5. Mirella
FIVE
Mirella
" Y ou can't keep teasing me and then disappear," I said, breath ragged, when Dante's mouth left mine long enough for me to think.
He smiled without humor. "I'm not teasing."
His fingers splayed along my spine, heavy and certain.
The room smelled like citrus cologne under leather—him—and the sheet tangled around our legs.
I could feel the scar along his jaw under my thumb, the pale line at his knuckle, every small proof he'd been in other fights and come through. My pulse went hard in my throat.
"Then stay," I said.
He stayed. He took a long breath and kissed me again, slower. The first hour was clumsy—too many apologies, hands checking, a question under each touch. I fumbled the hem of his shirt. He laughed low, a sound that made something in me unclench.
"Do I need to ask?" he said, voice small and careful.
"Ask," I said. "Say it."
"Is this what you want?" He lifted his head, eyes dark and direct.
"Yes." My voice surprised me—firm, steady. I hadn't given such a simple thing without strings in years.
His mouth closed over mine like a promise.
Hands that had handled knives and guns moved like they belonged anywhere soft.
He explored the planes of my back with an almost awkward reverence, then found my hip and held it there as if anchoring me.
I traced the ridge of his collarbone with lazy fingertips, memorizing the breadth of him, the way his shirt clung across his shoulders.
He pushed the rest of my shirt up with a thumb. "Tell me if anything—anything—hurts," he murmured.
"Don't stop," I said. "Not that."
We were both ridiculous and perfectly in tune.
The fumbling ended when he slid inside me, slow and searching, an inch at a time.
I bit at his lower lip until he cursed and moved faster.
The city hummed faintly below the windows; up here it was just a narrow world made of skin and breath and the low prayer of our names.
"Mirella," he said, like he was checking I was there.
"Dante," I answered, and the name itself felt like an admission.
We found a rhythm—raw, bordering on feral.
His hands were everywhere: at the nape of my neck, the small of my back, mapping me in ways that didn't feel like ownership but like learning someone sacred.
My fingers dug into his shoulders. He tasted of peppermint and old smoke, of the citrus he wore.
I noticed how his muscles flexed under my palm, how his scarred jaw tightened when he concentrated.
Heat chased the burn where his thumb brushed a tender place. My breath came in ragged stutters.
At some point the edges blurred and voices dropped into animal sounds.
We both said each other's names over and over, a mantra until the rustle of linen and our heavy breathing filled the night.
When he reached for me, it wasn't just hunger; it was fierce protection. "Don't go," he breathed into my hair.
"I'm not leaving," I whispered back, truth and dare braided. I wanted to mean it with bone-deep honesty, not the half-truths I'd traded for survival. He tightened his arms and I felt the line between wanting and needing dissolve.
After came a small, stunned silence. We lay tangled, chests rising and falling in a lazy cadence. His calloused hand found my cheek and held it, thumb warm. I watched him as if I could memorize an unrepeatable expression—the softness he'd kept locked away.
"You breathe wrong after you aim," I said, because I needed noise.
He snorted. "And you sing off-key in the shower. Full of surprises tonight."
I laughed, a wet thing, and reached for him. He kissed my forehead, then my temple, slow and possessive. "Stay," he said again, but softer, like a question asking permission.
I stayed. I fell asleep with the scent of him in my hair, the weight of him a kind of shelter I hadn't permitted myself to need.
Morning came too loud. Light slivered through the blinds and burned across his floor—a reminder there were rules outside the room.
I woke before him, my body still humming with the night.
For a second panic fluttered at the edges: the Costa family, Enzo's suspicion, the text from earlier that had said report to the Villa at dawn.
But those were distant throbs. Dante breathed against my collarbone and the city narrowed to an acceptable threat.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I kept my eyes closed. He reached for it and the movement woke me fully. He read the message and folded his eyebrows together. I knew that look. Duty returning, edging into the softness between us.
He set the phone down without comment. Instead, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and padded to the tiny kitchenette. I watched him move—broad shoulders, careful hands, the lean line of his hips. He'd been built for shutting the world out. I wanted to stay there inside him like a secret.
A cup clicked. Steam hissed. The neighbor's kettle screeched faintly through the walls. Then he returned with a small porcelain cup. He set it on the nightstand with a soft exhale.
"You drink it bitter," he said, not really asking.
My mouth curled. "Straight, no sugar. You remembered."
