Page 12 of Devil’s Gambit

DANTE

What the hell is she doing?

I scan her hastily drafted arguments, recognizing case law I haven't thought about since my own brief flirtation with legitimacy.

"What do you have in mind?" I keep my voice neutral, but something unfamiliar stirs in my chest. Pride, maybe. Or surprise that she'd risk walking into here for me.

"Boss, this is ridiculous." Tommy leans forward, cigar smoke curling around his words. "We don't need some?—"

"Some what?" I don't raise my voice. I don't need to. The temperature in the room drops ten degrees.

Tommy shifts in his seat. "I mean, we have lawyers for this. Professionals who understand how things work."

"You mean professionals who understand their place?" Isabella's voice cuts through, steadier now. "Who won't ask questions about the blood on your money?"

"Listen, sweetheart?—"

"Finish that sentence and join Lorenzo." The words leave my mouth ice-cold. "He thought he knew better, too."

Tommy goes pale. Message received. Nobody mentions Lorenzo's name anymore, but his ghost serves its purpose.

"Continue," I tell Isabella.

"Last night's incident at the Inferno. Multiple witnesses saw Sal Calabrese enter armed and threatening. Under New York Penal Law Section 35.15, you had justifiable use of physical force to defend yourself and others present."

"We know self-defense," Vito cuts in. He's older, smarter, and has been through enough trials to know the law better than most lawyers. "What we need is to make sure the witnesses stay quiet."

"That's... that's not..." Isabella stammers and takes a breath, forcing her shoulders straight. "You're approaching this wrong. Make it messy, people remember. Make it legal, boring, and properly documented? It disappears into bureaucracy."

"Legal takes time," Vito counters. "You know how long it took us to find Jeff here?" He gestures to the man in the corner who hasn't spoken yet. "Six months. Good lawyers who understand our business don't grow on trees."

"You don't need to bury it illegally. You file the right papers, claim the right defenses, flood them with precedent.

.." She's finding her rhythm now, the trembling fading as legal theory takes over.

"Turn it into a defensive shooting that follows NYPD Patrol Guide procedures for civilian interventions. "

"Except we're not civilians," Vito says. "We're criminals. Changes the game."

"No, it clarifies it. Sal came to your establishment—a legal business—with armed men. Clear threat, clear response. The fact that you have... other interests... doesn't negate your right to self-defense in your own property."

Jeff finally speaks up from his corner. "She's not wrong. Castle doctrine extends to businesses in New York. We could argue?—"

"What about the man who got killed?" Vito interrupts.

Silence falls heavily. Isabella's trembling returns.

"Taken good care of," Marco says. "The smart witnesses bolted before he dropped. The dumb ones saw him draw first."

"That's... good." Isabella's voice catches on the word.

I watch her process this. A man died last night. One of Sal's idiots, but still human. Still breathing until he wasn't. And she just called it good.

She's changing. The woman who walked into my house five days ago would have flinched at death discussed so flippantly. Now she's factoring corpses into legal strategies.

Is this my fault? Am I corrupting her, or just revealing what survival already taught her to hide?

"The security footage?" Jeff asks.

"Shows what we need it to show," I reply.

"Then she's right. We file defensive shooting reports, cooperate fully, and bore them to death with paperwork." Jeff nods slowly. "It could work."

"Or it could open us up to investigation," Tommy mutters, apparently not learning his lesson.

"We're already under investigation," I remind him. "FBI. This keeps it clean, contained. One incident, clear justification, no loose ends."

"Except her." Vito points at Isabella. "She provoked Sal. That's conspiracy if they dig deep enough."

"Battered woman syndrome," Isabella says quietly. "Two years of documented abuse. Hospital records. Police reports Sal made disappear, but digital footprints remain. Any prosecutor would see me as a victim, not a conspirator."

The room digests this. My war council considers legal briefs instead of bullet counts.

"Fine," Vito concedes. "We’ll try it your way. But if this goes south?—"

"It won't." Isabella straightens fully now, fear transforming into strength. "I know what I'm doing."

"Do you?" I ask, genuinely curious. "Yesterday, you were a captive. Today, you're strategizing for the family?"

She meets my eyes, and there's fire there. Fear, too, but fire underneath. "Today I'm protecting myself. If you go down, where does that leave me?"

Smart answer. Safe answer. But I see the lie in it, the way her eyes flick away at the end.

"Alright." I stand, signaling the meeting's end. "Jeff, work with Isabella's notes. File whatever needs filing. Make this disappear the boring way."

"Boss—" Tommy starts.

"Meeting's over."

They file out with murmurs and suspicious looks. Marco pauses at the door, grin wide. "Gotta say, brother, your poker games are getting more interesting."

"Out, Marco."

He leaves laughing, the sound echoing down marble halls that have heard worse. Then we're alone, Isabella and I, with the ghost of violence discussed between us.

She sags slightly, the performance dropping like a coat that's too heavy. I move around the table, drawn in a way I can't name and don't want to examine. She doesn't retreat, but she doesn't advance either, simply standing like she's run out of scripts and doesn't know her next line.

"The balcony," I say. "Fresh air might help."

