Echoes Of A Deadly Past

Her quiet retreat toward the exit was cut short the second her name rang out across the dining room.

“Cora…?” Declan called.

She halted mid-stride, let out a slow breath, and pivoted back toward the table with a stiff smile pinned to her face. “Declan… hey,” she greeted, raising a hand in a brief wave.

“Were you heading out just now? Or were you actually trying to slip past us?” Declan asked.

“Yes… I was,” she admitted plainly.

“Didn’t you spot us sitting here?” He gestured broadly toward the booth, his hand angling mostly toward Dante, which instantly drew a frown to Cora’s face.

“Had I realized it was your group earlier, I never would have walked over,” Cora scoffed.

The instant the words left her mouth, Dante’s head snapped toward her. His dark, freezing stare locked onto hers, sending a violent chill straight down her spine that made her shudder.

Declan’s brows pulled together in confusion. He glanced at Dante for an explanation, only to catch the blatant hostility radiating from him toward Cora. Assuming the couple had simply fallen into some petty spat, Declan figured he might as well step in and smooth things over.

“Why don’t you sit with us, Cora?” he offered.

Cora shook her head and offered a tight smile. “Thanks, Declan, but there are certain situations I prefer to stay far away from.”

“What is going on, Dante?” Rowan finally spoke up after watching the tense back-and-forth between husband and wife, though Dante gave him no answer at all. Rowan shifted his questioning look toward Cora, only to be met with flat silence.

“If you want answers, ask your dear friend Dante. It was nice seeing the two of you, Declan and Rowan,” she replied, putting deliberate weight on those two words.

She spun on her heel to walk out. For all the bold front she had just put on, a foolish part of her still wished Dante would call her back as she walked away, pull her against his chest, and whisper that the nightmare of the past few days had been nothing more than a cruel joke. She hated how badly she wanted that to be true, even knowing she was only fooling herself. Yet she had barely taken a few more steps when Dante’s voice stopped her cold.

“Cora!”

Her heart missed a beat at the deep, rough sound of his voice calling her name, and a pleased smile tugged at her lips. A rush of relief washed over her as she thought she had been right after all. Turning back to face him, she beamed, a bright crimson flush warming her cheeks. Dante looked straight at the color rising in her face, struck in that brief second by just how captivating and stunning she truly was.

“Yes?” she answered softly.

“You have five days left to sign the papers and…”

Before he could even finish the threat, Cora cut him off, the smile vanishing from her face as she silently cursed the bastard.

“I already signed them, and I crossed out the alimony,” she said clearly. “I don’t want your money, Dante… I didn’t marry you for your wealth.” She let out a tired sigh. “I married you because I loved you.”

“I don’t love you, Cora,” Dante ground out between clenched teeth.

Cora bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, refusing to let him see how badly those words stung.

“The feeling is mutual,” she shot back. “I used to love you, but that is dead now. All I have left for you is pure hatred and nothing else.”

She gave him a cold smirk, turned around, and walked out of the restaurant.

***

A heavy breath left Cora the moment she shut herself inside her car. Biting her cheek had been the only thing keeping her from falling apart in front of Dante and his friends, and now the sharp, rusty taste of blood coated her tongue. Tears spilled down her face as she brought her fists down against the steering wheel over and over, sobbing and cursing into the empty cabin.

“Damn you, Dante! Damn you! I hate you, I hate you!” she screamed.

Several minutes passed before she finally wiped her wet cheeks dry and fixed her ruined makeup. Starting the engine, she drove straight to her office to hand in her resignation, then headed toward her uncle’s mansion to say her final goodbyes.

The moment she stepped inside the house, Nanny Rose hurried forward and wrapped her in a tight embrace.

“My child, I have missed you so much. How have you been doing? You have grown into such a gorgeous woman, just like your mother.”

“I missed you too, Nanny. How have you been keeping?” Cora asked, genuinely glad to see the older woman after three whole years apart.

Nanny Rose had served the Vance household ever since Cora’s mother was a little girl, raising both her mother and her uncle before looking after Cora and Giselle as well. Throughout the years Cora had lived under this roof, Nanny Rose and her uncle were the only ones who had ever shown her real kindness.

“I have been keeping well. Are you here to see your uncle?” Nanny Rose asked.

“Yes, is he at home?” Cora inquired.

“He is, right up in his study,” Nanny Rose replied.

As the two of them headed down the hall toward the study, a sharp voice cut across their path.

“What is this piece of bad luck doing in this house?” Aunt Diane sneered.

“Lovely seeing you too, Aunt,” Cora replied with a mocking curl of her lip.

“Oh, so she talks back now?” Aunt Diane snapped sarcastically, her temper flaring hot inside her.

“I’m sorry, Aunt, but I have actual business to take care of, so if you don’t mind, I’ll excuse myself first,” Cora said smoothly, stepping past her before the older woman could get another word out.

Aunt Diane stood frozen in the hallway, practically shaking with fury that Cora had dared walk away from her mid-conversation. Swearing to herself that the ungrateful brat would pay dearly for today’s disrespect, she made a firm mental note to teach Cora a harsh lesson soon.

Reaching the study, Cora knocked on the door and stepped inside once she was called in. Her uncle’s face lit up the second he saw her.

“Oh, Cora,” he said, rising from his chair and rounding his desk to pull her into a warm hug.

Seeing her brought him genuine joy, though a heavy sense of guilt still lingered beneath it. He owed his niece far better than what she had been given. Though he had tried to provide for her after she was orphaned, he knew he had ultimately failed her by putting his own daughter’s happiness ahead of Cora’s, and he had no doubt his late sister would be deeply disappointed in him wherever she was.

