Chapter 7 - The Enemy in the Mirror
The silence in the medical bay was suffocating.
Brutus let out a quiet sigh in his sleep, the steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor the only sound remaining between them.
"They didn't just kill him, did they?" Dante asked, his voice unexpectedly gentle. "They came for you, too."
Elena stared at the floor, her chest heaving as three years of buried nightmare flooded back to the surface.
"My husband was building a RICO case against a human trafficking syndicate operating out of the East Coast ports," Elena whispered, her voice trembling despite her best efforts. "He found out who was backing them. High-level politicians. Judges. Syndicate bosses."
She looked up at Dante, her eyes burning with cold fire.
"The night before he was supposed to present his evidence to the grand jury, our car exploded in the driveway. He died instantly. I survived because I was stepping back to pick up my dropped keys."
She pulled down the collar of her shirt slightly, revealing a jagged, pale white burn scar stretching across her collarbone.
"The police report said it was a gas leak," Elena said, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "The federal agents told me to go into witness protection. But three days later, the agent assigned to my safehouse tried to poison my food. That’s when I realized the syndicate owned everyone."
"So you ran," Dante said.
"I faked my death," Elena corrected him. "I buried my name, my career, my life, and I walked away. I became nobody. Because if nobody knows you're alive, nobody comes to finish the job."
Dante set his bourbon glass down on the table with a soft clink.
He walked up to her, his tall frame looming over her, but there was no threat in his posture.
"Who was the man your husband was prosecuting, Elena?" Dante asked.
"A man named Nikolai Volkov," Elena said, watching Dante’s face carefully.
At the sound of that name, Dante’s jaw flexed, his eyes darkening into pure obsidian.
"Volkov," Dante repeated softly. "The Russian boss operating out of the north docks."
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"Do you know him?" Elena asked.
"He's the man who just sent a drive-by shooter to my bar to kill me," Dante replied coldly. "And he's the man who put a bullet in my dog."
