Chapter 5 - THE PRICE OF ROYALTY
Leo Marino’s chest heaved as he stared down the barrel of Dante’s pistol. The sweat was pouring down his temples, stinging his eyes, mixing with the dust and smoke of the ruined room.
For a single, desperate second, his finger tightened on the trigger of his Beretta. He thought about lunging forward, about trying to close the ten-foot gap and take Dante down in a suicidal rush of blind fury.
Then he looked into Dante’s eyes.
There was no anger there. No hesitation. Just a bottomless, frozen void—the look of a man who had already calculated the exact trajectory of a bullet through human bone.
Leo’s shoulders slumped.
The heavy nickel-plated Beretta slipped from his trembling fingers, hitting the floor with a dull, pathetic thud that echoed loudly in the quiet room. He raised his hands slowly, his palms facing outward.
"Dante..." Leo’s voice broke, a pathetic simulation of the rugged enforcer he had pretended to be for two decades. "We go back twenty years, man. Remember the West Side warehouse? Remember when I took that slug for you? We’re brothers, Dante. You can't just throw all that away over a... over a misunderstanding."
Dante stopped three feet away. He looked down at the gun on the floor, then up at Leo’s face.
"I remember the West Side, Leo," Dante said, his voice dangerously soft. "I remember pressing a towel to your shoulder while you laughed. I thought you were laughing because you were tough. Now I realize you were laughing because you always knew you were going to betray me in the end."
"No—Dante, please—"
"You didn't just take a bullet for me, Leo," Dante continued, his gaze hardening into steel. "You were investing in your own future portfolio. You thought my empire was yours for the taking. But a crown isn't something you steal from a king, Leo. It’s something you earn in blood."
Dante didn't raise his voice, but the finality in his tone made Leo shrink back against the sofa.
Suddenly, a soft, high-pitched sob cut through the quiet.
Camila scrambled backward on her knees, away from Leo, away from Dante, her designer dress tearing against the shattered glass on the floor. She pressed her back against the base of the marble fireplace, her hands raised in desperate supplication, tears streaming down her face, washing away her makeup in dark, ugly streaks.
"Dante..." she whispered, her voice trembling with a terrifying blend of theatrical grief and genuine terror. "Dante, please. Look at me. It was all Leo. He forced me! He threatened my family, he said if I didn't let him in, if I didn't play along, he would kill me and my mother! I swear to God, Dante, I never wanted any of this!"
Dante slowly turned his head to look down at her.
For a long moment, the man who had built an empire on cold logic and absolute loyalty stood frozen, staring at the woman he had chosen to be his wife, the woman he had trusted with his name, his home, and his heart.
"Your mother lives in a gated community in Boca Raton with armed private security paid for by my corporate accounts, Camila," Dante said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "She hasn't seen Leo twice in her life. And Leo doesn't have the imagination to orchestrate a cartel alliance on his own. That was all you. You liked the pearls, Camila. You liked the private jets. But you loved the idea of being the queen of a corpse even more."
Camila froze, her mouth open in a silent, suffocating gasp. The mask of the helpless victim shattered completely, revealing the cold, calculating opportunist beneath.
"You're a monster," she spat, her voice suddenly turning venomous as she realized her tears had failed. "You were never a husband! You were a dictator! You treated me like a prize horse in your stable!"
"And you were a thoroughbred snake," Dante replied evenly.
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He didn't raise his weapons. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket with two fingers, pulled out his encrypted satellite phone, and dialed a single three-digit speed-dial code.
"Clean up the living room," Dante said into the phone, his voice carrying clearly across the silent estate. "And bring the heavy truck around to the side service entrance. We have cargo to transport."
