The shouting started the moment Kieran D'Angelo stepped out of the elevator.
"My wife is alive."
The words hit the floor like a gunshot.
Heads snapped up. Conversations died mid-sentence. Assistants froze behind their desks, fingers hovering uselessly over keyboards. A junior executive actually dropped his tablet, the clatter echoing far louder than it should have.
"I said she's alive!" Kieran roared into the phone, striding down the corridor without slowing. "I don't care what the reports say. I don't care I saw. I saw her. This afternoon. At the mall. She couldn't remember me."
People stared.
Some exchanged glances. Others quickly looked away, pretending very hard to be invested in absolutely nothing. The whispers began almost immediately.
Did he say his wife?
But she's dead…
Or has their don finally run mad?
Kieran didn't hear any of it. His world had narrowed to a single truth pounding in his skull.
"She was taken," he snarled. "In front of me. And I couldn't stop it."
He pushed open the doors to his office and paced straight to the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city spread beneath him like a taunt. One hand slid into his pocket. The other tightened around the phone as if he might crush answers out of it.
"I want every camera pulled. Every vehicle traced. I don't care how deep you have to dig—" His voice cracked, just barely. "—find my wife."
Outside, the office floor had gone deathly quiet.
Even Elias D'Angelo heard.
From his own office down the hall, the old man paused, listening as Kieran's voice thundered through glass and steel. Elias closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.
"What a mistake," he muttered. "First Dante… now this."
Madness, it seemed, ran beautifully in the family.
Inside Kieran's office, the shouting finally stopped.
Not because Kieran was calm.
Because someone laughed.
Slow. Soft. Amused.
Kieran stiffened.
"Well," a familiar voice drawled, "this is disappointing. I leave you alone for a few years and you completely fall apart."
Kieran turned.
Dante was already seated in the chair opposite his desk, lounging like he owned the place. One ankle rested casually on his knee, fingers drumming against the armrest, a grin carved too wide across his face.
"You," Kieran said flatly. He ended the call without looking. "How did you get in here?"
Dante tilted his head. "That's the greeting? No hug? No welcome back from the psychiatric hospital you personally sent me to?"
Kieran's jaw tightened. "You're out?"
"Mm. Out, escaped, released—semantics." Dante waved a hand. "But look at you. Shouting about dead wives. Seeing things. I almost feel cheated. I thought I was the crazy one."
Kieran stepped closer to the desk, eyes dark. "Get out."
Dante's smile widened. "Or what? You'll have me locked up again? Careful, cousin. People are already whispering. The great CEO screaming about ghosts." He chuckled. "Honestly, I warned Uncle. You were never fit for this job."
Kieran didn't rise to it. He was vibrating with restraint, every instinct screaming to tear Dante apart and still somehow get back to the only thing that mattered.
"She's alive," he said quietly. "And I will find her."
Dante laughed outright now. "Alive? Kieran, you were even there when she died. You couldn't protect her. You didn't even know you had a son." He leaned forward. "What kind of Don doesn't know his own family?"
"GET. OUT. NOW."
Dante started laughing again — sharp, breathless, like he couldn't stop it even if he tried.
"Oh, relax. I'm not staying," he said, wiping at his mouth like the laughter hurt. "I just came to say it out loud. You know. So it sinks in."
He walked his fingers across the desk, tapping the wood.
"This office," tap, "this position," tap, this whole ridiculous empire you're clinging to—He suddenly slammed his palm down and grinned. "Mine."
He leaned in close, voice dropping to a hiss.
"You're illegitimate. A placeholder. A bad decision Uncle refused to undo."
His smile snapped wide. "And people like you don't rule, Kieran. You just warm the chair until the real heir comes home."
The phone buzzed on the desk.
Kieran snatched it up. "Any news?" A pause. His grip tightened. "Keep looking."
Dante's attention drifted, bored again, until his eyes landed on something near the edge of the desk.
A photo frame.
Dante reached for it without asking.
Kieran noticed—but too late.
The moment Dante's fingers wrapped around the frame, his entire expression shifted. The grin slipped. The madness stilled. His pupils dilated, breath hitching so subtly only someone watching closely would notice.
At first, he simply stared.
The woman in the photo wasn't unfamiliar — that was the problem. His chest tightened as recognition hit him like a delayed gunshot.
"No…" Dante whispered under his breath.
His fingers tightened around the frame.
She had been alive all this time.
She had lost her memory.
And she was Kieran's wife.
Dante swallowed hard, eyes never leaving the picture.
Then he saw the second frame.
A baby boy.
His heart stuttered.
The child's features were unmistakable — sharp brows, the same arrogant bone structure, the same cursed D'Angelo blood, the same eyes Dante had seen in the mirror a thousand times growing up beside his cousin.
A carbon copy of Kieran.
"What the hell…" Dante whispered.
Realisation hit him like a blade to the ribs.
A child.
Kieran had a son.
With her.
So not only had Kieran taken the empire from him.
Not only had he been chosen as CEO.
Not only had he lived the life Dante believed should have been his.
He had taken her too.
And built a family.
Dante's hands began to shake.
Something dark twisted inside his chest —jealousy, obsession, rage, grief all fused into one violent emotion. He stared back at Aurielle's picture, eyes burning now, mind spiraling.
Mine.
That word echoed in his head, irrational and dangerous.
She was never supposed to be Kieran's.
Not again.
Not when Dante had already found her first this time.
The frame slipped from his fingers.
It hit the floor with a sharp crack.
The sound snapped Kieran's attention fully onto him.
Dante didn't say another word.
He straightened slowly, his face eerily blank now—too calm, too controlled. The kind of calm that comes before destruction.
Without looking at Kieran, Dante turned and walked toward the door.
"Kieran," he said quietly, voice low, almost thoughtful. "You really do have a talent for taking things that don't belong to you."
Then he left.
Just like that.
The door closed softly behind him.
Too softly.
Kieran stood still, eyes narrowed.
That wasn't the Dante he knew.
Dante never left without chaos. Never backed down. Never walked away without leaving blood behind.
Something was fishy.
Kieran exhaled slowly. "Bad news," he said flatly. "Dante is in America."
There was a pause. Then a sharp intake of breath.
"He escaped," Kieran continued. "Killed everyone in the mental hospital."
Silence.
"I want you to follow him," Kieran said. "Discreetly. Slowly. Do not let him know he's being watched."
His eyes flicked to the shattered frame on the floor.
"Something tells me he has something to do with my wife," he added. "Dante is smart. Cunning. Don't underestimate him."
Kieran hated that he had to admit that.
"He just left the building," his right-hand man said.
"Good," Kieran replied. "Stay on him."
—
Dante slid into the driver's seat of his black Mercedes, shutting the door with deliberate calm.
His phone rang.
"Sir," a voice said quickly, almost breathless. "I saw Kieran at the mall today."
Dante's hand tightened on the steering wheel.
"He recognized the lady," the man continued. "He took off her veil, I think. But I managed to escape with her."
For a moment, Dante said nothing.
Then he laughed.
Low. Dangerous.
"The fuck," he muttered.
His eyes darkened as he started the engine.
"You and that little bird of mine," he said softly, venom curling around every word, "are finished tonight."
Then, in Italian, his voice dropped to a lethal whisper:
"Siete morti. Tutti e due."
(You're dead. Both of you.)