My lovely betrayal

Chapter 10: The Devil's Timing

The engine roared closer.

Rourke heard it too. His head snapped toward the sound, and for one beautiful second, the mask of calm superiority slipped. Beneath it was something uglier—fear, maybe, or the recognition that plans had just changed in a way he couldn't control.

"That would be my ride," I said.

The black SUV burst into the alley like a battering ram, its tires screaming against cobblestone, its grille catching the afternoon light. It slammed to a stop between me and Rourke's firing squad, and the passenger door flew open before the vehicle had fully settled.

Dante Marchetti didn't shout. He didn't wave a gun or issue threats or do any of the things ordinary men did when they crashed a rescue into the middle of an ambush. He simply stepped out of the SUV, straightened his cuffs, and looked at Rourke with the cold, quiet fury of a man who had just confirmed a suspicion he'd been nursing for years.

"Sebastian," he said. "I was hoping I was wrong about you."

Rourke's composure had returned, but it was thinner now, stretched across something brittle. "You should have stayed on the plane, Mr. Marchetti. This doesn't concern you."

"You're pointing guns at a woman under my protection. That concerns me."

"She's not under your protection. She's a rogue agent who just assaulted two men in a bank and stole classified materials. I'm doing my job."

"Your job." Dante took a step forward, his shoes crunching on broken glass from a window I hadn't noticed shattering. "Your job was to protect my organization from threats. Instead, you've been feeding information to the man who killed Mira Vasquez. You've been working with Marcus Webb for—how long? Five years? Eight?"

Rourke didn't answer. His men shifted behind him, uncertain now. They'd signed up to follow Dante Marchetti, not to point guns at him in a Geneva alley. The hierarchy of loyalty was crumbling in real time.

"The glove," I said, stepping out from behind the SUV. "Take off the glove, Rourke."

He turned to me, and his smile was a knife. "I don't take orders from dead women."

"Take it off."

The voice came from behind Rourke. One of his own men—younger than the others, dark-skinned, with a sniper's steady hands and a gaze that was locked on Rourke's back. He'd lowered his gun. So had two others.

Rourke looked at them. Looked at Dante. Looked at me. Then, very slowly, he peeled the leather glove from his left hand.

The scar was identical to the one on the guard from the bank. A pale, puckered line running from thumb to wrist, the mark of the man who'd given the final order on my sister's life.

"Mira described you," I said, my voice steady even as my heart tried to tear itself out of my chest. "She saw you through a window in Geneva the night before she died. A man with a scar on his left hand, giving orders to Marcus Webb. She didn't know your name. But she knew you were the one who decided she had to die."

Rourke flexed his scarred hand. "Your sister was very observant. It's what got her killed."

Dante moved before I could. One moment he was standing beside the SUV; the next he had Rourke pinned against the alley wall, his forearm pressed against the man's throat, his face inches from Rourke's.

"You killed her," Dante said, and his voice was barely a whisper, terrible in its softness. "You killed her in my safehouse. You burned my men alive. You let me believe for eighteen months that my security had failed, that I had failed, that her blood was on my hands."

"It is on your hands." Rourke choked out the words, his scarred hand scrabbling against Dante's grip. "You brought her into your house. You trusted me. You trusted Webb. You made it easy."

Dante's arm pressed harder. Rourke's face began to purple.

"Dante." I stepped forward, placing my hand on his shoulder. The muscle beneath my palm was rigid, trembling with the effort of restraint. "He's more valuable alive. He knows who Webb answers to. He knows the whole network."

"I don't care about the network."

"I do." I tightened my grip. "Mira died for this. Don't let him take the easy way out."

For a long moment, I thought he was going to kill him anyway. I could see the hunger for it in his eyes, the primal need to crush the life out of the man who'd murdered someone under his protection. I understood it. I'd felt the same hunger in the bank, staring at Webb's smiling face.

Then, slowly, Dante released his grip. Rourke slid down the wall, gasping, his hand pressed to his throat.

"Tie him up," Dante said to the young man who'd spoken earlier. "He goes in the cargo hold. Anyone who wants to join him is welcome to try."

No one moved. The loyalty of Rourke's squad had evaporated like mist over the lake.

---

We flew back to Como in silence.

Rourke was secured in the rear of the plane, bound and gagged and guarded by two of Dante's most trusted men—the young sniper, whose name I learned was Khalid, and a giant with a broken nose who never spoke. The USB drive was still in my pocket, the envelope of scattered papers left behind on the bank floor, too compromised to retrieve.

It didn't matter. We had Rourke. We had the USB. We had the name of the scarred man on the bank guard, which Khalid had identified as Viktor Petrov, a freelance contractor with ties to half the criminal organizations in Eastern Europe. And we had something else, too—something that had been growing in the silence between Dante and me since the moment he'd stepped out of that SUV.

"I should thank you," I said finally, as the Alps slid past beneath us. "For coming after me."

"I told you I would."

"You also told me you'd wait with the plane."

His mouth curved, just slightly. "I lied."

I turned from the window. He was sitting across from me again, but something had shifted in his posture. He looked exhausted—not physically, but somewhere deeper, in the marrow of whatever passed for his soul. The discovery of Rourke's betrayal had cracked something open in him. I recognized the wound because I carried its twin.

"You trusted him," I said. "Rourke."

"For eight years. He saved my life in Brussels. He taught Leo how to play poker. He sat at my table and broke bread with my family." Dante's voice was flat, reciting facts instead of feeling. "And the whole time, he was selling my secrets to the man who killed your sister."

"We both missed it. Mira missed it too, and she was better than both of us."

"Mira knew there was a mole. She just didn't have a name." He rubbed a hand across his jaw. "I should have found him sooner. I should have—"

"Stop." I leaned forward, catching his gaze and holding it. "You didn't kill her. Webb and Rourke and whoever's above them killed her. You've been carrying guilt that doesn't belong to you for eighteen months. It's time to put it down."

He stared at me. "You sound like you're speaking from experience."

"I am." I sat back, my hand drifting to the pocket where the USB rested. "I spent two years hating you. Two years building my entire identity around revenge against a man who turned out to be innocent. I know what it costs to carry the wrong guilt. It almost cost me everything."

"And now?"

"Now I know who the real enemy is. And I know I can't fight him alone." The words cost me something. Pride, maybe. Or the illusion that I was strong enough to carry this burden by myself. "You asked me earlier to trust you. I'm not good at trust. I've been trained out of it. But I'm trying."

Dante was quiet for a moment. Then he reached across the space between us and took my hand. His grip was warm and steady, and I didn't pull away.

"Then let me try too," he said. "I've spent my whole life surrounded by people who wanted something from me. Power, money, protection. You're the first person who ever wanted nothing except the truth. That's terrifying. And I don't want to lose it."

The plane banked gently, beginning its descent toward Lake Como. Below us, the water glittered like a promise, and somewhere in the villa that waited on its shores, a twelve-year-old boy was waiting for his chess game.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"Now we interrogate Rourke. We find out who's above Webb. And we finish what your sister started." He squeezed my hand once, then released it. "But first, I believe you owe my nephew a game of chess."

"You told him I'd play?"

"He told me." Dante's smile returned, tired but real. "He's been setting up the board since you left."