4. Dante
FOUR
Dante
S he is already at the window when I come out of the kitchen—one foot braced on the low ledge, the city smeared gold and neon below. The wine she didn't finish clings to her lips. The scar at the corner of her mouth catches the light and the part of me that counts risks flinches.
"You look like you're planning an escape route," she says, not turning. Voice low. Dangerous. Comfortable.
"Always," I answer. My shirt is still hers; it hangs on me the way his shirts do—looser, softer at the collar. I keep meaning to give it back and never do.
She laughs, the sound thin, meant to polish over something else. "Good. I'd hate to die bored."
I cross the room on three steps. Her scent—gun oil mixed with jasmine—pulls at something tangled and old inside me.
My hand finds the small of her back without thinking and the contact says more than I say.
Her body is warm and lithe against my palm.
I notice, in a way I should not, the way the fabric pulls snug over her hips. My pulse tightens.
"You're staring," she says.
"Can't help it." My voice is softer than I intended. "You're impossible."
"Funny. I could say the same." She finally turns. Up close, her eyes are unreadable and then they're suddenly molten. The joke drops away. We stand so near the glass that our reflections blur together.
She raises the wine glass, a tilt of provocation. "You owe me an explanation, by the way. For stealing my shirt."
I let my fingers lift the rim of the glass and catch it, thumb warm against hers. The electricity is small and immediate. Her hand is callused at the base of the thumb; proof of work you'd rather not see on a woman who kills people for a living. It makes me want to protect her more.
"Payment for bandaging me," she says. "And for not laughing."
"You didn't," I say.
She narrows her eyes. "I didn't?"
"You made a face," I counter. "Several." The tease is a shield.
She steps closer, so close I smell the wine on her breath.
I notice how the collarbone dips under her shirt, how the muscle at her jaw works when she speaks.
The want inside me is a low hunger I haven't fed in years—sharp, disciplined, and dangerous.
My hands want to trace the line of her spine and learn the map of her scars.
"You still haven't told me why Marco sent that picture," I say, too blunt. My teeth catch on the end of the sentence. The words are heavier than I plan.
Her fingers tighten on the glass. "He wanted me afraid. Same as always. You're not the only one he can reach."
"Not the only one," I echo. The possessive in my chest bristles. I don't like other hands reaching her. I don't like the thought of anyone watching. I don't like the way my silence makes her shoulders tense.
Her laugh is half-anger. "You sound jealous. That's new."
"Not jealous." I step so close my knee brushes her thigh. "Protective."
Her mouth quirks. "That's sweeter."
I drop my forehead to hers. The heat of her skin is immediate. I taste leather and citrus when we breathe. The city below hums—a distant, indifferent heart. Up here, the world narrows until it's just the two of us and the thin pane of glass between us and the abyss.
"Don't," she whispers.
Don't what? Don't kiss her. Don't let this be more than what it is. Don't be soft.
I do it anyway.
I cross the last inch. My mouth finds hers—deliberate, searching.
No hot clumsy grab. I move with control because I am practiced at restraint, but I let the restraint slip in careful measures.
Her lips are full and surprising; she tastes like red wine and danger.
The kiss deepens as if it's a thing we've earned.
Her hand comes up and threads into my hair—fingers rough and urgent.
The world tilts and there is no plan except the heat between us.
When our mouths part, her breath is hitchy. She presses her forehead to mine, dizzy and fierce. "You walk a razor, you know that?"
"I know," I say. My voice is raw. I don't pull away.
We stay like that long enough for the city to rearrange its light. Then, quietly, I say something I haven't said out loud in years—not even to myself.
"I lost someone because of this life."
Her laugh dies. For a moment she looks unmoored, and I hate giving her cause to look at me that way. I don't fill in names or dates; I don't have to. The admission cuts through the line we'd drawn around professionalism and curiosity. It changes the air.
"Tell me," she says.
I almost don't. Admitting it will open a door I keep shut because behind it waits the memory of a face that won't come back when I call.
"She trusted me," I say finally. "She believed I could keep her safe.
I..." My throat closes. "I thought if I was careful, if I kept the knives in the dark and my hands clean, I could keep her out of it.
She was twenty-two. She—" I stop and shake my head.
The image flashes through me: someone I loved, smiling in a sunlit room, then not.
It's jagged and blunt and enough to make me swallow hard.
Mirella is quiet. Her fingers slide along my jaw and she watches me as if studying the fracture lines. "You still blame yourself," she says, not a question.
"I do." The word is small but honest. "I think anything I let in becomes a target. I tell myself leaving hurts less than staying."
She closes her eyes. "That's why you pull away."
"That's why I try," I say. "You're not safe around me."
She shifts, and the motion is all defiance and softness. "You want me safe, then don't make promises you can't keep. Make the ones you can."
"Like what?"
She huffs a laugh—no humor, only challenge. "Like not walking out the door while I'm still alive."
The answer is too little and too much. I take her face in both hands, thumb brushing that pale crescent scar on her forearm without thinking, then remember and let go.
"I won't leave because you're useful," I tell her.
"I won't leave because it's convenient." The truth tastes raw in my mouth. "I'll stay because I want to."
Her stare is still. Then something like relief leaks out of her. "Wanting is not a promise."
"No." I move, anchoring my forehead back to hers. "It's nearer."
She shoves me, half irritated, half breathless. "You're infuriating."
"I make that a point."
We laugh together—short, incredulous bursts—and there it is: permission. Not the tidy kind you say in formal vows, but a small, vertiginous allowance to be soft. To be with one person in a way that's not just utility.
