Page 39 of Devil’s Gambit

DANTE

The cold cuts through my jacket hard. Twenty men behind me, all of us running as fast as we can. Our dress shoes slip on wet leaves.

My lungs burn with each breath. We’ve been running for twenty minutes now, maybe more. Time moves differently when you're being hunted.

Rodriguez keeps pace beside me. The roads are blocked.

Every damn one of them is crawling with FBI vehicles, their lights painting the trees red and blue.

We had to abandon the cars a mile back, leave a fortune in German engineering for the feds to impound.

Now we're running through rural New York wilderness.

"How much further?" someone gasps behind me.

"Half mile," Rodriguez answers when I don't.

Half a mile to Bella. To making this right. To telling her she was right about everything—I am another man who thinks ownership is love. But I'm her man, and that has to mean something. Has to be worth something.

My thighs burn, muscles screaming for rest. I push harder. Each footfall on the forest floor sounds like thunder in my ears, but it's probably just my heartbeat, too loud, too fast. The trees thin ahead, and I know we're close.

Sal's compound is compromised. The FBI swarmed it right after we left, like they were waiting. Like someone tipped them off at the right moment. What game is he playing? Did he trade his empire for revenge? For one last chance at Bella?

The thought of her makes my chest loosen and constrict at the same time. Soon. Soon I'll see her storm-gray eyes, even if they're full of hatred. I'll take her hatred over her absence. I'll kneel if I have to. Beg forgiveness for the chair, the ropes, the choices I stole from her.

"Boss." Rodriguez's voice cuts through the wind and heavy breathing.

I slow and turn to where he's pointing. My stomach drops before my mind processes what I'm seeing.

Smoke. Black smoke rising against the gray sky, thick and wrong. Not chimney smoke. Not controlled burning. This is destruction smoke. Death smoke.

"What the hell?—"

I'm running again before the thought completes.

Faster than before, faster than my body wants to allow.

The smoke gets thicker as we close the distance, and then the smell hits.

Wood burning, yes, but underneath that—something else.

Something organic. Something that makes primitive parts of my brain scream warnings.

We break through the tree line, and I stop so suddenly that Rodriguez crashes into my back.

The farmhouse is gone. In its place, a skeleton of flame, its beams collapsing inward like broken ribs. The fire is so intense that the heat hits from a hundred yards away, making my eyes water immediately. Orange light paints everything hellish, turns the afternoon into an apocalypse.

But it's the silence that's wrong. No sirens. No firefighters. No attempts to contain this. Just the roar of flames consuming everything my grandfather built, everything my father preserved, everything I've lost.

"Weapons out!" My voice sounds strange, distant. "Something's wrong. Something's?—"

Movement in the smoke. Figures emerging like demons from hell. Paulie's men, spreading out in a semicircle, weapons drawn but not quite aimed. I count automatically—thirty-four of them. We have twenty-six. The math of violence, always running in my head, even when my heart is stopping.

Then I see him.

Paulie stands near what used to be the front entrance, his pretty-boy face lit orange by flames. He's watching something at his feet with the fascination of a child watching ants burn under a magnifying glass.

Two shapes on the ground. Blackened. Still.

My feet carry me forward without conscious thought.

"What the hell happened here, Paulie?" My voice comes out steadier than it should.

He looks up and tilts his head with that empty smile that never reaches his eyes. "The house burned."

"I can see that. How? Where's Bella? Where's my brother?" My hand is already on my gun, fingers tight on the grip. "What are those?"

He looks down at the shapes—bodies, they're bodies—then back at me. There’s a flicker in his empty eyes. Amusement, maybe. Or pity.

"She's right here, Dante."

The words hit like bullets to the chest. All the air leaves my lungs. I look at the shapes again, and now I can see it. Two bodies. One taller, broader. And one smaller, delicate even in?—

"No." The word comes out as nothing, less than a whisper.

"I killed them myself." Paulie's voice is conversational, like he's discussing the weather. "Your brother, your woman. Even my father, but he's probably still inside." He gestures at the inferno. "Shot them first—I'm not a complete monster. Quick and clean. Then the fire, to send a message."

"You're lying." But my voice breaks on the words because I can see it now, can't unsee it. The smaller body, the way it's positioned, protective, like she died trying to shield herself.

"WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?"

My gun is out, pointed at his head, and I don't remember drawing it. Around us, every man raises their weapons, the metallic symphony of safeties clicking off.

"What I was always going to do," Paulie says, still calm, still smiling. "You think you're special, Dante? The great Devil of New York? Untouchable? Unable to be broken?" He steps closer. "I wanted to see what you'd look like at rock bottom. What the Devil becomes when he loses his soul."

Rain starts to fall. Cold drops that hiss when they hit the burning house, that run down my face and blur my vision. Or maybe that's something else. Something I haven't felt in years.

"You psychotic fuck?—"

"Psychotic?" He laughs, the sound sharp as breaking glass. "I'm what you made me. What you needed me to be. A weapon without conscience. You forgot that weapons don't choose their targets."

I pull the trigger. The sound cracks through the air, and Paulie's foot explodes in red. He staggers and gasps, but he's still smiling as he starts limping away, faster than should be possible.

