3. Mirella #2
I reached for my phone with hands that didn't feel like mine and typed without thinking: Marco set me up. He's the one behind the contract.
It wasn't a confession in a whisper. It wasn't the kiss on my mouth. It was louder, more reckless. I hit send to him—Dante—because somehow my fingers knew he deserved to know, and because I wanted to see whether he'd stay after the new knowledge settled between us.
My thumb hovered. The message left my screen and then it was gone into the small buzzing dark.
Dante watched, his face open and unreadable for the first time in hours.
I waited for his reply. My breath was a count.
My throat clogged. Outside, the city kept its steady hiss.
Inside, the lamp dropped a circle around us and whatever we were had the weight of a thing that could break or become a shelter.
My phone just sat against my palm, a small, lit thing that could start wars.
He didn't move.
"Do you regret telling me?" His voice was small. It was a question with a blade.
I looked up at him. The space between us was a long tight wire.
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed once on the table. I read the notification with my skin prickling—another message, not from him. From Marco.
The name on the screen made something cold and precise click in my chest. My mouth went dry.
I didn't open it.
Dante's fingers tightened around mine. He caught my eyes and didn't look away. "Don't," he said, one word that carried all the threats and promises both of us knew how to keep.
My phone buzzed again.
I thumbed the screen, hands suddenly wrong with anticipation. The screen showed Marco's name and the first line of his message: You shouldn't have done that.
I shut the phone and held it against my chest because if he—if Marco—knew I had told Dante, then every small shelter I'd built would feel like a match.
Dante's grip on my fingers went still. He leaned forward, his forehead nearly touching mine, his breath warm and steady. "Tell me everything," he said.
I opened my mouth. The city held its breath. My phone vibrated on the table as if the world was insisting we decide right now.
I swallowed. "I will," I whispered. "But not here."
He frowned. "Where then?"
I hadn't planned beyond the impulse to tell. The rooftop garden came to me—the place he'd shown me earlier, a strip of sky above the city where we could be less overheard. It was close, risky, and somewhere safe enough for two people who were not supposed to let anyone in.
"Up there," I said. "Before he replies."
Dante's hand tightened on mine in agreement. For a second, the firm set of his mouth made him look like a man choosing a war.
We rose together. The wine sloshed and left a thin ring on the table. I snagged my jacket from the back of a chair, then stopped and draped it over his shoulders without thinking—an old gesture, but it landed with a gentleness that surprised us both.
He didn't say a word as we moved through the hallway. The stairwell smelled of concrete and the faint metallic tang of the city. The elevator hummed. My phone buzzed again, and my thumb hovered over the lit screen. This time I opened the message.
Marco: Good. You always did have a taste for drama.
Dante's grip on my wrist turned not into anger but into a protective claim. "You're not sending him anything more," he said, low.
"I'm not," I replied. I meant it and I didn't. The truth in me was a thin, dangerous line—tell and be closer; stay silent and keep a safe distance.
We stepped out onto the roof and the night hit us with salt and sky. The city's lights moved like distant insects. Dante let go of my wrist and pulled the jacket tighter around me, though I was the one who'd put it there.
At the edge of the roof, under a scrim of stars and the soft rustle of the harbor air, he turned to me. The rooftop was small and smelled of wet stone.
"Tell me now," he said. "Everything. Starting with why he set this in motion."
My phone lay in my palm like a live thing. Marco's message pulsed unread in my head. I felt the old fear—abandonment, betrayal—like a hand around my throat.
I met Dante's eyes. They were darker than the sky.
"I trusted him," I said. "And he left me."
He stepped closer, the space between us gone in two strides. His face was inches from mine. "Then don't trust him again," he said. "Trust me."
My heart thudded against my ribs. He meant it. The danger was that he meant it.
We were both standing on the edge of a choice. My phone buzzed once, twice. I killed the sound and slid it into my pocket.
"I'll tell you," I said. "But if I do, you have to promise me something."
He smiled then, very small and private. "What's that?"
"That you won't leave when I stop being useful." My voice broke on the last word; I hadn't planned to be that honest.
He swallowed. "I can't promise forever," he said. "I can promise I'm not going anywhere because I think you're useful."
That was a lie and a half-truth. It was the kind of promise that could hold for the night.
I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them, I leaned in.
This time, when our mouths met, it wasn't merely curiosity or a dare. The taste of him—wine and lemon and something closer—was a verdict.
We kissed hard enough that the world blurred. My hands found the collar of his shirt, and his thumb ghosted along the line where my jaw met my neck. The kiss said things neither of us had said aloud. It said: I will try. It said: I will stay.
It also said: I am terrified.
At the back of my mind, Marco's message waited unread, a small, dangerous thunder. And then my phone buzzed again, urgent in my pocket, making the roof spin with the sound.
I pulled back enough to breathe and fumbled for the phone. The screen showed Marco's name and the rest of his message that had arrived seconds too late.
You're already in over your head.
I looked up at Dante. His face had gone hard.
"I told you I couldn't promise forever," he said.
My chest split. I had just asked for him not to run. I had just given him a reason to stay.
He stepped closer, so close that his breath hit my lips. "They think they can scare you," he whispered. "They don't know you."
My phone buzzed again. This time the notification was different—an unknown number. A photo popped up, small and sharp: a picture of me in the stairwell, blood on my sleeve, someone standing over me with a blurred face.
Dante's hand tightened around my jacket. "Don't look at it," he said, but the image had already dug under my skin.
I swallowed. Marco had sent it. He knew.
The roof felt suddenly too small and the harbor wind too loud. Dante's mouth was at my ear.
"Tell me everything," he repeated. "Now."
I exhaled and opened my mouth. The city lay below us, indifferent and full of teeth. My phone buzzed in my hand, another message paging the edges of everything I was starting to give him.
I should have run. I should have kept my mouth shut, my hands busy, my heart locked behind the same iron door I'd built after the stairwell. But I didn't move.
"Okay," I said. "I'll tell you. But now you're going to have to listen."
He nodded once, hard and certain.
My phone buzzed again. This time the message preview made my mouth go dry: Did you really think you could trust him?
I looked up at Dante. The roof was suddenly a battlefield. He could protect me—or this could be the thing that did the breaking.
He waited for me to begin. My throat was a tight paper roll. I swallowed and started.