The silence after Elena’s whisper was so thick it felt like the entire mansion held its breath. Her supposed brother stood calmly at the bottom of the staircase, hands clasped behind his back, as if he had walked into a family dinner rather than a hostile mafia estate filled with guns aimed at him.
Dante’s grip tightened around Elena’s hand. He didn’t move her, not yet, but she felt the tension rolling off him like heat from a wildfire. His jaw clenched, his shoulders rigid, his eyes locked on the man in the crimson coat with a murderous focus she had never seen in him before.
“Elena,” Dante murmured, barely audible, “step behind me.”
She didn’t. Her feet had rooted themselves to the floor. Her mind was spinning too fast to obey anything.
Her brother’s smile softened, as though he unde