The night air hits like a benediction, washing away cigar smoke and the metallic taste of violence discussed in comfortable rooms. A finely manicured yard stretches through the darkness below.

"Why are you doing this?" I ask.

Isabella grips the cold railing. "I was complicit."

"No, you weren't."

"I provoked him. Manipulated the situation. That makes me?—"

"Smart. Surviving. Not complicit." I move closer, close enough to smell her shampoo mixing with the night air. It’s the expensive one from my guest bathroom. Dewy flower petals and vanilla. "You don't have to protect me, Isabella."

"I did it to save myself." She pauses, and there’s a shift. Like she's deciding whether to keep lying or risk a more dangerous route. When she speaks again, her voice is softer. "And you."

"So, you're really worried about me?"

The question dangles between us like a challenge. She turns, and the look in her eyes stops my breath. Not the calculated distance from the meeting, not the fear from before. Raw and honest and dangerous as any weapon on my war table.

"What do you want, Dante?" Her voice drops low enough that I lean in to hear. "Really want?"

"I—"

"You don't seem to want my body." She steps closer, forcing me to see her as more than the trembling woman in my meeting room. "You've had chances, opportunities. Any other man who won a woman in a poker game would have collected by now. So, what is it?"

The questions come faster now, like she's been storing them up. "My humiliation? Some twisted revenge on Sal? Using me to send a message? I need answers. I'm tired of not knowing what game we're playing."

What do I want?

The truth is a dangerous thing. I want impossible things.

Want her to stop seeing me as Sal's replacement.

Want her to stop flinching when I move too fast. Want her to keep walking into meetings with legal briefs and fire in her eyes.

Want her to choose my cage, not because it's better than Sal's, but because it stops feeling like a cage at all.

I want her in ways that have nothing to do with poker games or ownership papers or the blood I've spilled in her name.

"Is it pity?" Her voice cracks on the word. "Do you have a soft spot for broken whores? Is that what this is?"

Whore . The word hits like a slap, all the uglier because I hear Sal's voice in how she says it. Years of training, teaching her to see herself through his eyes. Whore. Property. Object. Never Isabella, brilliant and brave and worth burning the world down.

Everything I've done for her flashes through my mind in accusatory sequence. Accepting the bet when I could have walked away. The locked door that says more than any words. Killing Lorenzo. Starting a war with the Calabrese family because Sal dared to come for her.

All impulse. All instinct. All without the careful calculation that's kept me alive this long.

Why am I keeping her? What's the endgame? Where does this story go that doesn't end in blood or heartbreak or both?

I stay silent because lies would insult us both, and the truth is too lethal to speak.

She watches me struggle, those storm-gray eyes seeing too much. The fire from the meeting is still there but banked now. Waiting. I can see her cataloging my silence, adding it to whatever equation she's building about what we are.

"Nothing to say?" Her laugh is brittle as winter branches. "The great Dante Caruso, finally speechless. The man who has an answer for everything, a plan for every contingency, and you can't tell me why you're keeping me?"

She turns to leave, and I know if she walks away now, something will calcify between us. The walls will go up and stay up, and we'll dance this careful dance until one of us breaks, bleeds, or both.

"You're right."

She stops, one hand on the door, and looks back with those eyes that started all this.

"I guess I have a soft spot for broken whores."

The words taste like ashes and necessary cruelty. "That's it."

Her expression shatters, like safety glass hit just right. The fire dies, replaced by familiar walls and the kind of hurt that comes from confirming your worst suspicions. She nods once, sharp and final as a blade, then walks away.

I let her go.

The door closes with a soft click that echoes in the silence. I grip the balcony railing until my knuckles ache, metal biting into palms that have done worse things than lie to protect someone.

What the fuck do I really want?

I want her to stop looking through me to find Sal's shadow. Want her to eat breakfast without calculating exits. Want her to walk into my meetings not because she thinks she owes me, but because she wants to be there.

I want her to be mine in all the ways that matter and none of the ways that cage.

But that truth would destroy us both. Hope is a luxury neither of us can afford, not with our histories, not with the blood between us. She's right to protect herself and demand answers I can't give. Right to walk away from a man who reduces her to the worst word her ex-husband taught her.

I stay on the balcony long after she's gone, letting the cold seep through my suit like penance.

Tomorrow, there will be lawyers and paperwork, wars to manage, and empires to run.

Jeff will file our defensive shooting claims and make last night's violence disappear into legal language.

The Calabrese family will regroup and plan their retaliation.

The alphabet agencies will add new photos to their files.

And Isabella will lock her door and hate me for confirming what she's always suspected—that she's another possession in a long line of things men like me collect.

I should let her go already. Give her money, a new identity, a clean start somewhere I'll never touch.

A place where she can remember who she was before demons and monsters taught her to see herself as broken.

It's the kind thing. The right thing. The thing a man who reads romance novels should understand.

Instead, I stay on the balcony planning ways to keep her. Legal strategies to maintain guardianship. Anything that doesn't require me to admit the truth.

That I don't have a soft spot for broken whores.

I have a soft spot for her. Just her. Only her.