Chapter 19 Dante
Barcelona, Spain
“No loud music after six p.m., no pets,” my realtor says, his thick Spanish accent slicing through the air.
I told him I speak Spanish, but for some reason, he keeps talking to me in English, wrestling with every word like it weighs a hundred kilos.
“Next rent on time, two months after today’s…
” He drags the sound out as he checks his phone. “Twelfth. ?Comprendido?”
“Yes,” I say, the word clipped, flat. I nudge one of my suitcases with my foot, pushing it out of his way. It sounds like I have an army’s worth of luggage, but it is only three small suitcases. Strange how such a tiny collection can hold an entire life.
“Okay, good. Call me if something happens, but I may not be available during the day. I juggle this job with being a barista at a local bar. Deberías visitarnos alguna vez. You should visit sometime.” His round face breaks into a grin, and a rough laugh shakes his chest before he slaps my shoulder. “I’ll give you a discount.”
The urge to break his nose for touching me flares like a spark, sharp and immediate. The imprint of his hand burns against my clothes, a temptation I fight down with effort.
“Okay, got it,” I reply through clenched teeth. The trip back from London still roars inside me, my rage simmering just beneath the surface. “No loud music, no causing trouble, and call you only at night or in the evening.”
He shakes his head and steps farther into the apartment. I draw in a sharp breath, bracing myself for whatever stupidity he is about to unleash.
Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him.
“No, I’m busy during those hours too,” he says.
A shrug rolls through my shoulders. “So when am I supposed to reach you if something happens?”
He scratches his head and tilts it like he is trying to think. I can tell there is not a single thought moving behind his eyes.
“I think it’s better if nothing happens,” he says quietly, before slapping the same spot on my shoulder again. I catch my bottom lip between my teeth, but the bite does nothing to calm the heat building inside me. “Take care, man.”
Finally, he turns, walks out, and shuts the door behind him. I exhale, the tension unraveling from my shoulders in a slow, shuddering release.
His name is Alejandro, I think. The only one who agreed to meet with me today.
After I left Bennett’s apartment, I had no destination, no plan.
I was a storm of sensation, every emotion crashing into the next so violently that I couldn’t even trace the edges of one before another tore through me.
My body still burned from the kill, blood thrumming with a raw, electric heat so vivid that I could almost see the steam rising from my pores.
For the first time in my life, I felt a hunger I had never known before—a thirst for more murder. That first act hadn’t satisfied me. It had only ignited something deeper, darker, sharper.
I took his ring as a souvenir, but I couldn’t stop feeling like that wasn’t enough, like I needed to do more.
I wandered through the streets like a lunatic, the stares of strangers digging into my back, my face, my chest. Every glance pressed against me, yet I barely noticed. London’s chill, the rain hammering down in a relentless sheet, did nothing to cool the fire inside me.
It wasn’t a fever. It wasn’t sickness. It was her under my skin—her presence, her past, her touch—all seeming to pulse through me, breaking down the layers that separated me from everything I had once considered control.
The addictive effect tore at my nerves, like molten metal running through my veins.
I’ve never felt anything more intoxicating.
Her past turned out to be the most compelling, the most brutal, the most intimately familiar thing I’ve ever encountered. Every story, every fragment, resonated in ways I couldn’t name, couldn’t suppress.
I hate the roots of this feeling. I hate that I can’t remember where it begins, only that it grows, rising in my chest like a storm that refuses to be quieted.
Each attempt to trace it, to grasp it, brings a vivid headache, a pressure that no pill, no distraction, can mute. It comes from somewhere deep inside.
And yet I know it exists for a reason. Sooner or later, I will find it. If it doesn’t come to me on its own, I will carve it out from myself, expose it, and face whatever lies buried there. I will stare it down, whatever it is, because I need to know. Because I cannot let it remain hidden.
Running a hand through my hair, I take in the apartment with a slow sweep of my gaze.
It is small but untouched, the air still carrying the faint bite of fresh paint and the clean, crisp scent of new wood.
The walls gleam in a soft off-white, smooth and unmarked, waiting for a life to settle into them.
Sunlight pours through the balcony doors in warm, golden sheets, sliding across the polished floorboards and breathing warmth into the stillness of the room.
