Chapter 18
Dahlia
A nother safehouse. Higher north. Much colder than the last. And not just in temperature—though it’s nestled high in the hills, wrapped in mist and ancient stone like a tomb—but in something deeper. In the silence. The shadows. In everything we’ve stopped saying.
Dante hasn’t spoken since we arrived.
He drove like a man possessed. Every muscle tight, every breath a fight. The bloodstains on his shirt are dry now, crusted over the ridges of his abdomen, stiff with smoke and something more brutal.
Something that doesn’t wash out.
I didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t ask if his hand still hurt from taking the brunt of the collapsing wall when he shoved me out of the way. I didn’t ask if the security team made it out okay.
Because the look in his eyes said everything.
Because sometimes silence is the loudest fucking thing in the room.
When I flip the light switch, it flickers. Once. Twice. Then catches. The wiring is old—like everything in this place—but functional. The kitchen smells faintly of cedar and cold iron, the scent of old woodsmoke and storms clinging to the walls like ghosts.
I drop my bag on the counter. My fingers won’t stop trembling.
We’re alive.
Barely.
“You should shower,” Dante says behind me.
His voice is hoarse. Strained. Like he’s been screaming inside his own head for hours.
I nod. But I don’t move.
He steps closer. Not touching and not surrounding me the way he used to—like I belonged to his orbit, like he’d rearrange the world just to keep me centered. No. He just stands there. Tense. Quiet.
Waiting for me to say something that might make this survivable.
Like he’s not sure he’s allowed to care anymore after he told me he loved me, three fucking times , and I said nothing. Because the weight of it feels like a thousand collars.
“I’ll check the perimeter,” he mutters, already turning.
“Dante.”
He stops.
I say just that. His name. But it vibrates through the space between us like a bomb ticking down. I don’t even know what I want to say.
My throat is thick with unshed screams. With rabid need. With questions I don’t know if I want the answers to.
Will we make it?
Do you want to keep me?
Will you stop me from being who I want to be?
Instead, I ask, “Did we lose anyone?”
A pause. A breath.
“Not yet,” he says.
And the silence that follows feels like death.
When the door shuts behind him, I finally let myself cry.
Not the angry, hot tears that come from fear or pain. The kind that seep out slow. That leave you hollow.
I sink to the floor, curled in on myself, and cry into my knees like I did the night my mother died.
Because this uncertainty. This loss? I only felt like this when she was taken from me.
And yet, Dante’s alive. He told me he loves me.
So why do I feel like I’m grieving anyway?
Dante
There’s a special kind of irony to swearing you’ll keep the woman you love safe… seconds before the world shatters around her.
I walk the perimeter twice. Maybe three times. I’ve lost count.
The sensors are clear. The drones we hacked show no signs of pursuit. The safehouse is tight. Secure.
None of it matters.
Because I can’t go inside. Not yet. Not while the scent of her skin is still in my lungs and I’m still shaking from the thought of losing her.
She almost died.
I watched that fireball ignite in the dark and knew —just knew—it would swallow her whole if I didn’t move fast enough. I don’t even remember dragging her down, pressing my body over hers, taking the burn.
But I remember her voice.
“Are you okay?”
Not Am I okay? Not What the fuck just happened?
She asked about me .
That this thing between us was supposed to be about the contract. The heist. The control.
It was. It is. But…
Fuck .
Am I the asshole for dwelling on what I’ll do if she doesn’t love me back? How even now I flirt with a different heist. A kidnapping. The forever kind. I have the means to take what I don’t deserve.
No fucking doubt.
But I’ve never wanted anything this badly.
Not vengeance. Not victory. Just her. Her laugh and her chaos, her trust in my hands.
And maybe it’s selfish, dropping my guard and daring her to break the only thing that’s still mine—a black, charred heart—at her feet in the middle of a fucking war…
but I don’t care. Because if she walks away now…
Fucking Christ, she won’t get far.
And those chains sitting at the bottom of my go-bag?
She’ll wear them knowing she’s the only goddamn thing keeping me from going under.
When I finally go back inside, she’s curled in the armchair, knees drawn up, one of my shirts wrapped around her small, curvy body like armor. She looks breakable. Not fragile. Dangerously breakable . Like one more wrong move will be the final straw.
Her laptop glows faintly in her lap. Fingers tapping in code. Fast. Focused.
“I’m running a new backdoor,” she says without looking up. “We’ll have one shot at this. I’ll burn through the last layer if I brute-force it.”
Her voice is cold. Calm. Clinical.
But I hear it.
I feel it.
The distance she’s building brick by fucking brick.
