Chapter 4 - THE INK ON THE PHOTOGRAPH
She is clean enough to fix my reputation.
The words burned themselves into Maria’s retinas.
Every romantic memory, every late-night conversation, every touch Dante had ever given her suddenly felt like glass shattering in her chest.
She hadn't been a lucky woman who caught the eye of a powerful man. She had been a strategic acquisition. A shield of innocence bought to cover the blood on his hands.
"Why are you showing me this?" Maria choked out, fighting the urge to vomit.
"Because a hostage is only useful if her husband wants her back," Salvatore said coldly. "And Dante only wants things he believes he owns. I need you to understand that you are not his great love. You are his property. And today, I am taking his property."
A heavy metal door screeched open at the far end of the warehouse.
Footsteps echoed across the concrete.
Maria looked up, expecting to see more guards.
Instead, she saw Bianca Romano.
The beautiful mistress was no longer wearing silk. She wore a soaking wet trench coat, her mascara running down her face in dark, ugly streaks. She was being dragged by two of Salvatore’s men.
They threw Bianca to the floor beside Maria.
"Salvatore, you promised!" Bianca screamed, scrambling backward until her back hit a concrete pillar. "You said you just wanted the old woman to send a message! You said I would be protected!"
Salvatore looked down at her with absolute disgust.
"You betrayed the man whose bed you shared because you lost a chair at a dinner table," Salvatore said. "What kind of fool would ever trust a woman like you?"
Bianca began to sob hysterically. She looked at Maria, her eyes wide with terror.
"I'm sorry," Bianca wept. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I just wanted Dante to be angry at his grandmother!"
Maria looked at the woman who had ruined her marriage. She felt no anger toward her anymore. Only a profound, suffocating pity.
"Dante isn't coming for either of us," Maria said, her voice hollow.
Salvatore smiled. "Oh, he is coming, Maria. Because I sent him a gift."
He gestured to one of his men. The man stepped forward and threw a heavy object onto the floor between Maria and Bianca.
It was a man's charcoal wool coat.
Maria recognized it instantly. It was the coat Dante had worn to their wedding reception. The one he kept by the front door.
"Why do you have his coat?" Bianca whimpered.
Salvatore knelt down and reached into the pocket of the coat. He pulled out a heavy, antique silver pocket watch.
"Because Dante is already here," Salvatore whispered. "My men intercepted him twenty minutes ago while he was searching for you. He walked right into the trap."
Salvatore flipped the watch open. The ticking echoed loudly in the damp space.
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"He has one hour left to live. And I am going to make both of you watch him die."
TITLE: THE WATCH THAT STOPPED TICKING
