Gifted To The Don The Real Mafia Heiress Returns Chapter 06
The Cage He Built
Once the drug wears off, Dante move me to the master suite.
He gently sets me on the bed like I’m made of blown glass, then straightens.
“Miss Colombo, this is your room.”
I look around.
Blood-red drapes. White marble hearth. Gold-leaf vanity.
Every object in this room is a piece of my old life.
Dante tracked all of them down. One by one. Rebuilt my old life inside his Ricci Mansion.
I don’t say anything. I just close my eyes and let the pain wash through.
The room empties. The door closes.
I know without looking that Dante is standing straight on the other side of that door.
He won’t leave. Won’t sit. Won’t eat. Won’t sleep. He stands there like he used to — back when he was one of my sworn guards.
Luca and Marco kneel in the courtyard, further out.
—
No one steps over the threshold of my room for three days.
On the third day, Luca gathers his nerve. Slips in. Stops ten paces from the bed and drops to one knee, head bowed.
“Miss Colombo, I didn’t know it was you. If I had — none of this happens.”
I’m sitting up, feeding sunflower seeds through the bars of a birdcage.
There’s a canary in it. Dante had it delivered on day two — said he was afraid I’d get bored while I healed.
I don’t look up.
“You work for the Don, not for me. What are you apologizing for?”
Luca’s shoulders lock. His head stays down. “Please forgive me, Miss Colombo.”
I laugh. Small. Dry. Move on to the next seed.
My indifference is worse than beating him.
Luca quietly leaves.
From the hall, I hear Dante’s voice — low, murderous:
“Who told you you could go in there. Who told you.”
Then Luca sobbing. Then a slap. Then another.
I don’t bother listening.
—
Every day of my recovery, Dante has case files delivered to the low table beside my bed.
Every deal. Every account. Every man he’s killed and every man he owns.
He’s dumping his entire life on the mattress next to me. Like a wolf laying its kill at its master’s feet.
I flip one open at random.
It’s the story of Dante. How the shy, mangled boy became the Don of the Ricci Family.
There’s a page on how he faked his own execution to get out from under the old bosses. Paid off a doctor. Used a dead prisoner’s body as his own.
I keep flipping. My finger eventually stops on a slim red folder. One word on the cover.
Bella.
Six years of hunting me.
*March, Year 3. Woman with a mark between her brows sighted at St. Mary’s shrine, upstate. Investigated. Wrong woman.*
*July, Year 4. Silk merchant in Milan offered a mistress with a painted red dot. Investigated. Killed.*
*November, Year 5. Old don’s granddaughter, birthmark rumored. Investigated. Wrong woman.*
The last page. A lead from the border. A dead soldier’s daughter, born with a similiar birthmark between her brows.
Dante’s handwriting, two words.
*Burn them.*
Because the lead was false and it wasted his time.
Whole family. Gone.
Dante is a real lunatic.
I close the folder. Something behind my ribs twists in a way I don’t have a name for.
Dante has guarded my secret with his own hands all these years. Never once forgot about me. Or the old Colombo.
A ringtone brings me back. A small phone I’d hidden in my purse.
“The Shadows are in the city. Awaiting your word.”
I end the call and toss the burner phone into the fireplace. Watch it burn to ash.
Then I turn to the window.
Dante, sweetheart. You think you laid your whole world at my feet.
You don’t know that this city has been in my net for longer than you’ve been in your suit.
I lift my chin toward the door. Voice lazy.
“Dante.” A beat. “I’m hungry.”