Page 47 of Devil’s Gambit

DANTE

Rain hammers the windshield, each drop exploding against the glass. The wipers scream across, back and forth, back and forth, but they can't keep up. The world beyond is drowning, and I'm racing through its death throes at ninety miles per hour.

Ninety-five.

One hundred.

The BMW shudders beneath me, a two-hundred-thousand-dollar coffin begging me to slow down. My knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Every muscle in my body is coiled tight, ready to snap.

I'm coming, Bella. I'm coming.

Her voice haunts me. That broken, slurred desperation on the phone. Please come save me. Please, please, please. The way she said my name.

My face is on every news channel from here to Jersey. The FBI wants me so bad they can taste it. One cop, one traffic stop, one moment of hesitation, and I'm done. Twenty-five to life if I'm lucky. The needle, if they connect me to half the bodies.

I don't care.

I press harder on the accelerator. One hundred and five. The engine screams its protest, but I need to see her face. Need to hold her. Need to fall on my knees and beg forgiveness for the chair, the ropes, for becoming the monster she was running from.

The Beretta sits in the passenger seat, metal gleaming with each passing streetlight. Fifteen rounds plus one in the chamber. I've carried this gun for twelve years. Countless men have looked down its barrel and seen their last sunrise.

Tonight, I pray it stays cold. Tonight, I want to bring her home.

Route 9 stretches ahead like a tunnel into hell.

Two in the morning and the road belongs to the damned—long-haul truckers running on meth and coffee, prostitutes heading home from their corners, criminals racing toward their sins.

I'm all of them and none of them. A man who traded his soul for a woman who might not want it.

It doesn’t take long before the town appears through the rain like something from a nightmare. Three streetlights, each one dying, casting sickly yellow pools that do nothing but make the shadows deeper. There’s a gas station and buildings that might have been stores once.

Population 847, the sign says. But I doubt half that many still draw breath here.

The silence when I kill the engine is complete. No traffic. No life. Just the rain drumming on the roof and my heart trying to escape my chest. I leave the keys in the ignition. My hand hovers over the Beretta.

No. Leave it.

The gun stays on the seat, and I step into the rain.

It soaks through my jacket immediately. Three-thousand-dollar Armani, ruined in seconds. The water is ice, shocking, real in a way that makes everything else feel like a dream. My footsteps echo off wet pavement, broadcasting my presence to anyone listening.

The diner squats on the corner like a cancer. "Rosie's" in neon. Newspaper covers the windows. The door is locked, but the glass is broken, jagged teeth waiting to taste blood.

I slip through carefully. My jacket catches, tears. The sound is obscenely loud in the silence.

Inside, time stopped decades ago and never started again.

Red vinyl booths, their stuffing hemorrhaging through splits.

A counter with stools bolted to the floor, one spinning slowly like someone just got up.

The jukebox in the corner, chrome gone gray, songs trapped inside that will never play again.

The silence is wrong. Not a peaceful quiet, but an aggressive absence of sound, like the building is holding its breath.

A floorboard creaks.

My entire body goes electric, every nerve firing at once.

There’s movement in the shadows near the kitchen.

A figure emerges into a shaft of moonlight that shouldn't exist—the broken window casting silver across the floor like a spotlight.

My heart stops. Actually stops. For one eternal second, I'm dead.

Then it explodes back to life because?—

Bella.

"Hello, Dante."

Her voice cuts through me like a blade made of ice.

She's wearing red silk that clings to every curve, every line I've memorized with my hands, my mouth, my desperate need.

Her makeup is perfect—smoky eyes, red lips, not a hair out of place.

She looks like she stepped from a magazine cover, not from captivity. Not from Sal's dirty hands.

Something isn’t right. The thought whispers through my mind like smoke, but my body is already moving.

"Bella." Her name breaks in my mouth. Shatters into a thousand pieces of need and relief and terror.

I cross the distance in three strides. My hands find her shoulders and pull her against me. She smells wrong—expensive perfume instead of the vanilla soap she prefers. She's rigid in my arms. A statue. Cold marble where there should be warm flesh.