I move to the kitchen, pour two drinks. Bourbon. Neat. My hand trembles just slightly as I set hers down on the side table.
She doesn’t touch it. Just types as we hurtle toward the crossroads.
I could lie again. Stay in character. The cold, ruthless bastard who got her into this mess and will see her through the end of it.
Or I could sit and finally face this silent war head-on.
I sit. And I say it. “I never wanted it to go this far.” My voice cracks. Raw. “Not with you.”
She turns, eyes wide, watchful. Is her breath held? “Where was the end point, Dante? With me bound and gagged at the back of your car? On my way to a landfill or back in my apartment?”
My laugh is coarse, searing. “The latter. Hopefully.”
Her eyes pierce mine. And yes, her breath is definitely held. In hope. Or rejection?
“Hopefully,” I repeat, softer this time. “But you have a habit of getting under skin that’s supposed to be bulletproof.”
A beat.
I should say it again. I love you. I should take the risk. Strip it bare like I stripped her body and asked her to trust me to Master it.
But I don’t. Fucking pussy .
Instead, I lean back in the chair and tip my glass to my lips. “Anyway. You’re still here. Which means I didn’t fuck up as badly as I thought.”
I offer a crooked smile. Deflection, laced in charm. A joke wrapped in panic.
Her lips part slightly. Like she wants to say something. Like she knows what I didn’t say. But she closes them again.
And the silence between us sharpens.
I let it hang there.
Because the truth is, I’m terrified— not of the Vesper Syndicate, not of losing the mission.
I’m terrified of losing her .
So I stay silent.
And I pray she doesn’t see through it. Doesn’t see the chains silently unfurling. Ready to capture and keep what might not be mine.
Dahlia
The code blurs.
My fingers hover over the keyboard, the screen glowing with lines I can’t focus on. The digits and backdoors and security tunnels—none of it matters right now.
Not when I can still feel the ghost of Dante’s touch and silence, even when he’s across the room.
He sits by the fire now. Not close enough to burn, but close enough to feel the heat. One leg sprawled out, his elbows on his knees, head bowed like he’s bearing some invisible weight. Like if he looks up, the world might crack open and swallow us both.
I close the laptop slowly. Swallow hard.
“You’re doing that thing again,” I say softly.
His gaze lifts. Charcoal-grey eyes like a storm held behind glass. “What thing?”
“The silence thing. The blaming yourself thing.”
A beat.
“Isn’t that what ended us here? Another fucking safehouse?”
My heart squeezes. “You can’t take the world on your back and pretend I don’t get to choose. Not for Rina. Not for me.”
His eyes narrow. Probe. “I didn’t choose for you to almost die.”
“You didn’t choose to love me either, I think.”
Fuck. Not what I was going to say.
The words hang there. Heavy. Awful.
True.
Dante flinches, just slightly. His hand flexes against his thigh, like he wants to reach for me but doesn’t trust himself to. Or worse—doesn’t trust me to want him anymore.
I rise from the armchair and cross the room, slow and quiet. Bare feet on the old wood floor, wearing nothing but his shirt, like it still matters whose skin it touched last.
When I stop in front of him, I don’t speak. I lower to my knees instead. My favorite place.
He exhales like I’ve hit him. Not with force. With mercy.
“You shouldn’t be down there,” he says, but he doesn’t stop me.
“I want to be.”
He brushes a hand through my hair, fingertips skimming my cheek. “You scared the fuck out of me with that close fucking shave. Again.”
I nod, my throat tight. “You scared me too.”
His voice turns ragged. “When I thought I lost you?—”
“You didn’t.”
“Not yet.”
The crack splits open.
And I fall in.
“I used to wonder,” I whisper, “what my dad would say if he saw me like this. If he knew I was halfway in love with a man like you. A man who breaks the rules for a living but for the wrong team. Who might not make it out the way Mom didn’t.”
Dante doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.
“I think if he pulled himself out of his misery long enough, he’d hate it,” I go on, soft and bitter.
“And even if I told him I discovered I was wrong, that you were on my kind of righteous crusade, I think he’d still say I’m repeating history.
My mom died chasing something she thought mattered. Maybe I’m doing the same.”
“He may be right about me, but you’re not her,” he says, low and fierce. “No,” I agree. “But I love like her. Fast. All in. Firewalls all the way down.”
I slide my hand over his knee, up his thigh, until my palm rests over his heart. His pulse is erratic beneath it. Strong. Real. Terrified.
“I know what this was supposed to be,” I whisper. “Thirty days. A game. Control and obedience.”
“Dahlia…”
“But it’s not that anymore, is it?”