Rising From Ash: The Mafia Queen Returns

Dante POV:

The speedometer buried itself at 160.

The world outside my windows was nothing but a blur of neon lights and darkness.

I didn't blink.

My hands gripped the leather steering wheel so hard the veins in my forearms were throbbing against the skin.

Inside the car, the music was deafening.

Heavy bass.

Screaming guitars.

It was loud enough to make my ears ring, but it wasn't loud enough to drown out the silence.

The silence she left behind.

Three months.

Ninety-two days since Elena vanished.

Ninety-two days since the house became a tomb.

I crushed the brake pedal to the floor.

The tires shrieked against the asphalt, shredding rubber, the acrid smell filling the cabin as the car skidded to a violent halt on the shoulder of the highway.

I slammed my fist against the dashboard.

Once.

Twice.

The plastic cracked.

My phone buzzed in the cup holder.

Vanessa.

Again.

I stared at the name on the screen, and for the first time, I felt nothing but a cold, heavy exhaustion.

I answered.

"Where are you?" Her voice was grating. "Dinner was served an hour ago. The Capos are asking questions, Dante. You can't just disappear."

"I am the Don," I said, my voice sounding like gravel grinding together. "I don't answer to them. And I sure as fuck don't answer to you."

"What is wrong with you lately?" she demanded. "Ever since... ever since she left, you've been a ghost. It's weak, Dante. It's not like you."

*Weak.*

I laughed.

It was a dry, humorless sound.

"Stop calling me," I said.

I hung up.

I threw the phone onto the passenger seat.

It landed where Elena used to sit.

I looked at the empty seat.

I remembered the way she used to fold her hands in her lap, trying to take up as little space as possible.

I remembered the way she looked out the window, her reflection haunting and beautiful in the glass.

I had never asked her what she was thinking.

Not once.

Now, that empty seat felt like a black hole.

It was sucking the air out of the car.

It was sucking the life out of me.

Vanessa thought I was grieving Marco.

The family thought I was stressed about the expansion.

They were all wrong.

I wasn't grieving a brother.

I was starving.

I was starving for the sight of a woman I had ignored for two years.

A woman whose absence was deafening, louder than her presence ever was.

I put the car in gear.

I wasn't going home.

I couldn't handle the perfume.

I couldn't handle the lies.

I needed to find her.

Or I was going to burn the whole world down just to see by the light of the fire.