"Always so predictable, Dante!"

I fire again, but the gun clicks empty. Of course. Used too many bullets at Sal's compound, playing hero for a woman who was already?—

I chase him. Behind us, gunfire erupts as our men engage, but I don't care. Only Paulie matters now. Only making him hurt the way I'm hurting.

He's moving fast despite his destroyed foot, adrenaline and insanity driving him forward. He turns, pulls his own gun, and fires twice. The bullets whistle past, and I don't flinch. Can't flinch. Fear requires caring about living, and I'm not sure I do anymore.

"You took everything!" The words tear from my throat, raw and animal.

"You gave me everything!" He laughs even as he stumbles over a root. "Gave me power, gave me purpose, gave me people to kill! You created this, Dante!"

We're deeper in the woods now, the gunfire growing distant. Both out of bullets, reduced to what we really are underneath the suits and pretense.

I tackle him at full sprint. We hit the ground hard, rolling through mud and wet leaves. His elbow catches my jaw, snapping my head back, but the pain is nothing compared to the fire in my chest. I get on top, fists already coming down.

The first punch breaks his nose. Blood sprays across his pretty face, and he laughs through it.

"There he is! There's the Devil I've been waiting to meet!"

The second punch splits his lip. The third cracks something in his cheek.

"You fucking traitor! I trusted you!"

"You trusted a killer!" Blood bubbles from his mouth as he talks. "What did you think would happen? That I'd draw lines? They're all just meat, Dante!"

My fist pauses mid-swing. "She was everything. She was my chance to be more than?—"

"More than what? More than a killer? More than your father's son?" He spits blood, teeth coming with it. "You're exactly what you've always been. A monster who thought fucking the right woman would make you human."

I hit him again, knuckles splitting against bone. "She loved me. Despite everything, she loved me."

"She feared you." Even through pain, he's still talking, still twisting the knife. "Just like she feared Sal. You're all the same to women like her—different degrees of captivity."

"Shut up?—"

"Want to know how she died?"

I freeze, fist raised and dripping blood—his or mine, I don't know.

"Want to know what she said at the end?"

I don't want to know. Need to know. The rain is coming harder now, washing blood down his face in pink streams.

"She said your name." His voice is getting weaker, but still cruel. "Called for you like you were some kind of savior. 'Dante will come,' she kept saying. Even when I put the gun to her head, she believed you'd save her."

My hands find his throat and squeeze.

"Marco tried to stop me. Took a bullet to the stomach for it. You should have seen him crawl, trying to reach her while bleeding out. True brotherhood, that. Too bad you were too busy playing gangster to be here when it mattered."

I squeeze harder, watching his face change colors. Purple, then darker.

"She looked beautiful dying," he gasps with what breath remains. "Like she was finally free."

There’s a crack under my hands. Maybe his hyoid bone. Maybe something in me. I keep squeezing even after his hands stop clawing at mine, even after his eyes go vacant in a different way than usual. I grip his throat until Rodriguez appears, pulling me off.

"He's dead, boss. He's dead."

I stand on legs that don't feel like mine and look at my hands covered in blood and mud despite the rain. Behind us, the gunfire has stopped. The silence feels final.

"Who won?" My voice is hollow.

"We did. Paulie's men scattered when they realized he wasn't coming back." Rodriguez looks at the corpse between us. "Boss, we need to go. The feds?—"

"I need to see them."

"Boss—"

"I need to see them!"

We walk back through the woods, my feet mechanical, automatic. The farmhouse is still burning. And there, where Paulie left them, lie two bodies that used to be people. That used to be everything.

I drop to my knees beside the smaller one. The fire has taken everything recognizable, but I know. The size, the position, the curves, the way, even in death, she seems to be reaching for something. Reaching for help that came too late.

"Boss." Rodriguez's voice is gentle. "The feds will be here soon."

I reach out, my hand hovering over what might have been her face. I can't touch it. Can't make it more real than it already is.

"I was supposed to protect her." The words come out broken. "That was the deal. Protection for submission. I couldn't even keep my end of a simple fucking deal."

"Boss—"

"She wanted a choice. And I tied her to a chair." A sound escapes me, not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. "Tied her to a chair to keep her safe, and she died anyway."

I wipe rain from my face. If I didn’t know better, I might think I was sobbing. But no, it’s something else. Something I haven't felt since I was seven years old, watching my father strangle a man and learning that Carusos don't cry.

"I'm sorry," I tell the charred form. "I'm so fucking sorry. You deserved better than any of us. Better than this world."

Rodriguez pulls me to my feet. "We have to go. Now."

I take one last look. At the burning house. At the bodies. At the complete destruction of everything I thought I was building.

Then I turn and walk away, leaving it all behind.

Paulie was right about one thing. I am exactly what I've always been—a monster who thought he could change. Who thought love could transform him into a man worthy of her.

But monsters don't get happy endings.

They get what they deserve.

And walking away from her body, leaving her in the rain and ash, knowing I failed her in every way that mattered—this is what I deserve.

The empire is gone. My brother is dead. Bella is ashes.

And I'm still here, still breathing, still walking.

That's the real punishment.

Having to live with this.