Chapter 37 Dante
The door doesn’t just break—it detonates inward, crashing to the floor with a savage thud that kicks a violent cloud of dust into the air. I wrinkle my nose and swipe at my eyes, clearing out the grit just as footsteps thunder toward me.
“Dear God,” a familiar voice breathes. I don’t need to look to know it’s Lucia. “What did you do…”
Metal clicks fill the room, and I lift my hands in surrender, already bored by how absurdly repetitive this bullshit has gotten.
As the dust thins, Lucia’s face sharpens into view. She’s trembling, her fingers white-knuckled around the gun she’s clinging to. Three armed men stand behind her, all their barrels fixed on me like obedient little guardians.
“It was self-defense,” I lie, not even bothering to add conviction. I’m too drained to perform. My arm is screaming with every heartbeat, fresh stitches sending fire straight to my skull, but underneath it all is the bone-deep exhaustion—physical, mental, everything in between.
All I want is to get out of this godforsaken base. I already know it’ll claw its way into my fucking nightmares.
“Fuck, Dante, I don’t believe this,” Lucia cries, her voice shaking as hard as her hands. “Why?”
“Why did you decide to hunt me? That’s the real question.” My tone stays level, though my jaw ticks with anger. “Seriously? After everything we’ve been through?”
Her eyes grow wide as they land on Jason’s corpse, disbelief draining the color from her face. “I… I can’t look at this,” she whispers, then snaps her glare back to me. Her lip curls, disgust twisting her expression before she flicks her chin toward the far end of the base. “Move.”
My brows shoot up. “Move where?” I ask, glancing pointedly at the armed parade behind her. “You don’t feel safe with me, even with all this artillery aimed at my head? Come on, Lucia, you know me.”
“I don’t!” she screams. “None of us do! We stopped recognizing you a long time ago.” Her hands shake so violently she has to clamp one over the other just to steady her grip. She turns to the men behind her, voice cracking. “Check him and move him downstairs, please.”
I hardly have a moment to register before they lunge.
Hands clamp onto my shirt, the rough fabric biting into my raw skin as they haul me backward.
Fingers rake across my body and clothes, searching every pocket, probing for anything hidden.
I thrash until a gun barrel digs straight into my fresh gut stitches.
“Give me a fucking reason,” one of them growls, pressing the metal harder into the wound. “The second Lucia walks away, I’m taking my time with your psychotic ass.”
Lovely. Seems she got herself a shiny new title—just like Jason. Maybe he promised her a crown in their little fantasy kingdom.
Either way, I’ve already made a giant crack in their make-believe world.
I’m so wrapped in that thought that I barely register the descent until the lights flicker on. A cold, metallic clang hums through the basement, and then I see it—the cage, waiting in the center like some hungry beast.
I was prepared for this. My arm is proof of that.
But now that I’m actually being dragged toward it, dread floods my veins so sharply I want to crawl out of my own skin.
They haul me across the floor, and the moment the door swings open, dread shakes loose inside me. Then they throw me in, and my body hits the floor—a teeth-rattling collision that sends a brutal shudder through every raw inch of me.
It feels like my whole frame is nothing but stitches and bruises. I roll onto my side, clenching my jaw as the discomfort spreads in harsh, pulsing waves.
Through the haze, my eyes track Lucia. She locks the cage door with a sharp twist of the key, metal scraping against metal, before turning to the guards.
She says something—her lips move, her expression shifts—but the piercing ringing in my ears swallows every word.
I only see her gesture them away, sending them down the corridor, and then her gaze returns to me.
“Dante,” she says, or at least her mouth forms the shape of the name. The sound doesn’t reach me. I look around, disoriented, breath hitching as the walls close in.
Every inhale tightens my chest. Every heartbeat stutters faster. Panic spikes as I take in how cramped the space really is.
Old memories, long-buried but never dead, ignite like gasoline catching flame. They surge up the back of my skull and race across my vision—those days and nights locked in a cage just like this.
The reek of rust and blood. My father’s footsteps. The beatings that left me numb to my own limbs.
They rise and drag me under before I can brace against them. I slap a hand over my face, trying to force my thoughts into order, but everything slips through my grip. The memories swell, suffocating, pulling me toward the same drowning place I’ve escaped from a thousand times but never outrun.
I need Estella. I need the warmth of her hands, the calm in her voice. She was the only thing keeping those memories from swallowing me whole.