"I thought you were dead." The words tumble out, desperate and broken. "Paulie said—there were bodies—burned—I thought he killed you. I saw the corpse, and I thought—Jesus Christ, Bella, I thought I'd lost you."

I drop to my knees. The floor is filthy, but I don't care. My hands find hers—ice cold, trembling slightly.

"I'm sorry." My voice cracks. "I'm so fucking sorry. For the chair. For the ropes. For treating you like—God, Bella, I'm so sorry."

She doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just stares down at me with eyes that reflect nothing. Storm-gray gone flat.

"I became him." The confession tears from my throat. "I became Sal. Everything I swore I'd never be. I tied you to a chair, Bella. Tied you to a fucking chair because I thought—Christ, I thought I was protecting you, but I was just another monster."

Still nothing. Her face might as well be carved from stone.

"Say something." Desperation bleeds through now, raw and ugly. "Please. Hate me. Hit me. Scream at me. Just—please. React. Give me something. Anything."

Her lips part slightly. The smallest movement, but my entire universe narrows to that tiny gesture.

"Marco." Her voice is flat, emotionless. "I'm sorry about Marco, Dante."

"He's alive." Relief floods through me so intensely that I almost collapse. "He made it out. He's in surgery but stable. Private facility upstate. The best doctors money can buy."

Something flickers in her eyes, but she remains still. I squeeze her hands tighter, trying to find warmth, trying to find her.

"How did you escape?"

The question hangs in the air. There’s a shift in her eyes again, different than before.

"Bella, how did you escape from Sal?"

She looks at me then. Really looks at me. "I didn't."

The words don't compute.

"What?"

I'm on my feet, stumbling backward. The booth catches me, vinyl squeaking a protest.

"What do you mean you didn't?—"

Movement everywhere.

Shadows become men.

My body goes cold, then hot, then numb.

They emerge from every corner, every shadow I should have checked. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. More. Guns catching moonlight, faces hidden but intent clear. The trap snapping shut.

One shadow moves differently. Lazier. More confident.

Into the moonlight, he takes form. Inky hair slicked back despite the rain.

An eye patch over the left eye—black leather, the kind of theatrical shit he'd think was intimidating.

The swagger only slightly hindered by a healing knee.

That fucking smirk that makes me want to tear his throat out with my teeth.

Sal.

My hand goes to my waist. Empty. The Beretta sitting in my car might as well be on Mars.

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

Two men grab my arms before I can move. Professional holds—painful pressure points that make my fingers go numb immediately.

"I’ve won this war, Caruso.”

"Bella!" I'm looking only at her, ignoring everything else. "What the fuck is this?”

She doesn't answer. Just watches me with empty eyes.

"Talk to me!" My voice breaks.

Still nothing.

Sal glides behind her like poison. His hands find her waist with casual ownership.

"Bella!" I'm begging now, focused entirely on her face. "Tell me he's threatening you. Tell me he's forcing this. Just tell me something!"

She doesn't flinch when he touches her. Doesn't pull away.

She leans into it.

"BELLA!"

She looks at me. And then she nods.

A slight tilt of her head toward the guards holding me.

A boot drives into my kidney. I fold forward, gasping, and see her watching. No emotion. Simply observation.

"Is this what you want?" I'm screaming at her, only her, as if Sal doesn't exist. "Is this who you really are?"

Silence.

Another nod from her. Another boot to my ribs.

"I'll kill him," I spit blood, my eyes never leaving her face. "I'll kill every fucking man in this room. Every single one. Their families. Their friends. Everyone they've ever loved."

Sal laughs, long and lazy. "Kill us?" His voice drips amusement. "With what, exactly?"

He walks around me slowly, taking his time.

"Look around you, Caruso. Look where you are." He spreads his arms wide. "Middle of fucking nowhere. No one for miles. Twenty of my best guys. Armed. Ready. Eager."

He counts on his fingers like teaching a child.

"You? No gun. No backup. No leverage." He pauses, grinning. "Unless you're secretly Hercules under that suit— which, judging by how easily my boys grabbed you, you're not—you die tonight. Simple as that."

