Page 28 of Dangerous King
"Roberto thinks he's dead?"
"They all do." I nod, watching her closely.
She blinks slowly, and I can see the gears turning. She's connecting dots. Political leverage, family power plays… and her place in the middle of it all.
She swallows. Her voice lowers. "Then what happens to me?"
I meet her gaze dead-on. "That depends."
"On what?"
"On how well you play the part you were born into. You want to be free?" I ask. "Then help me bury them. Use what they did to you to rip their empire apart from the inside out. I'll protect your family. I'll protectyou. If you want to stop running,thisis how it ends."
She stares at me for a long moment.
And then, slowly, she nods.
"Good girl," I murmur.
She flinches slightly at the words but doesn't pull away.
I stand, grabbing my phone. "I'll give you five minutes. Alone. You'll call your parents. I'll keep my word, piccola. But after that?"
I look back at her.
"You're mine."
Enrico taps something on his phone before he hands it to me. Then he leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind him. The silence that follows feels like a held breath. I force my eyes from the closed door to stare at the screen for a beat. The contact is already pulled up: my father's number. It used to mean nothing. A gesture. A cruel illusion of connection.
I called my family once a week, supervised, of course, which made the conversations stiff. Someone was always watching from the shadows to make sure that none of us said the wrong thing. It was more of a leash than a lifeline.
But now? The phone rings. And rings. I close my eyes, letting my head fall forward slightly as the familiar tone loops in my ear. A single tear slips down my cheek.
Then—
"Pronto?" The sound of my father's voice rushes through me and fills my chest with a blooming heat.
"Papà..." I whisper.
There's a beat of stunned silence. Then, all at once, the line fills with sound. "Catalina? Oh my God—Dio mio, sei tu?"
"Sì, Papà... sono io."
His voice cracks. "They told me you were alive. That I'd speak to you soon. I didn't believe them."
My voice shakes. "Are you all safe?"
A breath that sounds like a sob escapes him. "We are. We're all here. We're safe."
My hands shake so badly that I have to use both to hold the phone up to my ear. It feels like I'm hearing his voice for the first time in years.
"They came for me at City Hall," he says. "Two men. At first, I thought they came to kill me, but then they said they were there to extract me for my protection. I thought it was a setup… I thought it was finally the end."
"Oh, Papà, I'm so sorry."
"What did you do, Catalina? You didn't sell your soul to the devil, did you?"
A laugh slips out of me, cracked and wet with tears. "Maybe I did," I whisper, "but I think this devil might have a heart."
