Chapter 4 - The Master's Move
That night, the house was silent as a tomb.
Dante sat in his study with the steel box open before him. Inside rested the black leather ledger—and alongside it, a encrypted satellite phone and a velvet pouch containing two million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds.
He picked up the satellite phone and dialed a number he hadn't called in six months.
The line rang twice before a deep, gravelly voice answered. "Speak."
"Vincenzo," Dante said softly.
A sharp intake of breath came over the speaker. Vincenzo 'The Hound' Vane—Dante’s former chief of security, the only man who had refused to serve Marco and Leo after the accident and had vanished into the shadows.
"Boss?" Vincenzo whispered, his voice trembling with emotion. "They told me... they said you were finished."
"They lied," Dante replied. "Marco and Leo came to my house today. They threatened Renata and her daughter."
A heavy silence fell over the line, followed by the metallic click of a weapon being readied. "What do you need me to do, boss?"
"I need three things," Dante instructed coldly. "First, secure a safe house outside the city for Renata and Sofia. Second, contact the loyalists in the third district—the men who remember who built their families. Tell them Dante Moretti is calling in his debts."
"And third?" Vincenzo asked.
"Bring me Dr. Harrison," Dante said. "It's time to start physical therapy for real."
For the next four weeks, behind locked doors and drawn curtains, Dante Moretti underwent a brutal, secret transformation.
Guided by Dr. Harrison—a discrete military surgeon hired by Vincenzo—and fueled by an relentless willpower, Dante pushed his body through agonizing physical therapy sessions. Though his spinal cord damage was severe, intensive nerve-stimulation treatments began to yield small miracles.
First came a flicker of sensation in his left toes. Then a muscle twitch in his thigh.
Every day at three o'clock, Sofia would come into the training room, sit on the mat beside him, and cheer him on.
"Push, tree man!" she would yell, waving her small fists in the air. "You have to walk so we can go get ice cream!"
Dante would grit his teeth, sweat pouring down his face, gritting against the excruciating pain, lifting his legs inch by painful inch.
One afternoon, five weeks after Marco's threat, Dante held onto the parallel bars in the exercise room. His knuckles were white, his body shaking from exertion.
Sofia stood at the end of the bars, holding out a small wooden toy truck. "Come get it!"
Dante took a deep breath. He forced his right foot forward.
Thud.
Then his left foot.
Thud.
He walked four steps across the floor. He collapsed onto the cushioned bench, gasping for air, but a fierce, triumphant laugh broke from his lips for the first time in years.
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Sofia clapped her hands wildly. "You did it! You're not a tree anymore!"
Dante pulled the little girl into a warm hug, resting his chin on her curly hair. "No, little one," he whispered softly. "Thanks to you, I'm alive again."
