Chapter 3 - The Dante EmpireThe ride was agonizingly silent and terrifyingly fast.
The motorcade bypassed the city center, speeding toward a secluded private estate on the coastal cliffs.
Iron gates, towering twenty feet high, groaned open to admit the vehicles.
Clara stared out the tinted window at the sprawling, gothic mansion hidden from the world.
Armed guards patrolled the perimeter with assault rifles strapped to their chests.
“Where are you taking me?” Clara demanded, her medical training helping her suppress a full panic attack.
The man in the seat opposite her finally looked up from his buzzing phone.
“To the only place where the Moretti cartel cannot blow your head off,” he replied flatly.
“My name is Dante Russo.”
Clara’s breath hitched painfully in her throat.
Even an overworked ER tech knew that name from the whispered rumors in the trauma wards.
Dante Russo was the undisputed king of the East Coast syndicate.
He controlled the ports, the politicians, and the streets.
The SUV stopped smoothly under a grand stone portico.
A guard opened the door, and Dante stepped out first, carrying his sleeping son.
He paused and looked back at Clara, who was frozen in the leather seat.
“Are you coming, or do you prefer to wait out here for my enemies to find you?”
Clara swallowed her terror and stepped out into the freezing wind.
She walked through the massive oak doors into a foyer of imported marble and deadly silence.
There was no turning back now.
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She was a prisoner in a golden cage.
And the warden was the most dangerous man in the city.
