9. Mirella
NINE
Mirella
I burst into Rosie's on a rain-smell night and cut the jukebox out with the edge of my mood.
"You're late," Rosie said, not looking up from the bar. She knew that look on me better than anyone—tight jaw, hands that wouldn't stop moving. "And furious."
"Both," I said. I dropped my keys and Marco's last message on the counter. The screen was blacked out, but the subject line had been savage enough: You remember the terms.
Rosie set a glass down and slid it toward me. "So go get him."
"He's gone," I said. Not a question. Not a plea. It was a fact I refused to accept.
Rosie's laugh was soft and sharp. "Gone where? Around here or to the moon? If you're not planning to stab anything tonight, take my spare jumper. He smells of leather and rain—if that's him, it might help."
I almost smiled. "He left a talisman on my pillow."
"That man and his theatrics." Rosie pushed a wool jumper toward me. "He left, he always leaves. But he has favorites. The rooftop garden. The pier. You know which one he's nursing his martyr complex at."
I did. I also knew Dante's exile wasn't penitence; it was punishment. He'd left because he believed my life would be safer without him in it. He'd done the cruel thing while thinking he was doing the kind one. I wasn't going to let kindness be an excuse for cowardice.
"I'll take the bike," I said, pocketing Marco's message into my sleeve where it burned like a brand. "If Enzo asked, tell him I had business at the docks."
Rosie didn't ask. She only lit a cigarette and watched me go. Her look said what her words never did: be careful.
The rooftop garden smelled of wet dirt and cheap incense when I climbed the stairs.
The city spread below us—lights like scattered coins.
He was there, as predictable as the tide, hunched beside the low concrete wall with one knee pulled up, talisman in his hand as if it were a puzzle he couldn't solve.
I stopped five feet away and let the rain strip the heat from me.
He didn't turn at first. His shoulders were wide under a damp shirt that clung to his back.
I had seen him from a distance before and catalogued him without meaning to—the slope of his neck, the scar near his jaw catching the light, the way his hands folded and un-folded like a man waiting for an order. My breath went thin.
"You left me a thing," I said, coming closer.
He looked up like a blade into the night. "You found it."
"Of course I did. It's small and sticky with your bad taste in symbols." I forced a laugh. "Dante—stop hiding like murder is a polite conversation."
His eyes were dark, and he said nothing for a beat that felt like a verdict. Then, low and controlled: "Distance keeps you alive."
"No," I said. My voice tasted ironic. "Distance keeps you comfortable."
He shifted. "I thought?—"
"You thought exile would protect me?" I cut him off. "You think I need saving from myself or from you? I won't be someone's mercy project."
Beneath the barbs, my hands clenched. I had rehearsed this confession on the way up, on the bike between intersections. I needed him to see the machinery that had been turning under me. I needed him to stop making choices on my behalf.
He flinched like I'd struck him. "Don't," he warned.
"Marco paid through shell accounts. The handler ledger is threaded with transfers with my name on the memo.
He owns photos, recordings—he calls them 'evidence' and loves the word.
He set me up years ago and kept the receipts.
He texted tonight. He thinks I will run.
He wants me to be useful or disposable." The words came in a rush.
I had always known the truth. Speaking it made it real and small in a way his silence never did.
Dante's jaw worked. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you would do what you did. You would leave.
" I closed the distance until my shoulder brushed his.
He smelled of rain and the citrus-cologne he wore when he wanted to be less dangerous.
Heat pulsed under my skin. "And because—you thought dragging me into Costa blood would make me a ledger. I wanted to keep you out of it."
He stepped back. His hand brushed my arm, brief and steadying. The contact was a fuse. My pulse spiked.
"You didn't keep me safe," he said. "You kept me ignorant."
"Isn't that generous," I said. The edge in my voice softened. "You didn't leave to protect yourself. You left to punish us both."
He laughed—a short, rough sound that didn't reach his eyes. "Punishment is cheaper than pain."
"You don't decide my price," I said. "Not anymore."
He looked at me, really looked. For the first time since the penthouse door clicked shut behind him, I saw rawness under his self-control. The man who killed without hesitation was suddenly fragile in the way he always tried to be for others.