He lifted the cup, and when he leant over me to press a sleepy kiss to my temple, I felt it: the joke and the vow wrapped in one gesture. "Don't tell Lucia I let you have the good cup," he murmured.
"Your sister would disown you," I said, reaching for the cup as if the heat would ground me.
He curled his hand around mine, fingers warm, squeezing once. "She wouldn't. She'd make me eat the rest of your bad jokes until I agreed to share."
I sipped. Bitter and perfect. He watched me swallow, a quiet smile crossing his face. Then he tugged the sheet up to my chin and sat there, close enough that the heat of him warmed my cheek.
"Tell me something," he said. "Not work. Not contracts. Something stupid."
"Why?" I asked, because this felt dangerous.
"Because I want to know what you were before this," he said, and his voice had the raw edge of someone offering a fragile truce.
I thought of the streets that raised me, of the alleyways and the two-room flat that smelled like frying oil and cheap perfume.
I thought of the handler who'd left me in a stairwell, and the heat behind my ribs that still flares when memory comes.
I could keep names out of it. I could keep armor on.
But his thumb stroked the creased corner of my eye and I wanted to lower it.
"When I was fourteen," I said, "I learned to pick locks by watching a man who never taught me anything but survival. He died before I could pay him back. I promised I wouldn't be weak." It wasn't pretty. It wasn't whole. But it was honest in a way I rarely let be true.
Dante's mouth softened, a crease at one side. "You aren't," he said. "Not to me."
It was almost a confession and I wanted to make one in return.
My phone lay heavy again on the nightstand.
I shouldn't. Everything about names and handlers made my teeth ache with fear.
But lying lives harder than truth; at least that's what I'd told myself when I pulled a trigger on someone who trusted me because I needed them to trust me.
I opened a new message to him—my fingers moving on a nervous autopilot.
My thumb hovered. I saw Marco's face in memory: smooth, easy charm that made other people blind.
He was the reason I'd wanted to get away.
He had left me to bleed in a stairwell once.
I'd never named him aloud. Saying his name made the memory real.
I typed, then erased. I typed again.
"Marco set me up. He's the one behind the contract."
My breath caught. Sending it felt like flinging a stone into dark water. The ripples would reach farther than I could see. I thought of Dante's promise not to leave. I thought of Enzo's text waiting in my head. I thought of Marco's reach.
Dante's hand stilled over mine. He didn't glance up immediately. When he did, his face had closed into a careful mask.
"You sure?" he asked.
I swallowed. "Yes."
He didn't say a word. Instead he reached across the bed and took the phone, thumb over the message. For one breath I thought he'd erase it. Instead, he hit send and handed the phone back.
"I can handle the fall-out," he said simply, but his jaw tightened. "You said it. Don't shoulder it alone."
The words were both promise and a blade.
He left soon after to check the villa schedules—business pulled him back like an undertow—but not before he wrapped me in his jacket and kissed me again, a slow press, thumb brushing my lower lip.
"If anyone touches you—" His sentence stopped where a threat would be. He didn't have to finish.
"I won't be easy to find," I said, because I wanted to reassure myself more than him.
"Good," he said. "Then I'll look harder."
He left the door ajar, the way soldiers do when they mean to return.
I sat up and rubbed my thumb over the fresh line on his knuckle where a skin had split during the night.
The sight of it pulled at me; repairing was part of keeping.
For a second I considered following him, telling him everything right then, giving him every corner of myself.
Instead I did something more terrifying.
I opened my phone and—before I could think about consequence or pride—forwarded his message to a blank message field addressed to my own number.
My fingers hesitated, then I hit send. The little timestamp blinked.
It existed now on my device as a fact. Marco's name sat thin and dangerous on my screen.
I stood and dressed quickly, pulled my hair up with rough fingers. The penthouse felt smaller with the confession in my pocket. I left a note on the coffee table—one line, not my style, but honest: I needed to clear my head.
Outside, the city smelled of salt and diesel. I walked the hall a couple paces and froze, hand on the stair rail. The decision I had made—typing a name into the open—was not reversible. There were people who would use that name as a key.
My phone buzzed in my palm before I reached the elevator.
A new message. From an unknown number.
I opened it with a slow, terrible certainty. The preview was a photo. My mouth went dry.
I tapped it to open. The image showed a stairwell—graffiti, flickering light—and on the landing, a younger version of me curled against the steps, blood dark on my sleeve.
Below the photo, a single line of text: Good to be remembered.
I have no choice now.