Chapter 2 Estella #2
I blink, momentarily thrown off by the sudden shift in topic. Frustration flares briefly before a flicker of curiosity ignites within me. Dante is new to this game, inexperienced, and I can’t help but wonder what Cane will throw at him next—how he’ll test him, push him, break him.
“What can I say? She’s in a good mood,” he says, nodding toward me without taking his eyes off Dante. “Still breathing. Still moving. So are you. Congrats.”
A faint smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, fleeting and hesitant.
Then, his gaze settles on mine, and a subtle shift crosses his expression—something I can’t name, yet it reaches inside me, dragging a frown across my face before I even realize it.
“Estella will teach you everything you need to know,” he states firmly. “Won’t you, Estella?”
A frown etches itself across my face, wiping away every trace of the brief levity I felt just moments before. Confusion coils inside me, twisting my thoughts into a knot I can’t untangle. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Dante’s new to this world. He wants to be like you. Take it as a compliment. Lucky him—he gets to learn from the best.”
A tense ribbon of irritation coils along my spine, crawling under my skin with a sharp, electric sting. My lips twitch involuntarily, and for a fleeting moment, the world seems to flare red around the edges. Before I can fully process it, my gaze snaps to Dante.
I inhale sharply, letting the air fill my lungs and steady the racing of my heart.
My eyes roam over him deliberately, taking in every detail from head to toe.
The faint red mark above his upper lip still lingers, while his cheeks glow with a soft, rosy flush.
I clamp my teeth on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing again and take a step closer.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t back away. But there’s a subtle shift in him—as if a current of electricity zaps through his nerves, lighting him up from the inside out.
I feel Cane’s gaze on me as I slowly circle Dante, taking my time. I want to see if I missed anything—some detail hidden beneath the urgency of earlier. Silence blankets the room, broken only by faint sounds drifting in through the not-quite-closed windows.
I complete my circle, letting my gaze linger just long enough to take him in fully.
He’s around six-foot-five, lean but coiled with muscle, every line of him radiating physical capability.
But confidence—confidence is where he falters, and that’s the real problem.
No matter how formidable he looks on the outside, if he can’t hold his ground when it matters—like he failed to do just thirty minutes ago—then all of this strength, all of this potential, is meaningless.
“Interesting,” I murmur, my fingers brushing toward his waistband as I lift the hem of his grimy shirt.
Beneath it, a wall of rough, tanned abs stretches across him, a constellation of tiny scars scattered alongside one prominent mark near his heart.
He shivers beneath my touch, goosebumps rippling across his skin, and I let the shirt slip back into place, locking my gaze with his and holding it there.
“Trying to scare the poor man off already?” Cane asks.
I don’t answer. Dante holds my stare, surprisingly steady for someone who radiates doubt.
“What do you want, Dante?” I ask, lifting a brow.
A muscle twitches under his eye as he tilts his head. “Is that a trick question?”
I take a slow step back. “An abandoned loner chasing vengeance,” I begin, keeping my eyes pinned on him. “A bored man who’s tried everything and still feels nothing. A desperate man clawing for purpose.”
My voice thins, curling into something quieter, sharper. “People don’t just stumble into this life. You don’t choose it unless something is truly broken. And not everyone survives what this job puts them through.”
I tilt my head, studying him like a puzzle missing half its pieces. “But the ones who do, they never go back. Ever. So tell me…” I let the words hang for a brief moment. “What makes you believe you’re worth it?”
Dante drags a hand over the back of his neck, every muscle taut, coiled like a spring ready to snap. He holds it together—for now—but I can’t stop myself from imagining what it would look like the moment he finally loses control. “I know you don’t trust me. But I—”
“You failed the mission,” I snap. I can feel Cane bristling behind me, confusion radiating off him.
Before he can even open his mouth, I pivot and lay it all out.
“He blew his cover before we even got started. Stormed into my cell, yelling in English, then switching clumsily to Spanish. If it weren’t for me, we’d both be dead.
It was stupid,” I say flatly. “And next time? You’ll probably lose control halfway through and get yourself killed. ”
I narrow my eyes, locking onto his with deliberate precision.
I’m hunting for the spark—the flicker of fury buried beneath that practiced calm.
Because I mean every word I’ve thrown at him.
But a part of me still wants to see if there’s fire behind the failure.
If he’ll lunge, if he’ll try to strike me, if he’ll give me even the smallest excuse to snap his neck like a twig.
Just like I did with the last man I trained.
Cane’s done this before—tossed someone under my nose and hoped for the best. Maybe he forgot how that ended.
The bastard never learns.
“ You’re always so harsh on everybody,” Cane cuts in, amusement curling at the edge of his voice like smoke. “Come on, Estella. He’s a good tech. Maybe you’ll even learn something from him.”
That familiar murderous heat spikes in my chest as I shoot him a look sharp enough to kill. He only shrugs.
“Did you not hear what I just said?”
“I heard you,” he says casually. “I’m just saying… maybe it’s not that big of a deal.”
A sharp jolt of betrayal cuts clean through my thoughts, fast and merciless.
For a heartbeat, the urge to stomp my foot like some furious, wronged child strikes me—absurd, humiliating, painfully real.
Disappointment simmers under my skin, bubbling up and fusing with anger until it thickens into something bitter, raw, and all-consuming.
Cane always has my back. I’m his favorite for a reason.
So why the fuck is he turning on me now?
