Chapter 4 - The Betrayal
The lock on the bathroom door clicked open three minutes after the elevator doors chimed their departure.
Elena pushed the door slowly, stepping back into the bedroom. Matteo was standing by the window, staring down at the street below where Gianni’s black town cars were pulling away from the curb. His shoulders were tense, his hands balled into tight fists at his sides.
"Dante," Elena said quietly.
Matteo didn't turn around. "Yeah."
"He sold you out."
"He’s been on Gianni’s payroll for six months," Matteo said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "I knew it. I was just waiting to see what price my uncle was paying for my daily schedule."
Elena walked over to the nightstand, picked up her leather tote bag, and zipped it shut with a decisive snap. "Then why keep him around? If you knew he was a spy, why let him stand outside your door?"
Matteo finally turned his head, looking at her with dark, weary eyes. "Because an enemy you know is safer than an enemy you have to hunt. If I fired Dante, Gianni would just slide someone else in—someone I wouldn't recognize until they slipped something into my IV drip."
He paused, stepping closer to her, his gaze dropping to her face. "Which brings us to you."
Elena bristled, stepping back. "Me? I didn't ask to be smuggled into a mafia fortress, Mr. Vescari. Your agency placed me here, and your guard let me up the elevator. If I'm a liability, let me walk out the front door right now. I don't care about your uncle, I don't care about your ports in Doral, and I sure as hell don't care about your insomnia."
"If you walk out that door right now, Gianni’s men will pick you up before you reach the lobby," Matteo said flatly. "Not because they want to hurt you, but because they want to know what you saw, what you heard, and why I let you sleep against my shoulder."
"So what? I'm a prisoner now?"
"You're alive," Matteo corrected, his voice dropping an octave as he closed the distance between them until she could feel the heat radiating off his chest. "Which, in my world, is the closest thing to safe I can offer."
Elena stared up at him, her chest rising and falling rapidly. She should have been terrified. Every survival instinct she had developed while working double shifts in county hospitals and dodging abusive landlords was screaming at her to run. But looking into his eyes, she didn't see the monster the city whispered about. She saw a man drowning in a sea of his own making, desperately looking for something solid to hold onto.
"My shift is over at six," Elena whispered, her voice losing its defiant edge. "My rent is due tomorrow. If I lose this job, my mother’s medical storage locker gets auctioned off by the city."
Matteo stared at her for a long, silent moment. Then, slowly, he reached out—not to grab her, but to slide a thick envelope stuffed with cash out of his inner jacket pocket and place it gently on the nightstand beside his gun.
"That's four times your agency rate," Matteo said quietly. "Cash. Clean. Enough to clear your mother's locker and buy you six months of breathing room."
Elena looked at the envelope, then back up at him. "I'm a nurse, Mr. Vescari. I don't take payoffs."
"It's not a payoff. It's hazard pay," he replied. "Because if you walk out of here, Gianni's going to make you his primary target to get to me. And if you stay..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
Before Elena could answer, the security monitor on the desk flared to life. The camera feed from the ground-floor service entrance showed Dante packing his duffel bag in the security alcove, grabbing his car keys, and heading straight for the elevator—not to secure the perimeter, but to leave the building entirely.
Matteo’s eyes narrowed into dark slits. "He’s running."
"Where?"
May you like
"To tell Gianni that I know about the betrayal," Matteo said, his hand dropping straight to his holster. "Which means my uncle just moved up his timeline."
---
