Chapter 5 Dante #2
I know if I hesitate now, I’ll lose what little resolve I’ve managed to build overnight. So I sit behind my desk, papers already laid out in precise order with my jaw locked tight enough that it aches.
She walks in with her shoulders rigid and her face pale. Despite that, her eyes remain furious. The first thing she does is ball her hands into fists when she stops in front of my desk.
“Is there a reason you separated me from my son again?” she demands.
Our son, a voice reminds me darkly.
I feel it then, the instinctive flare of anger clawing its way up my throat. The urge to snap back and remind her that she is not the wronged party here, that she is the one who disappeared all those years ago and kept him from me, and it is not a transgression that I will easily forget or forgive.
If I ever do in the first place.
“He’s safe with the staff. Nothing will happen to him while you and I are having a conversation,” I say evenly.
She fires back instantly. “He’s a child, Dante. He woke up crying this morning when your guards came in with breakfast. Do you know how scared he is right now? He’s in a place he’s never been before with people he doesn’t recognize surrounding him.”
And whose fault is that? The words almost escape me. I bite them back hard enough that my teeth grind together audibly. Losing control now would serve nothing. All it would do is show how easily she is able to get under my skin. That her influence over me has never truly gone away.
I refuse to hand her any more power than she already has, even unknowingly.
“Sit down.” The command is quiet but absolute.
She doesn’t at first. For a long, stretched moment, we stare at each other from across the room. I let the silence do the work for me. One minute passes, then another. I don’t look away. I simply wait.
Finally, she relents.
With a loud sigh, she grabs the chair positioned beside my desk and drags it forward. The legs scrape harshly against the hardwood floor, the sound grating on my already frayed nerves. It echoes too loudly in the quiet study. She drops into the seat stiffly, her hands clenched in her lap.
I don’t give her time to settle. I slide the stack of documents across the desk toward her. “Sign these.”
She doesn’t even bother glancing down at them. “Do you think I’m stupid? I’m not signing anything.”
“Elena.”
“I’m not.”
“Do you want to see your son again?”
She freezes, her defiance faltering.
Her eyes flicker, just once, toward the door.
It’s only for a heartbeat but it's enough to know that I’ve broken through that stubborn wall she’s tucked herself behind.
She hates that I’ve cornered her like this.
Hates that I’ve made it clear that what I hold and what she stands to lose are one in the same, that this is not a time to be defiant.
She finally glances down. I watch her eyes move across the page as she reads. It doesn’t take long for realization to bloom across her face and for her head to snap up, her gaze meeting mine again.
“A marriage license,” she says, disbelief bleeding into outrage. “You can’t be serious.”
I lean back in my chair, steepling my fingers, letting the Don within me rise fully to the surface.
It’s the only way I’ll survive this conversation.
Whatever guilt gnaws at me or shame whispers that I’m doing this wrong, I crush it down before it can take root and convince me to take back the papers and throw them away.
“You want to protect your future? Your son’s?” I ask calmly.
Her lips thin.
I continue. “Then you’ll do it as my wife.
Publicly. If word of your return and that you brought a child with you spreads, the scandal will destroy what I’ve managed to rebuild in the time your cowardly father decided to flee.
You will become a liability I cannot afford to have if you aren’t under my protection. ”
“What exactly are you trying to suggest?” she chokes out.
“You and the boy will live under my roof and under my family’s name. As long as you are a wife, no one in their right mind will touch you. Not unless they are planning on starting a war they cannot finish.”
The color drains from her skin slowly as the words settle over her. Her eyes grow glassy and unfocused as if she’s staring at something far beyond the walls of my study.
I see it clearly, then. To her, this isn’t a marriage. It’s a life sentence handed down without appeal. A future stripped of choice and dressed up to look respectable. A prison wrapped in silk and vows and my family’s name where the cell bars are invisible but nonetheless real.
She isn’t imagining a wedding. She’s imagining locked doors, guards, and a gilded cage where every step she takes is monitored. She sees years stretching out in front of her trapped beneath a surname she once tried to escape, bound to the man she once loved and feared in equal measure.
Her fingers tighten, the knuckles whitening. There’s no anger left in her now, it’s just the quiet, crushing realization that she’s been cornered in a way she can’t fight her way free from.
I tell myself this is necessary. It’s the only realistic way to protect our child and her from the people who I know will stop at nothing to wipe us out and protect everything I’ve rebuilt from the ruins of her father almost destroying my family.
But the guilt still sits heavily in my chest, unwelcome yet undeniable.
I’m not offering her a choice, but what I am offering her is survival.
She must realize that too, because only another minute passes before she finally raises her head and meets my eyes again.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”