I unhook a thin throw from the back of the couch without moving away from her and pull it up.
My hands are steady. I drape it over our shoulders, tucking it around us like a shield.
It is a small, passive action, but the way her body relaxes under the linen is enough to gouge out the rest of my restraint.
"There." I say nothing more. The blanket is a little threadbare but warm. She leans back into me and the contact hums under my ribs.
"This is indulgent," she mutters.
"Good," I say.
We remain at the window, two silhouettes and one ragged blanket.
Her head fits against my chest in a way that feels illicit and right.
I can hear her breathing slow. My hand rests, idle, against the small of her back—calluses and warmth.
I map the line of her spine with my thumb. My thumb's motion is almost a vow.
She shifts and our knees press together.
I notice the arch of her neck, the stubble of her jaw where hair would be on a man, the smallness of her throat when she swallows.
Desire rings in my body, but it's laced with something sharper—fear.
If I allow myself to care, what will the world take?
What will the family take? Enzo's eyes from a week before flicker in the dark of my mind.
"Tell me something," she says suddenly. "Tell me why you didn't walk when you could have."
Because leaving would be easier, because leaving protects them. I don't say that. I say, "Because I learned the hard way that leaving isn't always mercy."
"And staying is?" Her voice is a whisper now. The question is accusation and invitation at once.
"Staying is me trying to fix what I broke," I admit. It's too much and not enough. "Staying is my punishment."
She is quiet long enough for the city to fill the space. Then she reaches up and nips at my lower lip, playful and sharp. "You're sentimental."
"I'm old," I tell her. "Older than I look."
"You're self-flagellating," she corrects. "Different."
We trade small barbs and softer touches.
The edge between flirt and confession slices neatly; every line we cross rewires the way we look at each other.
I can feel her scanning me—learning me the way I have been learning her.
It's seductive because it's shared, because both of us have kept our hands busy with killing until this point in the night when the most dangerous thing we do is breathe too close.
She pulls back just enough to kiss across my collarbone, slow and deliberate. My breath catches. Her lips leave a heat I can still feel on my skin.
"Stay out of the family business if they smell you close to me," she says, voice low. "Promise me they'll overlook it."
"I can't promise them anything," I say, the words a clean refusal. I won't lie. "I can promise you I will make them pay attention to anyone who tries to hurt you."
Her laugh is sharp. "That's a family-sized promise."
"I'm not promising forever," I say. The line trembles. "I'm promising tonight. I'm promising this roof and this blanket and this moment."
Her eyes soften. "That's larger than I expected," she admits.
I glance at the coffee table. My phone buzzes face down under a stack of magazines. I could ignore it. I don't.
The name on the screen is brief, a clean label that never carries good news. Costa. The message preview cuts off in one short line.
I watch the light jump across the curved glass of the phone like an insect. The blanket scrapes as she moves, small and human. For a second everything shrinks to the size of a heartbeat.
"Don't," she says, softer now. "Don't open it."
I should. I need to. I slide a thumb and the message unfurls in blunt, corporate tone. A single sentence: Report to the Villa tomorrow at dawn. Bring Mirella.
The world narrows. I feel her body stiffen against mine. She curses under her breath and presses her hand over my wrist—hard, not to stop me from moving but to let me know she's there.
"They want to collect me," she says. The words are flat. There is no surprise in them; only calculation.
I swallow. There are a dozen ways that can go wrong. Enzo will be there. Orders from the family are never casual. "I will be there," I say immediately.
"No." She jerks back, eyes wide. "You can't. That will ruin you."
"Then don't go," I say. I'm not asking.
"I can't not go," she replies. "You know that."
"I do," I say. My hands clench around the blanket until the fabric creases. "But you won't go alone."
Her laugh is frantic and fragile. "Is that a threat or a promise?"
"A promise." I mean it. If staying for tonight is a promise, then going with her is the next one I will break my jaw on.
She stares at me as if measuring whether the man who holds her now is the same one who keeps his face unreadable before the family. "You're dangerous," she says. "So am I."
"Then let's be dangerous together," I answer. The words land like a dare and a plea.
She exhales, a sound that is almost surrender. For a sliver of time everything is still—wine-stained lips, my fingers at her spine, the thin blanket between us. Then the phone buzzes again, more insistent.
I push off the window with my shoulder, the movement bringing me away from the closeness like stepping back off a cliff. Her hand follows mine to the couch, fingers trailing, reluctant.
"We have to plan," I say.
"Fine," she says. "We plan."
The second buzz is different. An incoming call. From Enzo.
I feel the sink of old alarms in my gut. The blanket slides off our shoulders as if it knows how fragile the shelter was.
"Answer it," Mirella says.
"No." My thumb hovers over the screen; the call will show the name that decides our schedules, our liberties. If I pick up, I bend; if I don't, I risk a thousand questions.
She watches me and the set of her mouth hardens into something useful. "You want my head? Because that's how you get it."
"Don't say that," I order, more sharply than I intend.
She leans forward, closer than before and not kissing me this time—an intimacy that looks like readiness. "Then answer it," she says. "Let them see us. Let them know I'm not alone."
I look at her. This is the point where I either step into a life I swore would never touch another, or I back away before the Costa family has a reason to use the space between us.
Enzo's name pulses on the screen. I slide my thumb and accept.
"Talk," he says before I can breathe.
My mouth is a desert. I can feel Mirella's heartbeat against my ribs like a second voice. I close my eyes, hear the city, the hum, the thin rattle of consequences. I breathe out.
"Talk," I repeat.