“I’ll Give You $10M If You Translate This”, Laughed The Mafia Boss… But The Shy Waitress Silenced…
Selene stopped cleaning. She looked up, meeting his gaze.
“Is that all?”
Dante looked at her. He looked at her lips, then up to her eyes.
There was a flicker of something dangerous there, a hunger that had nothing to do with money.
“If you die,”
he said, his voice dropping an octave.
“I never find out what my father was trying to tell me, and I hate unfinished puzzles.”
He stood up abruptly, breaking the tension.
“That’s enough. Thank you.”
He walked to his discarded jacket and pulled out the parchment. It was miraculously dry, protected in a leather sleeve.
He slammed it onto the wooden table.
“Get to work,”
he ordered, his tone returning to that of the mafia don.
“We’re safe for tonight, but the Russians won’t stop. I need to know where the reserves are.”
Selene sighed. The moment of connection shattered.
She sat at the table, pulling the oil lamp closer. She smoothed out the parchment.
“The Devil’s Tongue,”
she muttered, tracing the microscopic lines at the bottom.
“Talk to me,”
Dante said, pouring himself a glass of the cheap vodka. He leaned against the wall, watching her.
“Why is it called that?”
“Because it twists the truth,”
Selena explained, her mind shifting into academic mode. It was safer here.
“It was developed by a rogue cryptographer in the 50s. It uses a double-blind key. You can’t just translate the symbols. The symbols themselves are a distraction. The real message is in the space between the symbols.”
She grabbed a pencil and a dusty notepad she found on a shelf. She began to measure the gaps between the ink strokes.
“Your father… he was a brilliant man,”
Selene noted.
“To use this, he must have been paranoid.”
“He was the Capo de Capi,”
Dante said.
“Paranoia is a job requirement.”
Selene worked for an hour, the only sound the scratching of the pencil and the crackling fire. Dante didn’t move.
He watched her with an intensity that made the back of her neck prickle.
“I have the first layer,”
she announced, rubbing her tired eyes. Dante was at the table in a second.
“What is it?”
“It’s a sequence, but it’s not coordinates yet. It’s a riddle. Read it.”
Selene took a breath.
“Where the sinner goes to wash his hands, but the water is always dry.”
Dante frowned.
“That makes no sense. A church?”
“No,”
Selene shook her head.
“Water that is dry. It’s metaphorical, or maybe chemical. Ice. Dry ice?”
Dante paced the small room.
“A freezer? A meat locker?”
“Think about your father,”
Selena probed.
“Where did he go to think, to confess, to hide?”
Dante stopped pacing. He looked at the fire.
A strange expression crossed his face—pain mixed with realization.
“The Confessional,”
he whispered.
“A church?”
“No.”
Dante looked at her.
“The Confessional. It was the name of his private speakeasy in the basement of the old warehouse in Brooklyn. He closed it down 10 years ago. He said he bricked it up.”
“And the dry water?”
Selene asked.
“The bar,”
Dante said, a dark smile forming.
“He always served his scotch neat. No water, no ice.”
He looked at Selene, and for the first time, there was respect in his eyes—genuine respect.
“You’re good,”
he admitted.
“I know,”
she replied simply.
Dante leaned across the table, his hands resting on either side of her notebook, trapping her.
“If the money is in the old warehouse,”
he said,
“we have a problem.”
“Why?”
“Because that warehouse is in territory that Luca sold to the Russians three days ago. We have to break into the heart of the enemy stronghold.”
Selene felt the blood drain from her face.
“We?”
“You have to come,”
Dante said.
“The cipher isn’t done. That riddle leads to a location, but once we are there, there will be a lock, a combination. And I bet my life that the combination is hidden in the rest of this code.”
He reached out, his thumb grazing her cheek, wiping away a smudge of soot. The touch was electric.
“You’re not just a translator anymore, Selene,”
he murmured.
“You’re the key. And I’m going to get you into that warehouse even if I have to burn the rest of the city down to do it.”
Selene looked at him, at the dangerous, beautiful man who had kidnapped her and saved her. She realized with a jolt that she didn’t want to run anymore.
The puzzle and the man had her hooked.
“Then let’s burn it down,”
she whispered.
The Queen of the Night
Morning broke over the lake in a wash of pale, bruised purples and grays. The rain had stopped, leaving the world dripping and silent.
Inside the cabin, the fire had burned down to embers. Selene woke with a start, her neck stiff.
She had fallen asleep at the table, her head resting on the notebook filled with cipher sequences. The cabin was empty.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in her chest. Had he left her? Had the Russians found them?
“Drink this.”
She spun around. Dante was standing in the doorway, blocking the morning light.
He had been outside. His hair was damp, and he was holding two steaming paper cups.
He looked different. The wild, desperate edge from the night before was gone, replaced by a terrifying, icy focus.
