The Maid Congratulated His Fiancée — The Mafia Boss Saw Her Tears

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The verdict had fallen like a guillotine, but a wounded animal never dies quietly.

The moment Don Vincenzo’s gavel struck the wood, Richard Bennett’s eyes snapped with the madness of a man who knew he had nothing left to lose.

"I won't die in your cages, Moretti!" Richard screamed.

From beneath his tailored jacket, Richard whipped out a compact, ceramic firearm—a weapon engineered to pass undetected through the electromagnetic scanners at the cathedral entrance.

"Get down!" Dante roared.

In a fraction of a second, Dante lunged toward me, throwing his entire body over mine as the first gunshot shattered the sacred quiet of the cathedral.

The bullet struck the marble pillar right behind my head, showering our hair with sharp limestone dust.

Screams erupted throughout the nave. The Five Arbiters ducked behind their high-backed chairs as Council guards scrambled to draw their weapons.

Richard Bennett wasn't firing randomly. His gun was aimed directly at me.

"If I lose everything," Richard shrieked, firing a second shot, "you leave with nothing, Dante!"

The second bullet tore through the heavy wool of Dante’s shoulder.

A sharp gasp escaped Dante’s lips as blood immediately blossomed across his white dress shirt, staining the midnight-black fabric of his tuxedo. The force of the impact staggered him, but he did not fall. He kept his broad frame planted firmly between me and the madman, his arm shielding my head against his chest.

"Dante!" I cried out, terror gripping my throat as the warm, metallic smell of his blood hit my senses. "You're hit!"

"Stay down, Elena," Dante commanded through gritted teeth, his voice strained with pain yet vibrating with volcanic fury.

Before Richard could pull the trigger a third time, Dante reached beneath his shoulder holster with his uninjured right hand.

With blinding, lethal precision, Dante drew his customized 9mm.

Two deafening gunshots roared through the cathedral arches.

The first round struck Richard Bennett’s right shoulder, obliterating the joint and sending his ceramic gun clattering across the mosaic tiles. The second round tore through his right thigh, dropping the billionaire patriarch instantly to his knees.

Richard collapsed against the communion rail, screaming and clutching his ruined shoulder, blood pooling across the sacred stone.

Beside him, Vanessa shrieked, dropping to her knees in pure panic, her hands stained with her father's blood.

"Stop! Please, don't shoot! Don't kill him!" Vanessa wailed, looking up at Dante like a cornered rat. "We surrender! Dante, please, have mercy!"

Council enforcers swarmed the altar, tackling the remaining Bennett bodyguards to the ground and disarming them within seconds.

Dante stood tall amidst the smoke and chaos, his smoking pistol still pointed steadily at Richard Bennett’s forehead. Blood soaked through Dante's left sleeve, dripping from his fingertips onto the white marble floor, but his hand never wavered.

The entire cathedral held its breath, waiting for the Don to pull the trigger and end the Bennett bloodline forever.

I looked at Dante. I saw the darkness in his eyes—the terrifying, ancient violence of a man who had been raised in war.

If he pulled that trigger in the sanctuary of the cathedral, before the altar of God and the elders of the Council, he would be doing exactly what Richard Bennett wanted: becoming a butcher, bound forever to the cycle of bloodshed.

I rose slowly from the stone floor.

I stepped up beside Dante. I didn't reach for his gun. Instead, I placed my soft, trembling hand gently over his bleeding knuckles.

"Dante," I whispered, my voice cutting through the ringing silence of the room.

His jaw twitched. Slowly, his dark eyes turned from the bleeding man on the floor to look at me.

"He murdered your father, Elena," Dante rasped, his voice thick with suppressed rage. "He poisoned your family. He tried to kill you two seconds ago."

"I know," I answered, looking him dead in the eye, my fingers tightening over his. "And he will pay for every single crime. But not like this. Not on the altar. David Carter was an honest man, Dante. He died believing in justice, not vengeance. Let the law take what is left of them."

Dante stared at me, his chest heaving with ragged breaths. The blood dripped between our intertwined fingers, warm and binding.

For five agonizing seconds, nobody in the cathedral dared breathe.

Then, slowly, Dante lowered the weapon.

He engaged the safety with a sharp, decisive click and slid the gun back into its leather holster.

He turned his cold, pitiless gaze back down upon the broken Richard Bennett.

"You will not have the honor of a quick bullet, Richard," Dante pronounced, each word falling like frozen lead. "Luca has already transferred your signed smuggling manifests, your offshore bank accounts, and Marcus's recorded murder confession directly to the Director of the FBI and the Federal District Attorney."

Dante stepped forward, towering over the weeping Vanessa and her bleeding father.

"You will spend the rest of your miserable life inside a maximum-security federal penitentiary," Dante said coldly. "Every asset you ever owned now belongs to the David Carter Foundation for Victims of Corporate Crime. You will die behind concrete walls, penniless, forgotten, and despised."

Dante signaled to the Council enforcers.

"Take them out of my sight."

Four guards hauled Richard and Vanessa Bennett to their feet, dragging them toward the cathedral doors as sirens began to wail in the foggy distance.