"Bella—"

"Stop talking to her." Sal's voice hardens. "She's done with you. Done listening. Done pretending to give a shit."

"This is some plan," I insist, still looking only at her. "A game you're playing?—"

Sal's laughter fills the diner, rich and genuine.

"A plan? Oh, this is beautiful." He wipes his good eye. "You still think she's on your side? Still think this is an elaborate scheme?"

He pulls Bella against him, and she molds perfectly to his body.

"Let me explain something to you, since you seem dense." His voice drops, growing venomous. "This was never about love. Never about feelings. It was a simple business transaction."

He lights a cigar, taking his time.

"I had some debts. Temporary cash flow issues with the Lucchese family. Very embarrassing for a man in my position." He blows smoke. "So, I made a deal. Let you borrow my wife for a few weeks. Let her warm your bed, make you feel like a king."

"You sack of shit?—"

"The arrangement was so simple," Sal continues. "I clear my debts. Get my wife back. Everyone walks away clean."

He shakes his head in mock disappointment.

"But you had to complicate it. Had to fall in love. Started burning my properties. Started a fucking war." His voice rises. "All because you couldn't see the big picture. Couldn't understand she was a warm hole on loan until her owner came to collect."

"When I get out of here?—"

"You won't." Sal pulls out an ancient Colt and holds it up to the light. "This was my father's. Giuseppe Calabrese. Used it to build our family name."

He opens the cylinder, counting with exaggerated slowness.

"One." He points at my right hand. "Through the palm. Shattered bones. Never hold anything again."

"Two." He gestures at my left hand. "Same thing. Complete symmetry."

"Three." Right leg. "Through the knee. The kneecap specifically. Explosive damage."

"Four." Left leg. "Matching set. You'll never walk again."

He spins the cylinder and snaps it shut.

"Four bullets. Four limbs. Leave you alive but useless.”

"I’ll fucking kill you?—"

"Then," he continues as if I hadn't spoken. "While you're lying there, bleeding, probably pissing yourself—you get to watch."

His hand finds Bella's throat. She doesn’t even flinch.

"After the show," Sal says. "After you've seen exactly what you never really had, then comes mercy."

He unhands her, tapping his gun in his palm as he steps toward me.

"One bullet left. Right through your skull. Quick. Clean. More than you deserve. The Commission already approved everything. Domenico specifically said whoever wins gets everything. Your territories. Your accounts. Your entire fucking legacy."

He grins.

"The Caruso name dies tonight. And everything your father built, everything you expanded? Mine."

A guard kicks me in the stomach. I double over, gasping.

"You should be grateful," Sal says, voice almost gentle. "I won't make you watch what happens after you're dead.”

He walks back to Bella, who hasn't moved or spoken.

"I'll spare you from knowing that in a year, no one will remember the Carusos existed. Just a footnote in the Calabrese empire's expansion."

From somewhere in the back, I hear it. The sound that makes my blood freeze.

Scraping.

Slow. Deliberate.

Something is being dragged across the floor.

Sal disappears into the shadows, and the scraping gets louder. More deliberate. Like fingernails down a chalkboard, but worse because I know what's coming.

He emerges, pushing a chair. Clean. Elegant. Red velvet and dark wood, the kind of chair that belongs in a theater.

For watching a show.

The scraping when he positions it is deliberate, dramatic. He tests the sight line and adjusts it slightly. Another scrape that makes my teeth ache.

"Perfect view," he says, running his hand along the velvet. "Don't want you to miss a single detail. The way her face looks when I enter her. The sounds she makes. The way she says my name."

He walks back to Bella, who still hasn't spoken. Still hasn't moved.

Sal's hands find her waist. His lips brush her ear as he stares at me.

"Time to remind you whose wife she really is."

She doesn't resist. Doesn't protest. Just lets him touch her while I watch, while I rage, while everything I thought was real reveals itself as illusion.

Sal's eye finds mine, his smirk widening into something monstrous.

"Let's begin."