Chapter 5 - Words from the Silence
Inside the sanctuary of the salon, the air was warm and smelled of lavender and espresso.
Cassandra sat at a glass table, holding a steaming cup of black coffee between both hands. Her fingers were still slightly scarred from frostbite and hard labor on the streets, but the hollow, hunted look in her eyes had been replaced by a cold, razor-sharp focus.
"They chased me off the pier," she said, her voice steady now, carrying the cultured, aristocratic accent she had hidden behind grunts and whispers for three years. "That night on the yacht... it wasn't an accident. My uncle Richard had two men waiting in the stateroom. They drugged my father before the explosion. I hid in the bilge compartment, and when the yacht blew, I managed to jump overboard."
Dante sat across from her, listening without a single interruption, his dark eyes absorbing every word like a sponge.
"I swam to the pilings beneath the Brooklyn Bridge," Cassandra continued, looking down into her coffee. "I watched the news the next morning from a diner television. They said we both died. They said the heir and her father were lost at sea. I knew if I went to the police, Richard’s judges would finish what his hitmen started. So I became a ghost. I lived in the dark because the light was a death sentence."
"You survived three years in the underworld because you were too stubborn to let a thief steal your name," Dante said, a rare, approving nod of his head acknowledging her resilience.
"I survived because I wanted to see him pay," Cassandra corrected, looking up, her green eyes flashing with the cold brilliance of polished emeralds. "And now... now I have a billionaire's bank account, a ten-billion-dollar corporation, and the most dangerous man in New York sitting across from me. Tell me, Mr. Serrano, what is the going rate for a hostile corporate takeover backed by a mafia war?"
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Dante let out a low, gravelly chuckle—a sound that carried genuine respect.
"The corporate takeover is on me," Dante said, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket. "The war... well, that's already waiting for us outside."
