LUCAS POV
I’ve imagined this moment more times than I can count, since Aria was taken. Breaking down a door. Pulling a gun. Screaming her name into rooms that smell like smoke and money and rot.
What I didn’t imagine was how calm he’d look.
Dante stands behind a desk the size of a small car, hands folded, posture relaxed like this is a business meeting and not the first time someone’s come here ready to kill him. His men stop me at the door. He lifts one finger.
“Leave us.”
They hesitate.
“I said leave.”
The door closes behind me with a sound that feels permanent.
“You took my sister,” I say.
He studies me with those dead-calm eyes, the kind that have weighed lives and found them wanting.
“She came to me,” he replies.
I laugh — sharp, humorless. “That’s what you people always sa
