32. Chapter Thirty-Two Jade
Chapter Thirty-Two: Jade
M y entire life was about to change…I was sure of it.
But before I had finished organizing my thoughts, a knock—sharp and unexpected—pierced through my muddled thoughts. Curiosity peaked, laced with annoyance at the disruption. I glanced up at the clock on my nightstand.
It was nearly midnight.
Who could it be at this hour?
I hoped everything was okay. I was already wearing my pajamas and slippers, my hair a messy tumble of curls against my neck. I stood up, crossing the room to see through the peephole. My heart stuttered in my chest when I recognized the figure standing there. Dante.
All the oxygen seemed to be sucked out of the room. I could feel my pulse quicken and a wave of dizziness threatening as his silhouette blurred then sharpened once more in my view. The edges of my vision danced with the threat of panic, but I took slow, deep breaths, reminding myself that this was Dante. He was complicated, yes, and dangerous in ways I was still discovering, but he was not a threat to me.
“Dante?” I asked, opening the door a crack. He looked out of place in my apartment corridor, his tailored suit gleaming under the dim lights, his chiseled features hardened by a taut expression.
His jaw clenched at the sight of me, his pained expression a stark contrast to his usual confident demeanor. He looked even more handsome under the low light, if that was even possible.
His face was drained of color; the jovial mischief I’d grown accustomed to was nowhere in sight. Dante’s eyes were clouded with urgency. His chest rose and fell heavily, as if he’d been running.
“Jade,” he began, but his voice caught in his throat as if the words were too painful to form. He fumbled for composure, raking his fingers through his hair.
“I need...” he started again, swallowing hard. I watched, my heart pounding against my ribcage like a wild animal defending its territory.
I knew I should tell him to go away. There was no reason for him to be here. And yet he looked so upset…
“Dante, are you okay?” I asked tentatively, opening the door wider. The concern in my voice was genuine, this was nothing like him.
Dante glanced behind him before stepping inside, his movements shaky. His usually confident demeanor replaced by a palpable unease. “I need...to tell you something,” he finally managed to say, fixing me with a look that sent a chill down my spine.
“Alright.” My throat tightened as I closed the door behind him and led him to the living room. Our relationship was anything but ordinary, yet this felt different, it felt loaded and potentially life-altering. My heart pounded in my chest as we both took a seat.
Dante’s fingers drummed restlessly against his knee, his gaze darting around my apartment. “I’m going to show you a picture on my phone,” he said. “It’s not going to make a lot of sense, but I’m going to explain it. You can ask me any questions you want, but all I ask is that you let me finish explaining before you ask me any questions. Is that okay?”
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat, my curiosity piqued by his strange behavior and cryptic words. His hand slipped into his pocket, pulling out a sleek, black phone. What could possibly be on that phone that was causing him so much distress?
He showed me a picture of a newspaper clipping. My name was on it. My picture was on it. I read it a couple of times, unable to make sense of it. It seemed to be an obituary for me. But I was alive.
Very much alive, and very much pregnant.
My heart throbbed in my chest. My hands felt like ice blocks. My mind spun with impossible thoughts.
“I... What is this, Dante?” I asked, voice trembling. “What’s going on?”
He took a deep breath, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the phone a little tighter. “Jade...it’s a long story, but the short version is, I have a lot of powerful enemies and one of them found out we were seeing each other. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of him. You won’t have to worry about this. But in case someone sends this to you on social media or something, you should know so you can play it off as a prank.”
“A prank,” I said, my voice a whisper.
Dante nodded, the tension in his face easing slightly. “Yes, Jade. A prank,” he reiterated. “My family’s criminal empire extends far beyond what you see at face value, and unfortunately... you’re caught in the middle.”
A soft sigh escaped my lips as I handed his phone back to him. I didn’t speak for several moments, letting the silence stretch between us.
He cleared his throat. “Do you have any questions for me?” he asked.
My mind was a whirlwind of confusion and fear, with questions echoing like a broken record in my consciousness. There were the obvious ones, like ‘How could you let this happen?’ or ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ But those weren’t the questions that scared me. The ones that truly terrified me were along the lines of ‘Who wants to kill me?’ and ‘Am I going to die?’
“Are they going to kill me?” I finally asked.
Dante’s expression darkened. “No. I would never let anything happen to you.”
“How can you know that?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “I’ll kill them first.”
My breath hitched at the cold determination in his voice. His words were chilling, but they resonated with an uneasy comfort. Framed by the soft glow of my living room lamp, Dante seemed more like a protective avenger than anything else.
But I definitely couldn’t tell him about being pregnant. Not until I managed to untangle all this.
