Chapter 3 - The Third Audit
The third candidate was Juliet Vance. Juliet was a silent partner in a high-end luxury concierge service, a woman who moved through rooms like smoke. She was twenty-seven, impeccably groomed, and possessed an eerie, unblinking composure.
"She has no past that will haunt him," Lena told Dante during a hurried meeting in his armored town car outside her office. "No family debts, no emotional baggage, no artistic temperament. She is calm, beautiful, and completely malleable."
"Malleable," Dante repeated, tasting the word like poison. "My mother wants a daughter-in-law, Lena, not a piece of clay."
"Your mother wants peace of mind. Juliet provides it."
The meeting was arranged at a private tasting room in Tribeca. Lena stayed home this time, telling herself she needed the rest. But at 9:00 PM, her phone buzzed with an urgent text from Dante’s head of security: Mr. Varlli left early. He is outside your apartment.
Lena walked to her living room window and parted the blinds. Down on East Sixty-Eighth Street, the black town car sat idling beneath the streetlamp. In the backseat, through tinted glass, she saw Dante sitting alone.
She grabbed her coat, marched down the stairs, and pulled open the car door.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, the cold night air biting at her face. "Juliet is a fine match. Why did you leave?"
Dante turned his head slowly. The interior light caught the sharp planes of his cheekbones and the dark, unreadable depths of his eyes.
"Because she agreed with everything I said," Dante whispered, his voice dangerously low. "I told her I had men killed in international ports, and she smiled and asked what vintage wine we should serve at the wedding. She isn't real, Lena. She’s a mirror reflecting what she thinks I want to conquer."
"Then what do you want?" Lena shouted over the hum of the engine, frustration finally breaking her professional veneer. "You rejected the socialite, you dismissed the artist, and you walked out on the perfect wife! You have fifty-four days left before your mother's birthday, Dante! Do you want me to pull a bride out of thin air?"
Dante didn't answer immediately. He shifted in his seat, the leather creaking softly, and reached out. His large, warm hand caught her wrist—not with the bone-crushing grip of a mob boss, but with an absolute, undeniable anchor.
He pulled her slightly closer, parting the gap between the freezing street and the heated interior of the car.
"I already have one," Dante said.
May you like
Lena’s breath caught. "What?"
"Sixty days," Dante murmured, his thumb tracing the pulse point at her wrist. "And you spent all of them trying to hand me away to strangers while ignoring the only woman in New York who looks at my ledger and doesn't flinch."
