As the thing that burned him back.
The thought was dangerous. The thought was intoxicating.
The thought was mine.
I drifted toward sleep with Dante's arm around my waist and his heartbeat steady against my back, and I didn't dream. I didn't need to.
Reality had become dark and beautiful enough.
CHAPTER 17
Dante
Sal had been missing for four days.
Four days since I'd learned he was the one feeding intelligence to the Castellanos. Four days since I'd put every resource I had into hunting Lorenzo's consigliere through a city that suddenly felt too small to hide a man who knew all my methods.
Because he did know them. Sal had been at my wedding. Had studied my security protocols. Had smiled at Julietta while planning her execution.
The rage that thought triggered was becoming familiar. Constant. A low burn that sharpened my focus to a single point: find him, eliminate him, remove one more threat from Julietta's life.
I stood in my office at three in the morning, studying surveillance feeds that showed nothing useful. Marcos sat across from me, hislaptop open, his expression the careful neutrality he adopted when delivering bad news.
"He's gone underground," Marcos said. "Liquidated two accounts yesterday. Small withdrawals—nothing that would trigger alerts, but enough to survive for months."
"He's not running," I said. "He's waiting."
"For what?"
"For me to make a mistake. Or for Lorenzo to give him new orders." I closed the surveillance window. The screens went dark. "Where would he go?"
Marcos pulled up a map, red dots marking Sal's known associates. "He has three safehouses we know about. Family in Buffalo. A mistress in Detroit who doesn't know what he does for a living."
"He won't go to any of those. Too obvious." I studied the map, thinking like a man who'd spent fifteen years as Lorenzo's right hand. "He'd go somewhere he thinks I don't know about. Somewhere off the books."
"We've been through his financials. His communications. His—"
"What about before Lorenzo?" I interrupted. "Before he became consigliere. Where did Sal come from?"
Marcos's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Started as muscle for the Vitale crew in Gary, Indiana. Small-time enforcement. Worked his way up."
"Gary." I felt something click into place. "Pull property records. Everything within fifty miles. Look for purchases under shell companies, family names, anything connected to the Vitale organization."
It took Marcos twenty minutes.
"There," he said, turning the laptop toward me. "Industrial property in Hammond, Indiana. Purchased in 2009 under Vitale Holdings. Officially a storage facility. No recent activity on record."
"That's where he is."
Marcos looked skeptical. "It's thin. Could be coincidence."
"It's not." I was already reaching for my phone, texting Vince. "Sal wouldn't go to family. Wouldn't go to his mistress. He'd go somewhere that ties to his past, before Lorenzo, before he became someone important enough to track. Somewhere he thinks I've never heard of."
My phone buzzed. Vince:Ready when you are.
"Assemble a team," I told Marcos. "Small. Six men. We leave in an hour."
"You're going yourself?"