“I wanted to warn you, tell you I have this handled and, uh, apologize,” Dante said. “I have a…hang on a second, I’ll be right back.”
He stepped out of my apartment for a brief moment, and he came back with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers in his hand. “I put this just out of view,” he said. “In case you decided not to let me in. So thank you for letting me in.”
“Well, it seemed important,” I said as he closed the door behind him.
“It was. I was tending to this all day. I’m sorry I missed your talk.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t expect you to be there. You’re a hobbyist, not a pro. It would have been boring for you.”
He smiled. “I doubt that. Watching you talk about what you care about is my favorite thing. It was genome sequencing, right?”
I sighed, rubbing my temple as I gestured for him to sit down on my sofa. “Honestly, it was hard to let you in. I don’t trust you after what happened last time,” I said, the words sharp like broken glass underfoot.
He exhaled, a look of regret washing over his features. “I’m sorry, Jade. I got carried away. I just... I wanted to show you how much I needed you. That’s why I missed your conference.”
“Needed or wanted?” I corrected, unable to stop the scientist in me from seeking clarity. “And it was about biotechnological applications in neuroscience, not genome sequencing.”
Dante’s lips curled into a smile, a soft chuckle escaping him. His reaction was like a spark in dry underbrush, threatening to reignite something dangerous between us.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice steady.
“Nothing,” he said, his smile lingering. “I just love hearing you talk about your work. You light up, you know? It’s captivating.”
My defenses wavered as he spoke, the genuine admiration in his tone disarming me. “The conference didn’t go great,” I said. “Well, the talk was fine, but the vibes were weird.”
“I’m sure it’s better than you think. And if it isn’t, hey, you’ll knock them dead next time,” he said, then looked at the flowers. “Do you want me to keep holding these on my lap or…”
I smiled, taking the flowers off him. I navigated the small kitchen, its familiarity bringing a sense of order to my thoughts. Plucking an empty vase from the shelf, I filled it with water before arranging Dante’s flowers within it. The petals were vibrant against the dull steel of the sink, a slash of color in the otherwise drab space.
“So what exactly were you doing today? You weren’t actually killing anybody, right?”
He shook his head. He scratched at the back of his neck—an awkward gesture that seemed out of place on someone who usually exuded such confidence. “That’s just a figure of speech.”
“But real estate?”
“Look, Jade, it’s just business stuff,” he said finally, his voice low. The apartment was tiny, so he remained on the couch as we had this conversation. “You know how it is.”
Did I, though? His vagueness gnawed at me, the unanswered questions piling up like the unread journals on my desk. But there was something in his tone, a hint of something deeper, that made me pause.
“Sure, Dante,” I replied, not quite ready to let him off the hook, but also aware that pushing might only drive him further away. “Just ‘business stuff.’”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and for a moment, I thought I saw a crack in the fa?ade—the weight of worlds unspoken pressing against it.
“Jade...” he started, but the words trailed off, leaving an unfinished thought hanging between us like the steam from the tea kettle I’d forgotten on the stove. I watched Dante’s struggle, the play of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed whatever half-truth he had prepared. “Contracts, property negotiations, you know the drill.”
“Right,” I said, my voice flat. My arms folded over my chest as I leaned back against the counter, my gaze not wavering from his face. His answers were like breadcrumbs, leading me away from what I really wanted to know. And I could tell there was so much more he wasn’t saying.
“Why the rush to apologize?” I pressed, watching him closely. His eyes, dark and fathomless, flickered with something I couldn’t quite read. The silence stretched out, becoming another presence in the room, demanding an answer. “To be clear, what I want to know is why you’re apologizing about missing the conference and not about forcing me to come in a parking lot.”
He smirked. “Well, you loved that.”
“I didn’t--” I stammered, feeling the familiar heated flush creep into my cheeks. But I couldn’t deny a certain undercurrent of truth in his words. And beneath that, a long-buried desire began to stir, the memory of his hands on me quickening my breath.
“Jade,” his voice was gentle now, and he rose from the couch, closing the gap between us. His glance darted briefly to my stomach before finding my eyes again. For a moment, I was sure he knew about the baby. Then he shook his head slightly, as if to clear it, and held out his hand to me - palm up - like an offering.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, more earnestly this time. “For everything. For all of it.”
I could see the sincerity in his eyes and it made my heart twinge. I put my hand in his, feeling the warmth spread from his fingers to mine.
“I appreciate that,” I managed to say, meeting his gaze with a hesitant smile.
He pulled me close to him. “Now,” he said into my ear. “How many times have you touched yourself thinking about me fucking you in that parking lot?”