He had shaved with a dull razor found in the bathroom, leaving his jaw smooth and sharp. He looked less like a fugitive and more like a CEO about to initiate a hostile takeover.
“Coffee?”
Selene asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“Black, no sugar. We need the caffeine, not the comfort,”
he said, setting the cup down near her notebook. He leaned over the table, examining her work.
“Did you finish the sequence?”
“Yes,”
Selene said, taking a sip. The coffee was bitter and scalded her tongue, but it woke her up.
“The riddle points to the basement, specifically the north wall, behind the sinner’s seat.”
“I’m assuming that’s the bar stool, my father’s favorite spot,”
Dante confirmed.
“But getting to that stool is going to be the problem.”
He pulled a folded newspaper from his back pocket and tossed it onto the table. It was a local edition.
The headline screamed: “Valerio estate destroyed in gas explosion. No survivors.”
“They think we’re dead,”
Selene whispered, looking at the grainy photo of the burning mansion.
“They hope we’re dead,”
Dante corrected.
“Which is our only advantage. The Russians have taken over the warehouse. Tonight, they are hosting a victory gala to celebrate their expansion into my territory. They turned the ground floor into a high-end underground casino. And we’re just going to walk in.”
“We are?”
Dante said.
“But not as Dante Valerio and the waitress. We are going as Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood. Oil money from Texas. Boring, rich, and invisible.”
He kicked a duffel bag that was sitting near the door. Selene hadn’t noticed it before.
“I called in a favor from a contact in town. Put these on.”
Selene opened the bag. Inside, nestled in tissue paper, was a dress.
It wasn’t just a dress; it was a weapon made of fabric. Floor-length, backless, made of midnight blue silk that looked like liquid water.
Next to it was a pair of diamond earrings and a tuxedo.
“I can’t wear this,”
Selene said, touching the silk.
“I’m—I’m just Selene. I spill coffee. I trip over my own feet.”
Dante walked around the table. He stopped behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him.
He didn’t touch her, but the air between them grew heavy.
“Selene Rostova is dead,”
he said, his voice low and hypnotic near her ear.
“She died in the fire. Tonight, you are not a waitress. You are the wife of a billionaire. You are arrogant. You are bored. You look at everyone in that room as if they are beneath you.”
He reached out, his hand hovering over her shoulder before he finally allowed himself to touch her. His fingers brushed the stray hairs at the nape of her neck.
“You have the mind of a genius, Selene. Stop acting like a servant. Tonight, you are a queen. Act like one.”
The command sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with fear. She turned to face him.
“And you?”
she asked.
“Can you play the part of a loving husband?”
Dante’s eyes darkened. He looked at her mouth, then back to her eyes.
“That,”
he murmured,
“will be the easiest lie I’ve ever told.”
Three hours later, Selene stood in front of the cracked mirror in the bathroom. The transformation was unsettling.
With her hair swept up in an elegant twist, the diamonds glittering at her ears, and the blue silk molding to her curves like a second skin, she didn’t recognize herself. She applied the lipstick Dante had provided, a deep blood-red shade.
When she walked out, Dante was waiting. He was adjusting the cufflinks on his tuxedo.
He looked up, and his hands went still. The silence stretched, thick and taut.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t compliment her.
He simply stared, his gaze sweeping over her with a possessiveness that made her knees weak. It was a look that said, “Mine.”
“Will I do?”
she asked, her voice trembling slightly. Dante walked over to her.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, lethal-looking pistol.
“Strap this to your thigh,”
he said, handing it to her.
“Under the dress.”
“I don’t know how to shoot.”
“You don’t need to aim. If someone touches you, press it against their stomach and pull the trigger.”
He offered her his arm.
“The car is waiting. It’s showtime, Mrs. Blackwood.”
The Victory Gala
The warehouse, now christened “The Foundry,” pulsed with bass so deep it rattled Selene’s teeth. Outside, the Brooklyn night was cold, but inside, the air was hot, smelling of expensive perfume, sweat, and ozone.
The industrial space had been transformed. Red velvet ropes, chandeliers hanging from rusted steel beams, and tables covered in green felt where millions of dollars were changing hands.
Dante moved through the crowd with a lazy, arrogant swagger that was entirely different from his usual predatory stalk. He had donned a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and changed his posture, slouching slightly to hide his military-grade alertness.
His arm was wrapped around Selene’s waist, his hand resting possessively on her hip. Every few minutes, he would lean in and whisper in her ear.
To the onlookers, it looked like a lover’s secret. In reality, it was tactical updates.
“Three guards by the kitchen,”
he whispered, his lips grazing her earlobe.
“Camera on the north pillar. Keep smiling.”
Selene laughed, tilting her head back as if he had told a joke.
“My face hurts from smiling,”
she whispered back through gritted teeth.
“Drink your champagne. Don’t look at the guards. Look at me.”
She looked at him. Behind the glasses, his blue eyes were scanning every face, calculating every threat.
