Chapter 8: Dangerous Ground
The "secure room" was exactly what it sounded like—a windowless concrete cell in the warehouse basement, equipped with a cot, a small table, and nothing else. Dante checked the corridor before closing the door, then immediately moved to a corner where shadows concealed us from the security camera's view.
"Are you okay?" he whispered, his hands hovering near my face as if he wanted to check for real injuries.
"I'm fine." But I wasn't fine. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving me shaky and nauseous. "Vincent believed it?"
"He believed it." Dante's voice carried grim satisfaction. "But Elena, this is more complicated than we planned. He doesn't just want you dead—he wants to use you."
"I figured that out." I sank onto the narrow cot, suddenly exhausted. "He wants me to become his inside source at the FBI."
"Which means he'll keep you alive longer than we expected, but it also means the stakes just got higher." Dante knelt beside the cot, bringing his face level with mine. "If Vincent thinks you're genuinely considering his offer, he'll give you more freedom, more access. But if he suspects we're playing him..."
He didn't need to finish the sentence. We both understood the consequences of failure.
"How long can we maintain this?" I asked.
"Long enough to get what we need. Vincent's getting sloppy—the paranoia is making him reveal information he'd normally keep compartmentalized. If we can record his conversations, document his contacts, we'll have enough evidence to bring down the entire organization."
I studied his face in the dim light. "You're talking about wearing a wire. In Vincent Castello's presence. Do you have any idea how insanely dangerous that is?"
"Do you have any idea how many people will die if we don't stop him?" Dante's voice carried passionate intensity. "Three more executions this month, Elena. Three more families destroyed because Vincent decided someone might be disloyal."
The weight of those deaths settled over me like a shroud. This wasn't just about justice for Dante's parents anymore—it was about preventing future victims.
"Okay," I said quietly. "What do you need me to do?"
Relief flickered across his features. "Tomorrow, Vincent will pressure you to make the call to your handler. You'll need to convince Agent Torres that you're following a lead without arousing his suspicions."
"And after that?"
"After that, you become Vincent's asset. You feed him information about the FBI investigation—carefully crafted intelligence that seems valuable but actually misdirects him toward dead ends."
The plan was elegant in its simplicity, but I could see the flaws. "Marcus knows me better than anyone. He's going to sense something's wrong."
"Not if we give him something real to focus on." Dante pulled out his phone and showed me a series of photographs. "Vincent's meeting with representatives from the Bratva next week. Russian mob, looking to establish operations in Chicago."
I studied the images—men in expensive suits with the hard faces of career criminals. "How do you know about this?"
"Because Vincent asked me to provide security for the meeting. He's getting desperate for new revenue streams, willing to partner with people he'd normally consider competitors."
The implications were staggering. If Vincent was bringing Russian organized crime into Chicago, the violence level would escalate beyond anything the city had seen in decades.
"We have to stop this meeting."
"We will. But carefully, in a way that doesn't expose our operation." Dante's eyes met mine. "You'll give Torres information about the meeting—accurate intelligence that makes you look like a valuable asset. But you'll also suggest the Russians might be unreliable partners, planting seeds of doubt in Vincent's mind."
"Playing both sides against each other."
"Exactly. Vincent gets what he thinks is useful intelligence from his FBI asset, while the Bureau gets advance warning about a major criminal meeting."
I had to admit, the strategy was brilliant. But it required a level of deception that pushed far beyond anything I'd been trained for.
"Dante," I said carefully, "there's something I need to know. When this is over—assuming we survive—what happens to us?"
The question caught him off guard. I could see him processing the implications, realizing that our partnership had moved beyond simple professional cooperation.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you're still technically a wanted man. Seventeen murders, remember? Even if you help bring down Vincent, the FBI isn't going to give you a complete pass."
His jaw tightened. "I know."
"And I'm a federal agent who's been collaborating with a known killer, compromising an ongoing investigation, operating without Bureau authorization." I kept my voice steady, though my heart was racing. "My career is over, no matter how this ends."
"Elena—"
"I'm not complaining. I'm just trying to understand what we're really doing here." I leaned forward, studying his face. "Are we pursuing justice, or are we pursuing something else entirely?"
The space between us seemed to crackle with tension. Dante's eyes darkened, and I could see the exact moment when his professional control slipped.
"What do you think we're pursuing?" he asked quietly.
"I think," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, "we're both using this investigation as an excuse to avoid dealing with something neither of us is ready to acknowledge."
Dante was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn't respond. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with suppressed emotion.
"Elena, you need to understand something. I've spent fifteen years believing I was beyond redemption. That the things I've done, the people I've killed, made it impossible for me to ever be anything other than Vincent's weapon."
He stood up, pacing to the far wall of the small cell.
"Then you looked at me like I might still be worth saving, and suddenly I remembered what it felt like to want something other than revenge."
My heart hammered against my ribs. "What do you want, Dante?"
He turned back to face me, and the intensity in his expression made me feel like I was standing on the edge of a cliff.
"I want a life that isn't defined by the worst things I've done. I want to wake up in the morning without counting the people I've killed. I want to look in the mirror and see someone other than Vincent Castello's perfect killer."
"And?"
"And I want all of that with you."
The confession hung between us like a live wire. I should have been terrified, should have remembered that this was Stockholm syndrome, should have maintained professional distance.
Instead, I stood up and crossed the small space between us.
"Dante—"
"Don't." He backed against the wall, though his eyes never left mine. "Don't say anything you might regret when this is over and you're back in your real life."
"What if this is my real life now?" I reached up and touched his face, feeling the tension in his jaw. "What if everything that came before was just preparation for this moment?"
For a heartbeat, I thought he might kiss me. The desire was there in his expression, raw and desperate and barely controlled. But then footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, and we sprang apart like guilty teenagers.
The door opened to reveal one of Vincent's soldiers—a thick-set man with the kind of face that had stopped traffic with its fists.
"Boss wants to see you," he said to Dante.
Dante nodded, his professional mask sliding back into place with disturbing ease. "Five minutes."
The soldier left, and Dante turned back to me. All traces of vulnerability were gone, replaced by the cold efficiency that had kept him alive in Vincent's organization.
"Get some sleep," he said. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day."
"Dante." I caught his arm as he headed for the door. "What we just talked about—"
"Doesn't change anything. We still have a job to do." But his eyes lingered on my face with something that looked like longing. "But Elena? When this is over, if we both survive, I'd like to find out who we are when we're not pretending to be someone else."
He left me alone in the concrete cell, and I realized that somewhere in the past three days, I'd stopped thinking about Dante Russo as my captor and started thinking about him as something far more dangerous.
I was thinking about him as home.