Outside, Barcelona murmurs softly. Scooters buzz like distant insects, laughter drifts up from the street, and the clatter of plates rises from the café below, the sound weaving itself into a steady, comforting pulse of life.
Among all those voices, all those strangers living their days, my mind refuses to stay here. It keeps circling the same orbit, pulling me back to one point.
Estella.
What is she doing now? How is she feeling? What thoughts are running through her mind?
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and a smirk curls at the corner of my lips, sharp and anticipatory. I pull it out, already bracing for the rush of her name lighting up the screen.
But it isn’t her. It’s Jason.
The smirk dies instantly. A flicker of irritation sparks beneath my ribs as I stand, weighing whether I should even bother answering.
Somewhere between yesterday and now, the thin thread of whatever partnership we had snapped clean without either of us noticing.
He doesn’t know half of what happened, and I have no intention of filling in the gaps for him.
He wouldn’t understand anyway.
And I refuse to stand there and absorb his and Lucia’s pinched expressions, their tight little frowns, their judgment bleeding through their pores as if the question isn’t already obvious in their eyes.
How could you?
While I’m buried in that thought, the call fades into silence. I exhale, relieved, thinking it’s done.
But then the phone vibrates again, Jason’s name flashing with stubborn insistence, sending a restless pulse into my palm.
Fine.
I hit the green button, bringing the phone to my ear. “Yes,” I say, the word spilling out coated in simmering anger. My fingers pinch the bridge of my nose, tension tightening like a coil inside my skull.
“Where the fuck were you, Dante?” he snaps, his frustration crashing into mine without hesitation. “We were worried sick for your ass while you just disappeared.”
I nudge one of my suitcases out of the way with a lazy kick as I move deeper into the apartment.
There isn’t much here—a couch, a work table, a kitchen table, two chairs, one wooden, one soft.
Barely enough to fill the space. Yet even with the emptiness and the pale walls, the golden Barcelona light filtering through spills warmth across the room.
It gives the place a pulse. A promise. Fragile, uncertain, but breathing.
“I’m sorry I was absent,” I say, forcing my voice to carry some kind of… fuck, anything resembling normal. The words scrape out of me, hollow.
That trip to London knocked me off my axis more than I expected. My thoughts are scattered, my nerves frayed, and talking to Jason feels like trying to grab smoke. But if I don’t pull myself together, he’ll start asking questions.
“I got caught up in work. I need to build trust, remember?” I manage, though every syllable tastes like a lie.
A lie that feels like a betrayal of Estella.
“I can’t really have friends in my new life, you know,” I add, twisting a thread of sarcasm into it, hoping he takes it as nonchalance rather than desperation.
Silence stretches on the other end. Long enough that I start picturing him setting the phone down and walking away without a word.
“Aren’t you supposed to turn your phone off when you’re on the mission? That’s what we agreed on,” he says. “You were available.”
Oh, fuck me.
I forgot. Entirely.
“Jason, I’m deep in this,” I snap, leaning into the irritation, letting it sharpen my tone. “I’m running around pretending I’d do anything for this job, dealing with all the shit they’re throwing my way. So what if I forgot? Does that mean you don’t trust me anymore?”
I hate pushing him into a corner, hate sounding like some gaslighting manipulative asshole.
But he leaves me no choice. I need him steady, and I need him calm.
Jason is the type who will chew on inconsistencies until he grinds them to dust, then start digging through the crumbs.
Eventually, he’ll find something he shouldn’t.
This is for his own good.
“I do trust you, man, it’s just—” he exhales, his earlier edge melting away. “Look, I’m sorry. You gotta understand, Lucia and I… we were scared shitless here. You know her. She started imagining the worst, thinking they caught you, that you were being tortured somewhere.”
Technically, I was being tortured—just not in the way they imagined. Sitting across from Bennett, listening to his never-ending stream of sanctimonious bullshit while restraining myself from rearranging his face… that was real torture.
“I understand,” I say evenly, lifting my wrist to check the time. Finding this place, arranging the meeting, getting here without drawing attention—it had all taken far more effort than I’d planned.
On the black canvas of the watch face, its golden numbers glinting faintly, a single dried drop of blood clings to the edge.