He Satisfies His Enemies—I Bury Them Chapter 03

He Satisfies His Enemies—I Bury Them Chapter 03

The morning of my last day, Bianca came downstairs wearing my robe.

My silk robe. The one my mother gave me before she died. Hand-embroidered with tiny violets along the hem—the last thing her hands ever made.

Bianca floated into the kitchen, poured coffee from my pot, sat at my table, and smiled at me like we were roommates.

“Morning, Sera. Hope we didn’t keep you up.”

I looked at my mother’s robe on this woman’s body and felt something ancient and volcanic rise inside my chest.

I swallowed it. Smiled back.

“Not at all.”

Dante appeared behind her, kissing the top of her head. He was dressed for the Volkov meeting—dark suit, no tie, the gold cufflinks his father left him.

“I’m taking Bianca to lunch after the meeting,” he said, pouring coffee without looking at me. “Don’t hold dinner.”

Don’t hold dinner. As if I’d been holding dinner. As if I’d been sitting at a table set for two every night for the past year, eating alone, watching his food go cold.

I had been. But that wasn’t the point.

“Did you read the Volkov analysis?” I asked.

“Skimmed it.”

“Dante, the port numbers—”

“I said I’ll handle it, Sera.” His voice carried that edge—the one that meant stop talking, you’re embarrassing me. He glanced at Bianca, then back at me. “Just manage the house. That’s what you’re good at.”

Managing the house. Three hundred million dollars in criminal enterprise flowing through financial systems I’d designed, and he thought I managed the house.

Bianca touched his arm. “She’s just trying to help, baby.”

Baby.

“I know,” Dante said softly. To her. Soft. The voice he used to use with me. “Let’s go. The car’s waiting.”

They left together. His hand on her waist. Her wearing my dead mother’s robe.

I stood in the kitchen for a full minute, perfectly still.

Then I moved.

I went upstairs. Found the robe draped across the bed—Bianca had changed into her own clothes. I folded my mother’s robe carefully, pressed it to my face, breathed in the faint ghost of lavender that still clung to the silk after all these years.

I packed it in my bag.

The rest of the day was surgical. I wiped my personal files from the house computers. Retrieved the contents of the floor safe. Made three phone calls—one to Zurich, one to my contact in Lisbon, one to the pilot.

At 4 PM, my phone rang. Nico, Dante’s underboss.

“Sera, the Volkov meeting went sideways. Dante accepted a fifty-fifty split. We’re losing two million a month on this deal.”

“I know.”

“You know? You didn’t stop him?”

“He didn’t want my input, Nico.”

“This is a disaster. Can you restructure—”

“No.”

Silence. Nico had never heard me say no before.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no. Handle it yourselves.”

I hung up.

At 10:47 PM, Dante still wasn’t home. I didn’t expect him to be.

I picked up my leather bag. Walked through the brownstone one last time—past the kitchen where I’d stitched him open, past the study where I’d built his empire, past the bedroom that smelled like another woman’s perfume.

I left my wedding ring on the kitchen counter. Right on the Calacatta marble. Right where the blood had pooled the night before.

The car was waiting outside. Not a Moretti car—a hired sedan, paid in cash, driven by a man who didn’t speak English and didn’t ask questions.

I got in. Closed the door.

Didn’t look back.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, I opened the USB drive and began dismantling everything.

Not stealing. Removing. Every failsafe, every financial firewall, every hidden architecture that kept the Moretti machine running smoothly.

I didn’t blow it up. I just stopped holding it together.

And without me holding it together, it would eat itself alive.

The pilot announced our descent into Barcelona.

I closed the laptop, looked out the window at the Mediterranean glittering under moonlight, and took my first free breath in three years.

Seraphina Moretti was dead.

Valentina Ferraro was just beginning.