Chapter 275: Dante Romano Is Mobilizing

POV: MARCO

Marco woke at five in the morning.

It wasn’t something he planned, his body just did it. Thirty years of working security meant his internal clock was set to wake before the rest of the world. Before threats could materialize. Before things could go wrong.

The villa was quiet. The staff hadn’t started moving yet. Dimitri and Eve would still be asleep somewhere in the master suite. The island was in that strange space between night and day..... still dark, but with the promise of light coming.

He made himself coffee in the kitchen and carried it to the small security office off the main hallway. It was a modest room with monitors on the wall showing different angles of the property. The beach. The driveway. The perimeter. The water.

Everything looked exactly as it should.

Marco settled into the chair and opened his laptop. He pulled up his secure email system and started checking messages from the team back in New York.

There were more than usual. That wasn’t normal.

Marco had been Dimitri’s head of security for twelve years. Before that, he’d done other work, the kind of work that didn’t have a job title. He’d seen a lot in those years. Understood how information moved. Understood what silence meant and what noise meant.

Right now, the noise level was higher than it should be.

He opened the first message. It was from Tom, one of the guys who monitored communications in the underworld. Tom had contacts everywhere....bartenders, dealers, people who worked in clubs where information flowed like water.

"You should know something. Dante’s people have been moving around. Unusual activity. Nothing we can pin down, but the chatter is different. Something’s happening. Stay alert."

Marco closed the message and opened the next one.

This one was from one of his guys embedded in the family networks in Rome.

"Picking up noise about an operation. Island operation. People are talking about it like it’s already planned. Like it’s already in motion. No details yet, but something’s definitely happening."

Marco leaned back in his chair and thought about that.

Island operation. They were on an island. That wasn’t a coincidence.

He opened the next message.

"Confirmed: Multiple sources saying the same thing. Something’s supposed to happen this week. Soon. This week soon. Nobody knows specifics, but the level of activity suggests it’s something major."

Marco set down his coffee and opened another message from a contact he had in Naples, a guy who’d worked security for various families and knew how these things were organized.

"Dante Romano’s mobilizing. Full mobilization. He’s pulling people together. He’s planning something. My guess? He’s planning to move against someone. And based on the timeline people are mentioning, it’s happening soon."

Marco read that message three times.

Dante. The man whose brother Dimitri had killed. The man who’d been waiting for exactly this kind of opportunity. The man who’d been building power while Dimitri consolidated operations in New York.

The last message in the queue was from a source Marco had developed over years, a woman who worked in the criminal underworld’s communication network and owed Marco a favor from way back.

"It’s Dante Romano. He’s found out where your boss is. He’s putting together a team to go after him. The team’s supposed to arrive soon. Like, this week soon. I don’t have specifics on how or when, but I wanted you to know. Dante’s decided it’s time to kill your boss."

Marco sat back and let that information settle.

Dante knew where Dimitri was. Dante was putting together a team. Dante was moving.

It was what Marco had been trained to expect, the moment when a enemy decided that waiting was over. The moment when patience ended and action began.

He pulled up another file on his laptop. This one contained everything he knew about Dante Romano’s operations.

Dante was smart. Dante was ruthless. Dante had been building toward this for months.

The island wasn’t that secure. Two perimeter guards. No heavy weapons. No military-grade defense systems. Just a beautiful private property with the assumption that isolation equaled safety.

It didn’t.

He started making phone calls. Quiet calls to people he trusted. People who could get information fast.

By the time the sun came up, he had confirmation from three separate sources:

Dante Romano’s people were assembling a team. A small team, seven men, all professionals. The kind of men who did this for a living. The kind of men who knew how to accomplish objectives quietly.

The team was being equipped with serious weapons. The kind that could do damage. The kind that suggested Dante wasn’t taking any chances.

The timeline was this week. Possibly tomorrow night. Possibly the night after. But soon.

And the target was definitely the island. Definitely Dimitri.

He closed his laptop and sat in the darkness of the security office, thinking through scenarios.

He could tell Dimitri immediately. Wake him up, pull him out of bed, explain the situation.

Or he could wait until a reasonable hour and brief him properly.

He checked the time. 6:47 AM. Dimitri would probably be awake soon anyway. The man didn’t sleep much....never had. Too much going on in his head. Too much always needing to be managed.

He waited until 7:15 and then sent a secure message:

"Need to brief you. Security situation. Come to the office when you wake up."

The response came back in minutes:

"Fifteen minutes."

That single instruction told Marco everything he needed to know. Dimitri already sensed something was wrong. Or maybe he’d been expecting something like this all along.

***

Dimitri arrived in the security office at exactly 7:29 AM.

He was dressed in casual linen pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was still damp from a shower. But his eyes were alert....sharp and focused and completely awake despite the early hour.

"Talk to me," he said, sitting down across from Marco.

Marco laid it out simply and directly.

The intelligence about Dante mobilizing. The confirmation from multiple sources. The team being assembled. The timeline being this week. The equipment being prepared.

Dimitri listened without interrupting. His expression didn’t change. His body language stayed calm. But Marco could see the shift in his eyes, the moment understanding crystallized into certainty.

When Marco finished, there was silence in the room.

"Dante," Dimitri finally said. His voice was quiet. Controlled. But underneath it was something else....anger, maybe. Or inevitability. "Stupid fucking bastard."