But she’s gone. And with her gone, the past floods back in, dragging me to the deepest point of the ocean right when I try to surface.
Voices echo from every corner of my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing back the tears, but they spill through anyway, lining my lashes and breaking loose down my cheeks.
“Dante?” Her voice finally pierces through, faint but real. I shake my head, annoyance blooming through the despair like a crack through glass.
None of this would’ve happened if she hadn’t been so unbelievably stupid. If she hadn’t put me in this fucking cage. If she hadn’t trapped me in the one place she should’ve known I can’t survive.
“Lucia,” I say slowly, pushing myself up onto my feet. My eyes stay shut as I fight the storm of emotions, memories, and sensations ripping through me. “I need you to let me out of here.”
A quiet sob breaks the air. “I’m sorry, Dante… I can’t.”
My nostrils flare as I inhale sharply, disappointment sinking deeper with every passing second. There’s no saving them. Not her. Not Jason. Jason is already gone, and Lucia is determined to follow him in her stupidity.
“I’m uncomfortable here,” I say, a flat, humorless laugh slipping out, scraped from the bottom of my throat. “I don’t—”
“I’m scared of you, Dante,” she says, echoing the same words I’ve heard once already, the ones that branded themselves into my skull.
I scrub a hand down my face, trying to ground myself, to force the storm of thoughts to settle, but the attempt only stokes my irritation.
“I want to help you, I really do, but you’re scaring me. What you did to Jason—”
“Was self-defence,” I cut in, forcing myself to meet her gaze. “I promise you, I didn’t want it to end like this.”
Tears pool in her eyes, trembling at the edges before she shakes her head, disbelief contorting her features. “His hands were… broken. And his eyes—” Her voice fractures, and she sniffles loudly. “It’s as if his soul is still hoping for the best.”
I barely manage not to roll my eyes. “I’m sorry, but I had to protect myself,” I reply. “Do you want to keep me here for the whole night? What’s your plan?”
She exhales sharply. “Yes, we’re keeping you here. You’ve proven to be a danger to everyone around you, so this is for your own good.”
I try to hold myself steady, searching Lucia’s expression for some flicker of the softness I know she’s capable of, the humanity that’s always there in her eyes. “I can’t stay here, Lucia,” I say quietly. “I won’t hurt you, I have no intention of it. I just want out. That’s all.”
“To do what?” she snaps back. “To chase after her, maybe? And then what?”
Her jealousy strikes me like a sour, unwelcome scent, causing my brows to jump in surprise.
“I’ve been closer to Estella than you and Jason ever will,” I reply, my voice calm but sharp.
“I saw her for what she is. All I’m asking is to let me find her.
We don’t want anything except to leave this mess behind. ”
“You forgot your real purpose,” she fires back, and the muscle beneath my eye twitches. “You got played. Manipulated. I’ve never seen you like this. And—” She cuts herself off, turning away as fresh tears trail down her cheeks. “You killed Jason.”
The dim, frail thread of hope snaps clean. She can’t be reasoned with. She’s just like him—locked inside her own little imaginings, blind to the truth, blind to what’s written plainly on my face.
I step away from the wall, my gaze skimming the cramped cage. My mind drags me back into old horrors as if eager to make me relive each one, to force me to drown in memories I never asked to revisit.
“Everything will go as planned,” Lucia says softly.
“As planned?” I echo, a humorless chuckle snapping out of me. I turn fully, nodding to myself as the heat inside me spikes, a scorching anger clawing its way up. “As fucking planned,” I repeat. “You just have to have another awful fucking plan, don’t you?!”
My emotions rip free, wild and uncontained. It feels like ants swarming beneath my skin, scraping over nerves, burrowing through every layer of me. The itch flares, relentless, consuming, until it roars into a wildfire that scorches its way across every inch of my body.
And with it comes the flood—every imprint of his hand, every bruise, every memory—dragged up from the depths and slammed back into me with brutal clarity.
I yank at the loose, stretched collar of my shirt, desperate for air, dragging my fingers across my neck. The veins there bulge, my skin flushing hot as I claw at it, my short nails digging deep just to escape the sensation threatening to consume me whole.
“Let me out of here,” I snarl, slamming my fist into the wall. The impact shudders up my arm, but I barely feel it.
Through my half-opened, rage-blinded eyes, I see Lucia shaking her head. My fist crashes into the wall again, harder this time, and my mind replaces the bulletproof glass with her face. “Let me the fuck out!”