EVERY MAN LAUGHED AT HER SCAR… UNTIL THE RUTHLESS MAFIA BOSS ASKED ONE QUESTION THAT BROKE HIM OPEN

The laughter in the dingy dive bar didn’t just echo; it crawled over Eloise’s skin like grease. Douglas Pratt stood before her with his yellowed teeth bared in a wet, mocking grin, his fingers still reeking of stale beer and cheap tobacco from where he had dared to yank her collar. Around the pool table, three men in greasy ballcaps chuckled into their bottles, waiting to see if the stray woman with the ruined neck would cry, beg, or run.

Eloise did none of those things. Her spine remained iron. She slapped Douglas’s wrist away with a sharp, stinging crack of her palm against his skin.

"Don't touch me," she said, her voice dropping into an arctic register that momentarily startled the drunkard.

Douglas’s smile vanished, replaced by the ugly, blotchy flush of wounded male ego. He lunged forward, his beefy hand balling into a fist. "You crazy little freak, you think you can hit me in my own—"

He never finished the sentence.

From the darkest corner of the tavern, where the amber neon of a flickering beer sign failed to reach, a voice sliced through the stale air. It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It possessed the terrifying weight of a cocked pistol resting against an earlobe.

"Touch her again, and I’ll have your fingers fed to the stray dogs behind the alley."

The bar went dead. Even the hum of the neon sign seemed to pull back in fear.

Douglas froze mid-reach, the color draining rapidly from his pockmarked face. He slowly turned his head toward the back corner booth, which had been cast in deep shadow since the noon rush began. Eloise’s breath hitched. She hadn't even realized someone was sitting there.

A man stepped out of the dark.

He was broad-shouldered, towering well over six feet, clad in a charcoal-gray overcoat that looked like it had been hand-stitched in Milan, entirely out of place in this grimy corner of Montana. His jaw was sculpted like cold granite, his jet-black hair brushed back from a face that bore no softness, only the severe, calculated calm of an apex predator. Beneath his tailored collar, dark ink crept upward along his throat—intricate, lethal lines that marked him with unmistakable underworld pedigree.

This was Dante Moretti.

Even in an isolated mountain town like Asheford, people whispered his name in terrified reverence. The Chicago syndicate Don who had allegedly turned Montana’s timber corridors into his private empire after a bloody purge that left half the northern underworld buried beneath the pine needles.

Behind Dante, two towering men in black suits flanked him instantly, hands resting inside their jackets.

Douglas began to tremble, his bravado dissolving into a whimpering stammer. "M-Mr. Moretti... I was just... she was looking for work, I was only joking around with the girl—"

Dante didn’t look at Douglas. His obsidian eyes were locked entirely on Eloise.

He took three slow, measured steps forward. His boots clicked against the worn linoleum, each strike sounding like a countdown. When he stopped, he was merely inches from Eloise. The sheer heat and scent of him—expensive cedarwood, black pepper, and faint gun oil—washed over her senses.

Eloise stood her ground. Her chin stayed up, even though her pulse was hammering against her ribs like a trapped sparrow. Her collar was still pulled slightly askew, leaving the jagged, silver-pink tissue of the burn bare under the harsh fluorescent bulb.

Most men looked at her scar with disgust, pity, or morbid curiosity.

Dante Moretti looked at it like he was reading an ancient sacred script written in fire.

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, Dante reached out. His hand was large, his fingers scarred across the knuckles, wearing a heavy signet ring of black onyx. Eloise stiffened, preparing to flinch, but his touch was shockingly gentle. The back of his rough knuckles lightly brushed the edge of her collar, tucking the fabric back into place with infinite care, concealing the jagged edge of the wound.

Then, his deep, rumbling voice broke the silence, thick with something raw, ancient, and fractured.

"Where were you," Dante whispered, his voice cracking by a microscopic fracture that made his own bodyguards glance up in shock, "on the night the Saint Jude Children’s Hospital in Helena burned down ten years ago?"