Chapter 291: The Next Move Is We Set A Trap

Jennifer nodded, tears streaming down her face.

"I’ll fix it," she said. "I’ll do whatever you need me to do. Just... please... my brother."

"Your brother is safe," Dimitri said. "As long as you continue to cooperate with us. And as long as you stop feeding information to Romano."

He turned to Marco.

"Get her contact information for Dante. Have her send a message saying she has more information. Tell her we’ll set up a meeting. When he shows up, we’ll be waiting."

"Understood," Marco said.

Dimitri turned back to Jennifer.

"You’re going to wear a wire," he said. "You’re going to meet with Dante’s people, and you’re going to record everything they say. Every instruction. Every confirmation that they set up the warehouse hit. Everything. Can you do that?"

Jennifer nodded, understanding that she no longer had a choice.

"Good," Dimitri said. "Marco will set everything up. And Jennifer, if you try to warn Dante, if you try to run, if you try anything other than exactly what I’ve instructed....your brother dies. Not a prison accident. Not something that looks natural. I’ll have him killed in a way that makes it clear why. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," Jennifer whispered. "I understand."

"Good," Dimitri said. "Then we’re done here. Marco, get her to the safe house. Keep her there until we’re ready for the meeting."

Marco escorted Jennifer out of the lounge, and Dimitri returned to his whiskey.

"That was impressive," Mike said quietly. "The way you handled her."

"It’s not impressive," Dimitri said. "It’s just necessary. She made a choice, and now she’s dealing with the consequences. Dante saw a vulnerability and exploited it. He did exactly what I would have done in his position."

"So what’s the next move?" Mike asked.

"The next move is we set a trap," Dimitri said. "We let Dante think he’s winning. We let him believe that Jennifer is still feeding him information. And then, when he shows up to collect, we kill him and everyone with him."

"And if something goes wrong?" Mike asked.

"Then we handle it," Dimitri said simply. "But i need to make sure that Dante dies before the week is over."

He drank the rest of his whiskey and looked at Mike.

"How long will it take you to rebuild the warehouse operation?" he asked.

"Two weeks," Mike said. "Maybe three."

"You have one week," Dimitri said. "I want this operation running again at full capacity by the time we deal with Dante. I want him to see that hitting me cost me nothing."

"That’s aggressive," Mike said.

"That’s necessary," Dimitri corrected. "Right now, Dante thinks he can hurt me. I need to show him that’s a mistake. The only way to do that is to bounce back harder and faster than he expects."

Mike nodded and started making notes about the rebuild plan.

Dimitri sat in the dark lounge and thought about Dante. About the man who’d sent seven soldiers to kill him and was now trying to compromise his operations through a desperate, vulnerable young woman.

Dante was getting desperate. Desperate men made mistakes.

And Dimitri was going to make sure that Dante’s mistakes were fatal.

He pulled out his phone and sent a message to Marco: "Set up the wire. I intend to make sure we end this before this week is up."

The response came back immediately: "Understood. I’ll have everything ready by tomorrow."

Dimitri set down his phone and took a deep shot of his drink.

***

POV: EVE

Eve woke to find the bed empty.

Again.

She checked her phone...3:47 AM. She could guess where Dimitri was. At Sinners, handling whatever crisis Mike had called about. Running the empire. Doing the things that required him to leave her sleeping alone in their bed.

She told herself it was okay. Told herself she understood. Told herself that this was part of being with him.

But the truth was more complicated than that.

Eve got out of bed and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. She made herself tea....chamomile, the kind that was supposed to be calming, and settled on the couch in the dark living room, looking out at Manhattan sleeping below her.

She’d been so naive on the island. So willing to pretend that the world was just them. That violence and danger existed somewhere else, in someone else’s life.

But violence had a way of finding you when you loved a man like Dimitri Valentino.

Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

She almost didn’t open it.

Instead, she read it.

"Your boyfriend killed seven men on an island. He is a monster. They call him the devil for a reason. Words are spreading about his warehouse that got robbed, and that is just the beginning. You might want to consider what you’re actually involved in."

Eve stared at the message.

She knew about the seven men. They’d come to kill him, and he’d stopped them. It was self-defense. It was necessary.

But seeing it stated so coldly...."He is a monster" made it hit differently.

She was dating a man who killed people. Not in self-defense necessarily, but as part of his everyday business. Who had people working for him who did violence as a job. Who ran an empire that existed in the spaces between legality and criminality.

Eve had known this intellectually. But knowing it and living it were two very different things.

The tea had gone cold in her hands.

She set it down and called Mike.

He answered on the third ring, his voice alert despite the late hour.

"Eve? What’s wrong?" he asked immediately.

"I need to talk to you," Eve said, her voice shaking slightly. "About Dimitri.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"Give me twenty minutes," Mike said. "I’m coming to you."

***

Mike arrived at the penthouse looking tired, he was dressed in dark clothes, his expression concerned as he studied his sister’s face.

"Talk to me," he said, pulling her into a hug. "What happened?"

They settled on the couch, and Eve told him about the text message.

"I knew it intellectually," Eve said, tears streaming down her face. "I knew he was involved in criminal activity. I knew there was violence. But experiencing it....knowing that people died, that danger is constant....it’s different."

Mike listened without interrupting.

"You want to know if you should leave him," Mike finally said. and It wasn’t a question.