The Don’s Consigliere Charged Me By The Minute To Touch Him Chapter 08
Morning Sun
[Dante’s POV]
They grabbed Valentina at the airport.
Two of my soldiers caught her trying to board a flight out of the country.
Gone was the polished, holier-than-thou mask she’d worn for three years. She was on her knees, snot and tears smeared across her face, sobbing like a child caught stealing.
“Boss, I know I was wrong. Please — for the sake of all those years I served you — just let me go.”
I looked down at her. And smiled.
“I did let you go. Did you let Elena go? Did you let her mother go?”
Two soldiers stepped forward. They grabbed her arms and started dragging her out.
Valentina’s face went white. “No — no, I’m not going — don’t take me —”
Her nails clawed at the doorframe. They ripped off one by one. She didn’t stop screaming.
“Dante Moretti — you’re the one who couldn’t keep it in your pants! You’re the one who killed them! You deserve to rot in hell!”
The door shut, cutting off all the sound.
I stood there in silence. The knuckles of my clenched fists had gone bone-white, blood seeping through the creases.
She wasn’t wrong.
Every word she screamed — she wasn’t wrong.
My phone rang. From Marco.
“Boss, your wife is awake.”
My heart lurched.
But before I could feel relief, the next sentence buried me. “But she left. On her own. None of the men dared stop her.”
I closed my eyes. My hand dropped to my side.
Of course she left.
What was there to stay for?
“Let her go. Don’t chase after her.”
…
[Elena’s POV]
Three years after I opened a bakery overseas, it went viral online.
Tourists started showing up from all over the country just to try my pastries. The little shop I’d opened in my hometown — the one I’d built with the inheritance my parents left behind and hands that finally stopped shaking — became something real. Something mine.
I brought lilies to the cemetery and set them down gently between my parents’ graves.
There were already fresh flowers resting against the headstones. Someone had been here before me.
I didn’t move them.
“Mom, Dad, I’m back.”
I sat down on the stone step and talked to my parents for a long time.
About the bakery. About the regular customers who always came on Tuesdays. About the stray cat that had adopted the back door. About nothing and everything.
By the time I stood up, the sky was bruising into dusk.
Behind me was a shadow. It kept its distance, said nothing, made no sound.
But the streetlamp stretched it out long and thin across the pavement. Impossible to miss.
I didn’t turn around. Didn’t slow down. Didn’t speed up.
He was just wind. Just smoke.
I walked into the old house and closed the door.
…
A year later, Marco found me.
He stood in the doorway of my shop, thinner than I remembered. He held an envelope in both hands like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Don Moretti passed away yesterday. Late-stage stomach cancer.” He paused. “After you left, he started drinking. Day and night.”
I nodded.
I felt nothing.
No rage. No satisfaction. No grief. No ripple at all.
This kind of self-destruction dressed up as atonement — it meant nothing to me. Not anymore.
“Thank you,” I said.
He handed me the envelope.
Inside was a divorce certificate and an inheritance contract worth over a billion dollars.
I tucked them under my arm, walked to the front of my shop, and picked up the marker by the daily specials board.
In neat block letters, I wrote:
[Today’s special: buy one get one free.]
The morning sun hit the sign. A line was already forming at the door.
I tied on my apron, washed my hands, and got to work.
[The End.]