Chapter 5 - Dinner With Chicago’s Most Feared Man
The photograph consumed me.
I looked at it in the car.
In Dante’s office.
At home.
At two in the morning.
At five.
The man in the station photograph was older than the faceless figure from my mother’s pictures, but there was something familiar about the shape of his eyes.
Maybe I imagined it.
Maybe I wanted to imagine it.
Dante’s people traced the photograph to Milwaukee.
Then the trail vanished.
No hotel records.
No credit cards.
No known address.
Nothing.
It was as if Marco Ki appeared for one second and disappeared again.
Three days passed.
Nobody contacted me.
No threatening notes.
No mysterious vehicles.
The silence was worse.
On Friday evening, Dante appeared at my desk.
“Come to dinner.”
I looked up.
“That sounded like an order.”
“It was an invitation.”
“You need practice.”
His gaze moved toward Claire, who was hiding a smile behind her monitor.
“I am told that frequently.”
“By women?”
“Mostly by lawyers.”
That made me laugh despite myself.
Dante watched the reaction with an intensity that made me suddenly aware of how close he stood.
“Dinner,” he repeated.
“Business?”
“Partly.”
“What’s the other part?”
His eyes held mine.
“Dinner.”
I should have refused.
I said yes.
The restaurant was closed to the public.
Of course it was.
I stopped outside.
“You rented an entire restaurant?”
“I own it.”
“Somehow that’s worse.”
He opened the door for me.
Inside, only one table was prepared.
No guards visible, although I knew they were nearby.
Candles.
City skyline.
Soft music.
It should have felt theatrical.
Instead, it felt strangely quiet.
Dante removed his jacket and placed it over the back of his chair.
For the first time, I noticed the tattoos extending along his forearms.
Not decorative.
Names.
Dates.
Symbols.
“You’re staring.”
“You have a lot of ink.”
“So do many people.”
“Most people I know don’t wear five-thousand-dollar suits over it.”
“Seven.”
“What?”
“Seven thousand.”
I stared at him.
He smiled.
I hated how much I liked it.
Dinner arrived.
Pasta.
Bread.
Wine I barely touched.
For ten minutes, we spoke about nothing important.
College.
My old job.
His hatred of reality television.
My disbelief that he watched any television.
Then his expression changed.
“We found Vale’s connection to your firing.”
I set down my fork.
“What connection?”
“He called the holding company personally.”
“Why?”
“To have you removed.”
“Before or after I met you?”
“Before.”
A chill moved through me.
“So he knew who I was first.”
“Yes.”
“Why fire me?”
“He may have wanted you desperate.”
“For what?”
“To make you easier to control.”
I thought about the black SUV.
The photograph.
The messages.
“Then why didn’t he approach me?”
“Because you met me first.”
The words landed between us.
“You disrupted his plan.”
“Apparently.”
“So that card really changed something.”
“Yes.”
I looked down.
“Why me, Dante?”
He was quiet.
“You keep asking.”
“And you keep avoiding it.”
He leaned back.
“At first, because your name connected to something I had spent half my life trying to understand.”
“And now?”
The room became very still.
“Now it has nothing to do with your name.”
My pulse shifted.
“Dante…”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“That makes one of us.”
He studied me.
“I think about you.”
I swallowed.
“People think about people.”
“Not like this.”
His voice was calm.
That somehow made the confession more intense.
“I think about whether you ate. Whether you arrived home. Whether you are afraid and pretending not to be. Whether somebody has looked at you the wrong way.”
I stared at him.
“That sounds unhealthy.”
“I never claimed otherwise.”
“Dante.”
“I am not asking you for anything.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because lying to you would be worse.”
There it was.
The frightening thing about him.
He said things plainly.
No performance.
No disguise.
I stood and walked toward the window.
Chicago glittered below.
He stayed seated.
“You scare me,” I said.
“I know.”
“Not because of the rumors.”
He waited.
“Because I feel safer when you’re near me.”
Dante’s expression changed.
“And I don’t know if that’s real,” I continued, “or if I’m becoming dependent on the person controlling the situation.”
He stood.
“That is a fair concern.”
I turned toward him.
“You agree?”
“Yes.”
“Most men would argue.”
“Most men are not me.”
“No argument there.”
He approached slowly.
Stopped several feet away.
“I can remove my security from your building.”
I hated how quickly my fear responded to the idea.
“No.”
His eyes softened.
“Then we leave it.”
For now.
He did not say those words.
But they were there.
A phone buzzed.
Dante checked the screen.
His entire posture changed.
“What?”
He handed me the phone.
A photograph had arrived from an unknown number.
It showed me entering the restaurant less than an hour earlier.
Below it:
She looks like Lena did.
Dante went completely still.
“Who is Lena?”
He took the phone back.
Nobody had frightened Dante before.
Not really.
But that name did.
“Dante.”
He walked toward the table and poured water.
His hand was steady.
His face was not.
“Lena was my sister.”
I blinked.
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Most people don’t.”
“What happened to her?”
“She disappeared fourteen years ago.”
“Was she found?”
“No.”
“And they think I look like her?”
“Not physically.”
“What does that mean?”
Dante opened an old photograph on his phone.
A teenage girl stood beside him.
Same dark eyes.
Defiant smile.
Something in her expression reminded me of myself.
“She asked too many questions,” Dante said.
“About your mother?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She discovered something connected to Marco.”
My stomach tightened.
“Then?”
“My father sent her away for protection.”
“Where?”
“He never told me.”
“And she vanished?”
“Yes.”
A second message arrived.
This one contained only an address.
And six words.
If Eliza wants Marco, come alone.
I read it.
Then looked at Dante.
“You’re not going.”
“That is not your decision.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No.”
“Dante—”
“I lost my mother because adults around me kept secrets.”
His voice dropped.
“I lost my sister because my father thought he could control every threat.”
He moved closer.
“I will not lose you because someone sends a message and expects me to obey.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
Lose you.
I had known him less than a week.
Yet something in both of us had moved too quickly to pretend otherwise.
I looked again at the address.
An abandoned warehouse district near the river.
“This could be a trap.”
“It is definitely a trap.”
“Comforting.”
“But traps reveal the people who set them.”
“What are you going to do?”
Dante’s expression became cold.
Not cruel.
Focused.
“Make them believe I came alone.”
That night, for the first time, I saw why Chicago feared Dante Richi.
And the most dangerous part was realizing that beneath all that power, he was afraid too.
Not for himself.
May you like
For me.
---