“Uncle Vincent,” Cora murmured, returning the embrace tightly. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Uncle Vince replied as he stepped back to look at her.

No one in Cora’s family had any idea she was married to Dante. The day Dante proposed, he had insisted on a quiet civil ceremony at city hall, leaving them with nothing more than a marriage certificate. While Dante’s own circle and relatives knew the truth, he had always come up with a new excuse every single time Cora asked him to come meet her family.

“How have you been keeping? You’ve gotten so thin—are you eating properly? Or is a boyfriend giving you a hard time? You do have one, don’t you?” Uncle Vincent rattled off one question after another, making Cora smile as she wondered which one she was supposed to answer first.

After sitting down and catching up with him for a bit, she finally brought up the real reason for her visit.

“Uncle Vince, I actually came by today to say goodbye. I’m leaving tomorrow,” she told him.

“Why so suddenly? Are you in some kind of trouble?” Uncle Vincent asked, concern tightening his voice.

“Not at all, Uncle. I just want to travel a bit and experience a different culture,” she lied smoothly.

“Alright then, where are you heading off to?” he asked.

“Gale Haven in Country B,” Cora answered.

“Oh, I see. I happen to have a close colleague based in Gale Haven City—I’ll reach out to him right away and have him set up a safe place for you to stay,” he offered.

Warmth flooded Cora’s chest at his immediate willingness to help. “Thank you so much, that really means the world to me,” she said, hugging him again as a single tear slipped down her cheek.

“You’re very welcome, my dear. I’ll text you his contact details so you can give him a call the moment you land.”

***

Dante strode out to his car in a foul mood. He still could not wrap his head around Cora’s audacity back there, scoffing aloud at the sheer delusion that he could have married her for love.

He was Dante Morretti—a ruthless corporate titan and the reigning king of the underworld, a man who made people tremble just by walking into a room. How dare the very girl who had brazenly bullied him in his youth delude herself into thinking he could ever harbor genuine feelings for her?

A cold laugh left his throat. Once she finally figured out she had been nothing more than a disposable pawn in his game, it would shatter her completely, delivering the exact revenge he had waited years to claim.

Pressing down hard on the accelerator, he sped off toward the old mansion.

Dante had been dragged into the mafia before he had even grown out of his teens. Ten years ago, Old Master Morretti—a grandfather he had never even heard of—had shown up unannounced outside their home, flanked by towering men in black suits and dark sunglasses lined up beside a row of brand-new Rolls-Royces.

Fourteen-year-old Dante had been standing by his bedroom window, looking down at the scene unfolding on the street below. Heading downstairs to find out who those people were, he had stopped out of sight and overheard the fierce argument raging between his parents and the old man.

“How dare you hide my own grandson from me?” Old Master Morretti had roared.

“He is my son, Dad! I decide what happens to his life,” Tobias, Dante’s father, had shot back with equal fury.

“Dante belongs to the family, and you know it! Why else would you keep him hidden from me since the day he was born?” Master Morretti snapped back, livid after spending fourteen long years hunting down his runaway son and heir.

Refusing to let his boy grow up steeped in bloodshed and violent crime, Tobias had turned his back on their generational mafia empire—an organization that ruled the entire criminal underworld of Country A behind the polished facade of legitimate corporate conglomerates. He had fled with his wife to build a clean, ordinary life, even changing their surname so his father could never track them down to claim Dante, never imagining the old patriarch would relentlessly hunt them for fourteen straight years.

“This family business has stood for generations! I only bent our laws because you were my flesh and blood, letting you walk away from the underworld on the strict promise that your son would succeed me, and you gave me your word!” Old Master Morretti shouted.

“I will not let you take my boy! I only agreed back then because I needed a way out!” Tobias argued fiercely.

“I am not asking for your permission. I am taking him home today to begin his training, though you are welcome to come along.” With a flick of his hand, the old man signaled his guards to tear the house apart.

Tobias and his wife fought to block the doorway, but neither of them stood a chance against trained enforcers. Realizing he was the prize they had come to collect, young Dante crept silently back up the stairs to his bedroom and turned the lock.

Once the guards checked every open room on the property, they quickly deduced the boy was locked inside the last bedroom and reported back to the Old Master. Leaning on his walking stick, the patriarch climbed the stairs himself and rapped gently against the wood.

“Child, open the door for me. Your grandfather would like to meet you,” the old man called out evenly. “I have waited a very long time for this day. Come on now, unlock the door and face your grandfather.”

A moment later, Dante turned the lock, pulled the door open, and stepped out into the hall to face him.

That same day, a private jet flew them straight to the ancestral Morretti estate in Country A, where his brutal initiation began the very next morning, drilling him in the cutthroat rules of both corporate empires and the criminal underworld.

Nothing about that life spared him, forcing him through relentless lessons in pulling triggers, executing targets, breaking out of fatal traps, and using women to his advantage.

By seventeen, he had claimed the throne of the underworld while simultaneously taking over as the youngest chief executive in all of Country A.

By nineteen, he had crushed countless rivals across both legitimate boardrooms and blood-soaked streets, cementing his rule as an iron-fisted corporate mogul and a cold-blooded kingpin who could order torture, murder, or a person’s complete erasure from the earth without a single blink.

Every ambitious woman across Opal City fantasized about claiming the title of his wife—or even settling for being his kept whore—yet every last one of them remained utterly petrified of the lethal aura following him everywhere he went.