Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dante
Iremember the first time he looked at me. Really looked. Not through me like the other soldiers did. Not past me like Bruno sometimes did when he was focused on business.
Lorenzo saw me.
I was seventeen. Still skinny from years of not eating enough. Still flinching at loud noises. Still sleeping with a knife under my pillow because the nightmares never stopped.
The family had a gathering at the main house. Some celebration I don't remember anymore. What I remember is standing in the corner of the kitchen, trying to be invisible, when Lorenzo walked in.
He was eighteen then. Already sharp. Already watching everything with those calculating eyes.
He grabbed two plates of food from the counter. Walked over to me. Handed me one without a word.
Then he sat down on the floor next to me and started eating.
We didn't talk. Not that first time. He just sat there, eating his food, like it was the most normal thing in the world to share a meal with the homeless kid his brother dragged in off the streets.
After that, I started following him.
I didn't mean to. It just happened. Wherever Lorenzo went, I found myself going too. He never told me to leave. Never asked why I was there. He just made space for me.
When he trained, I trained beside him. When he studied the family business, I listened from the corner. When he went to meetings with his father, he started bringing me along.
"You're quiet," he told me once. "That's useful. People forget you're there. They say things they shouldn't."
It was the first time anyone had told me my silence was worth something.
The Sartori family back then was different. Giuseppe was still alive. Riccardo too. The empire was blooming. Growing. Expanding into new territories every year.
Not gently. Never gently.
I watched men disappear. Watched deals get made in blood. Watched the family build its power on the bones of anyone who stood in their way.
But I also watched something else.
I watched Giuseppe kiss his wife's forehead, Aria, every morning before breakfast. Watched Riccardo teach his younger siblings how to shoot, patient and careful, never raising his voice. Watched Aria and Giulia cook massive dinners for twenty people and refuse to let anyone leave the table hungry.
I watched a family love each other.
And I didn't know what to do with that.
"I never talked to anyone about this," I tell Marina.
She's stopped crying. Her eyes are red, her cheeks wet, but she's listening. Really listening.
"About what?"
"About any of it. How I felt. What it was like." I shake my head. "I didn't know people did that. Talked about feelings. I thought you just... carried them. Buried them. Kept moving."
Marina's quiet.
"No one ever asked?"
"No one ever asked."
The words hang in the air between us.
"I didn't realize I could love people," I say. "After my family died, I thought that part of me was gone. Burned out. I thought I was just surviving. Going through the motions until something killed me."
I look at my hands. The scars on my knuckles. The calluses from years of fighting.
"But I did love them. The Sartoris. I loved them entirely."
Marina shifts on the couch. Her hand moves toward me, then stops. Pulls back.
"Aria was like a mother to me," I say. "She never treated me different. She treated me like one of her children. Made sure I ate. Made sure I slept. Yelled at me when I did something stupid."
I almost smile at the memory.
"I had brothers again. Lorenzo. Bruno. Pietro. Nico. Even Riccardo. Trained with me. Trusted me with their lives."
I pause.
"And Vittoria. I had a sister too."
Marina's watching me with something I can't read. Not pity. Not judgment. Something else.
"You found a family," she says quietly.
"I found a family."
The words feel strange in my mouth. True, but strange. Like admitting something I've known for twenty years but never said out loud.
"There are kids right now," I say. "Kids like I was. Fighting from the day they are born just to survive. Sleeping in doorways. Stealing food. Learning that the world is a place that hurts you and no one is coming to help."
My voice goes rough.
"They don't know they can be loved. They don't know that people exist who will stay. Who will choose them. Who will look at them and see something worth keeping."
Marina's eyes are wet again.
"They think they're broken," I say. "They think whatever happened to them—whatever made them end up alone—means they don't deserve anything good. They learn to stop hoping. Stop wanting. Stop believing that love is something that happens to people like them."
I meet her eyes.
"I was one of those kids. For four years, I was one of those kids. And if Bruno hadn't found me in that warehouse, I would have died believing I was nothing. That my life meant nothing. That no one would ever look at me and see a person worth saving."
Marina's crying again. Silent tears running down her cheeks.