“I’m not saying I was perfect—”
“Is that it? You’re trying to be perfect now?” I demand sharply.
“There’s only one person perfect for this job,” Cane begins as he steps in, closing the distance with that quiet, unshakeable certainty he wears like a second skin.
His hand settles on my shoulder, and despite everything simmering inside me, despite the feel of betrayal still burning hot beneath my ribs, I don’t pull away.
“That’s you,” he says softly. “And you’ve always been a solo bird, Estella. Nothing’s changing that. I’m just asking you to help. That’s all.”
The tension bleeds out of my body in slow, reluctant waves. I pull in a breath, lips parting to speak, when his phone cuts through the room with a sharp, insistent ring. He mutters a quick apology and slips away, disappearing down the hall, leaving us stranded in the sudden quiet.
I watch Cane until the hallway swallows him whole.
The second he’s gone, my focus snaps back to Dante, and something in me ignites.
Before I can trace the thought, before I can name the impulse, I’m already moving.
I close the distance in a breath, my hands locking onto his shoulders.
It isn’t hesitation that drives me forward—it’s instinct: pure, sharp, immediate, like a strike waiting for permission.
“Oh, thank God he left,” I breathe, whipping my head around just to confirm Cane is truly out of sight. Then, I seize Dante’s arms, fingers sinking into the heat and rough tension of muscle beneath his shirt. “You have to help me,” I whisper-shout, urgency cutting clean through my voice. “Please.”
“W-what?” he stammers, wide-eyed, those dark irises blown wide like full moons. Worry flares bright in his eyes as he reaches up, his fingers wrapping carefully around mine. The barely-there brush of contact skates over my skin, sending a strange, electric shiver spiraling down my spine. “Are you—”
“I don’t want to keep doing this,” I cut in, the words tumbling out too fast, my breath hitching as I deliberately let them trip over each other. “He keeps forcing me—he says he’ll kill me if I don’t, and I… I can’t do it anymore!”
I’m close enough to feel his heartbeat drumming against his chest—steady at first, then faltering under my proximity. The sound fills my ears, a living rhythm begging to be touched. One move is all it would take to end it. To silence everything.
Bloodlust curls behind my eyes, warm and thrilling. “Let’s run away together,” I whisper, watching his pupils dilate, watching confusion twist into panic. “I know you didn’t choose this life either. I see it in you. Please…”
His lips part, then seal themselves again, as if the words he wants to say evaporate on contact with the air. He drags his tongue across them—dry, nervous—just as his gaze jerks toward the hallway at the faint echo of approaching footsteps.
The fear in him sharpens into something almost heartbreaking.
He looks disoriented, unmoored, as every inch of my fabricated words sinks in.
His fingers curl more firmly around mine with a growing urgency.
And there it is—a subtle, involuntary flinch running through his body, like a man bracing to whisk me away, to haul me out of here and sprint straight into some imagined safety, some impossible sunset.
And that’s when the storm finally tears itself open.
A wide grin stretches across my face as I spring back, the sudden loss of his warmth sending a strange ache through me. But it’s drowned out by the laugh that tears from my throat—raw, sharp, and so loud it burns.
“Jesus,” Cane mutters as he comes closer, standing beside me. “What the fuck did you say to him?”
It takes me a moment to catch my breath, still dizzy from the chaos I’ve stirred, drunk on the beautiful wreckage of it. “Nothing,” I answer, all sugar and innocence, my gaze glued to the way Dante’s expression continues to crumble. “I just played a little.”
And oh, what a gorgeous canvas his face becomes—shame smudging into fear, fear bleeding into the first hints of fury—each emotion layering over the next until they fuse into a single, perfect storm.
It always fascinates me—how drastically humans transform when emotions swallow them whole.
It’s mesmerizing, almost artful, from the ugly little spasms that tug at their features to the involuntary tremors that ripple through their bodies.
Everything raw, exposed, unguarded. And it’s always so easy to get what I want when I press the right buttons and watch them unravel.
A pressure in my chest pulls me back from my thoughts, and I glance down, spotting a red apple in Cane’s hand. Slowly, I reach out to grab it.
“Where did you find it?” I ask skeptically. The thought of even holding something he discovered in this place sends a shiver down my spine.
“Don’t worry, it’s not from here. You need some energy.”
I scoff, twisting and rotating the apple in my hand. “You think this will give me the energy I need? What about real food?”
“That’s where Dante comes in,” he says, his confidence sharp and unwavering, and I can tell the bastard’s had this mapped out from the start. He flicks a glance at him. “Go grab dinner somewhere. It’s been a long day—you both earned it.”
“Go out like this?” I ask, tilting my head toward Dante’s sweat-stained uniform before sweeping a hand toward my own disheveled state.
Cane lets a smirk curl across his face. “Luckily for you, this place has two bathrooms. Don’t let the hallway fool you—the rest of the apartment is actually functional, and all set up just for you.
” He gestures vaguely, then adds, “Clothes are already laid out for both of you.” Pulling a phone from his pocket, he glances at it and shakes his head before tucking it away.
“I’ve got to go. But promise me one thing—no more mischief, okay? ”
“Fine,” I reply through clenched teeth, handing the apple back to him. “Take this atrocity with you. Dante’s taking me out.”
I pivot toward Dante, a mischievous sparkle igniting in my eyes, hinting at thoughts I’m barely holding back. “Isn’t that right, Dante?”
He holds a short pause. “That’s right, Estella.”