called him before he pulled the trigger.”
The words struck Dante visibly.
He turned toward the window.
“My father died in prison,” he said. “He told me he had never met your family.”
“He lied.”
“He lied to everyone.”
Outside, rain tapped against the glass. The house security lights swept over the lawn.
Alina studied Dante’s back. He was not the man who had held the gun fourteen years ago, but his body carried the same symbol. His empire had been built on the ruins of the world that had destroyed hers.
“Why does the baby have the cuff link?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Someone wanted him to find it.”
“Or someone wanted me to find it.”
Dante turned.
“The cuff link is not old,” he said. “It was made this year.”
“Then it isn’t from your father.”
“No.”
“It belongs to one of your people.”
His eyes hardened. “Maybe.”
“You know who wears it.”
Dante’s silence answered her.
“Who?”
He stepped closer until his shadow fell across the chair.
“My younger brother, Luca.”
Alina’s stomach dropped.
“You have a brother?”
“Had.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died six months ago.”
“How?”
“A car explosion.”
Leo stirred. Alina kissed the top of his head without thinking.
Dante watched the gesture, then looked toward the hallway.
“Luca was the only person who knew my father’s entire operation,” he said. “Before he died, he told me someone inside my organization was rebuilding it.”
“Someone who wears your family’s dragon.”
“Someone who has access to my home.”
A small sound came from the baby monitor on the dresser.
Static.
Then a whisper.
“The girl is alive.”
Alina froze.
The monitor hissed again.
“The Valdez girl is in the nursery.”
Dante reached for his gun.
A second voice answered through the static.
“Then burn the house.”
The nursery lights died.
May you like
Leo began to scream.
And somewhere below them, a door opened.
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