Tangled in Fire

Dante Moretti wasn't easily rattled. Years in the underworld had hardened him beyond recognition. But Elena DeLuca had always been different.

They met three years ago, not with sparks or seduction but fire. Literally.

Naples. A warehouse inferno had erupted after a weapons deal turned to chaos. Dante had come for a high-stakes delivery. Elena had come for intelligence, posing as a courier from a rival faction. Neither expected the explosion.

Dante was pinned beneath a beam when she found him bleeding, unconscious, barely breathing. She could've left. Should've. But something in her froze when she saw his face. Not because of who he was… but because of what he represented.

The man whose name haunted the stories of her past.

And the man who might unknowingly hold the key to her revenge.

Still, she dragged him out shoulder dislocated, lungs burning and collapsed beside him in the alley as sirens howled nearby.

Later, when he came to in a shuttered clinic with bandages on his ribs, he looked at her like she was a puzzle he hadn't ordered.

"What the hell are you?" he rasped.

Elena, without blinking, said, "A mistake you owe your life to."

They didn't speak again for weeks.

But Dante never forgot.

...

He began to see her everywhere after that. In Monaco, she disrupted a black market bidding war, only to pass him encrypted data from the winning syndicate. In Zurich, she showed up at a gala in disguise, slipped intel into his pocket, and vanished into the crowd.

She wasn't working for him. She was dancing between enemies and ghosts, always one step ahead, sometimes dragging Dante with her. At first, he thought she was playing the long game. Maybe she was. But something kept bringing her back.

And slowly, she slipped past his defences.

He let her into rooms meant for family. Shared pieces of his empire. Trusted her on missions no one else would've survived.

What he didn't know was that Elena had been gathering pieces the entire time.

Files. Passwords. Timelines. Names.

Her target had always been the man behind the Moretti syndicate. The man she believed had played a role direct or indirect in the death of her family.

Years ago, a Moretti-linked retaliation against a rival cartel had set fire to a cluster of safehouses on the outskirts of Calabria. Her parents' small villa had been caught in the collateral. Her little sister had died in her arms. No warning. No reason.

She had buried them herself.

The Morettis never answered for it.

So Elena made a vow: infiltrate. Rise. Ruin them from within.

Only... she hadn't expected Dante to be so human.

....

Two years into their strange alliance...

Dante brought her to his private vineyard his true home. Not the marble palazzos or the steel high-rises. This was the place he had built himself. No guards. No cameras. Just quiet, grapes, and honesty.

They sat on the porch, drinking old red wine as the sun bled into the hills.

"I've done terrible things," he said, finally, staring into the glass. "But I try to protect what I build. What's mine. That's how I sleep at night."

Elena had nodded, expression unreadable.

"You ever lose something you couldn't replace?" she asked.

He hesitated. "Yes."

"You ever cause that kind of loss for someone else?"

His jaw clenched. "Probably."

That night, she walked alone in the vineyard under the stars and cried for the first time in years.

...

The Betrayal

It happened in silence.

Dante had gone to Munich for a summit. Elena stayed behind to "watch the house." By dawn, she was gone and so was everything.

Encrypted hard drives. Client lists. Offshore access codes. The black box.

And his mother's necklace the one he'd found in the wreckage of a house years ago, just after a retaliatory hit. He'd kept it, not knowing why. Now, he knew. It had been hers. Elena's sister's.

By the time Dante returned, Elena had vanished. A message was left on his desk: "This was never about you. But now it has to be."

He said nothing to his men.

Just stood there.

Holding the empty velvet pouch.

.....

Now – At the safehouse

Elena sat across from her brother, Marco, as he examined the files she'd stolen.

"You got it all," he said. "We can dismantle everything. All the names. All the transfers. This is what we needed."

But Elena didn't respond. Her gaze was fixed on the necklace in her hand.

"I didn't think he'd keep it," she murmured.

Marco frowned. "What?"

She looked up, eyes hollow. "The necklace. He found it in the rubble. All these years, he kept it."

Marco's voice sharpened. "Don't start this, Elena. He was a monster. He just hid it well."

She nodded. Slowly. But something in her had shifted.

Not regret.

But the terrifying possibility that vengeance had made her blind to the full truth.

...

Back at the vineyard

Nico found Dante in the wine cellar, bottle in hand, eyes distant.

"She played you," Nico said.

Dante didn't look up. "No. She did what she came to do."

"So what now?"

He poured the wine slowly, red as blood. "Now, we let her finish the game."

"And then?"

Dante met his eyes.

"We remind her who wrote the rules."