Dante
The calls started before dawn. The city never slept, but this morning it woke early to gnaw on my name. Whispers about the dinner bled. By tonight, every table from here to Palermo would be telling the same story—Serafina Caruso humiliated him; the Romanos looked weak.
Perception is currency. I wasn’t about to go bankrupt.
I moved down the east corridor, my jacket draped over one shoulder. Matteo stepped out from the shadows like he’d been waiting there all along—shirt half-buttoned, hair still tousled from sleep, that same cutting smirk already playing on his lips.
“You’re up indecently early,” he said, falling in beside me. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I don’t have time to sleep.”
He angled me a look. “Your father breathing down your neck that hard?”
The phone buzzed across the