"But he did," I say. "He found me. And Lorenzo saw me. And Aria fed me. And slowly, over years, I learned something I never thought I'd learn."
I take a breath.
"I learned that people can stay. That love doesn't always leave.
That sometimes, if you're lucky, you find people who choose you.
Not because you're useful. Not because you can fight or kill or protect them.
But because they see you. The real you. The broken, terrified, hopeless you.
And they decide you're worth keeping anyway. "
Marina wipes her face with both hands.
"Dante," she whispers.
"I'm not telling you this so you'll feel sorry for me," I say. "I'm telling you because you asked. Because you wanted to know who I am. What made me this way."
I lean back against the couch. The movement pulls at my wound, but I ignore it.
"This is who I am. A kid who lost everything. A man who found a family. A killer who loves the people he protects."
I look at her.
"I'm not asking you to forgive what I've done. I'm not asking you to understand it. I'm just trying for the first time to express what I truly feel.''
Marina
I stare at him.
I didn't know he could talk this much.
In Chicago, Dante barely spoke. He communicated in looks and silences and the occasional sharp comment designed to make me angry. I thought that was who he was. A man of few words. A weapon that didn't need to explain itself.
But he's been talking for almost half an hour now. Telling me things I'm certain he's never told anyone. His voice rough in places, steady in others. His eyes distant when he talks about his family's murder, present when he talks about the Sartoris.
He's still talking about those kids. The ones like him. The ones sleeping in doorways right now, learning that the world is a place that hurts you.
I need him to stop.
Not because I don't care. Because I care too much.
Because I know those kids exist. I work with foster children every day at the nonprofit.
I see the ones who've learned to stop hoping.
The ones who flinch when adults move too fast. The ones who steal food and hide it in their pockets because they don't trust that there will be more tomorrow.
I know exactly what Dante is describing.
And I can't think about it right now. Not with him sitting three feet away, wounded and vulnerable and more human than I've ever seen him.
"Dante," I say.
He stops talking. Looks at me.
"You didn't answer my question."
He nods. Waits.
"Why did you come here?"
He looks away. Stares at the wall like it holds answers I can't see.
"You're not going to like what I have to say."
"I'm sure I won't."
Dante takes a deep breath.
His hands are resting on his thighs. I watch his fingers curl slightly, then relax. A tell I've never noticed before.
"When I got shot," he says slowly, "I knew I was dying."
My stomach drops.
"The bullet was deep. I was losing blood fast. I could feel myself getting weaker with every minute. By the time I got on my bike, I wasn't sure I'd make it ten blocks."
He's still not looking at me.
"I should have called Lorenzo. Should have gone to the doctor. Should have done a hundred things that would have made more sense than riding across the city with a hole in my side."
His voice goes quiet.
"But I didn't want to die in a hospital. I didn't want to die in some safe house surrounded by men who work for me. I didn't want the last thing I saw to be strangers."
He finally looks at me.
His eyes are dark. Unguarded in a way I've never seen them.
"I wanted to see your face."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
"What?"
"I wanted to see you one last time before I died." His voice is steady, but something underneath it isn't. "I was sure I wouldn't survive. I could feel it. The darkness closing in. My body shutting down. And the only thing I could think about was you."
I can't breathe.
"I thought if I could just make it to your door. If I could just see you one more time. Then it would be okay. Then dying wouldn't be so bad."
"Dante—"
"I told you that you wouldn't like it."
He's right. I don't like it. I don't like any of this. I don't like the way my chest feels tight or the way my eyes are burning or the way his words are rearranging something inside me that I thought was settled.
"Why?" I ask.
My voice comes out wrong. Too small. Too desperate.
"Why me? We barely know each other. We spent a few weeks in the same house two years ago. We fought constantly. I told you to leave and you left. That's not—that's not a reason to—"
I can't finish the sentence.
Dante watches me struggle.
"You asked me to be honest," he says. "I'm being honest."
"But it doesn't make sense." I stand up. Pace to the window. Turn back. "You have a family. People who love you. People who would have been devastated if you died. And you chose to spend your last moments with someone who—"
I stop.
Someone who what?