"Then tell me how to stop him," he said.
I had planned a boldness but not tenderness.
Telling him would only be half the battle.
Showing him would seal it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and laid documents under his palm: transactions, timestamps, an old alley photo where my crescent scar was visible.
I watched his fingers skim the images—calloused, precise. He read without comment.
"This is enough to make Marco sweat," I said. "Enough to threaten exposure of his own accounts. Enough to make him negotiate, or run. He still has leverage, but it's not infinite."
He swallowed. Up close, I could trace the line of the scar along his jaw and the faint white on his knuckle. My throat caught. I wanted to press my thumb to those lines and memorize them.
"You did this alone," he said. There was admiration and something sharper—relief, maybe. "You made plans."
"I made a choice," I corrected. "I chose not to run."
He reached for the talisman in his hand and then tucked it into his pocket like a private surrender. "You could have given it to me. I would have handled it."
"Would you have?" I asked. "Would you have answered Marco's message and let them know you were at the penthouse while I stayed in the open? Would you have sat at the center of a ledger that lists me as collateral?"
He faltered. Then he stepped forward and closed the last of the space between us.
His hand came up and rested at the small of my back.
The contact set my skin alight. I noticed everything—how his shirt was damp and clung to the muscles of his chest, the way his mouth set, the rasp in his voice when he said my name.
"Mirella." He didn't use my full name often, and when he did it landed like a promise. "I'm not staying away because I don't want to be with you."
"Then stop pretending staying away will save you." My fingers found the hem of his shirt and hooked it, not gentle. "Stay because you choose to. Because you want to be in the danger you can't control and I want you there."
He pressed his forehead to mine. The space between our breaths was thin and electric. "You know what I am," he said, as if that were new.
"I know what I am," I replied. "We are both terrible at surrender. Fine. We'll learn."
The kiss started like an argument. His mouth claimed mine with a need that matched the ache I'd carried since he walked away. It was fierce and focused and full of apology.
Hands on my waist, he lifted me against the wall and I hooked my legs around him because some parts of me were selfish and wanted to know what staying felt like. He tasted like rain and iron and everything I had been denying myself. He kissed me through the sentences we hadn't said.
"Is this okay?" he murmured against my lips when his hand traveled down my spine.
"Yes," I breathed. "Yes, damn you."
We moved in a blur—fierce and careful at once.
Consent didn't need to be argued; it was a private, repeated agreement.
Clothes came off in a messy tumble of urgency.
His hands mapped me as if memorizing territory.
I mapped him back. The world shrank to the tight press of bodies, the sharp intake of breath, the wet scrape of rain on concrete.
He was everything I'd catalogued and more. The curve of his shoulders when he leaned over me. The minute flex of his fingers. The sound he made when I touched the scar on his jaw. My pulse hammered against him.
We made love like two people coming up from under water—clawing, needing air, claiming. It was fierce, and then tender. Between ragged breaths he said my name, and I said his. We were both apologizing and promising in the same motion.
Afterwards, we lay tangled on a bed of woven blankets Rosie kept on the rooftop for anyone who needed shelter. Dante's breath slowed. He had a shallow cut along his forearm from the scuffle last week; it had bled a little into his sleeve. I traced the line with a thumb until he flinched.
"Don't," he whispered.
"I won't," I said. I pulled out the small kit I kept for jobs—the neat, necessary things—and cleaned the wound. My hands were steady. He watched me with something that made my chest ache: wonder, gratitude, relief.
"Your hands," he said. "They don't shake when you're in control."
"They shake when I'm scared," I corrected, then smiled. "But I'm not scared of you."
I wrapped the bandage with practiced motions and then cupped his face between both my hands. His jaw tilted toward my palms. He smelled of citrus and rain and home. My thumbs brushed the scar near his mouth.
"I choose you," I said, only once, and all the air left him.
He closed his eyes as if the words landed like a balm. When he opened them again, they were wet and fierce. "God," he breathed. "I didn't think?—"
"You thought you were sparing me," I finished for him. "You were sparing yourself."
He squeezed my hands. "Stay."
"I will," I said, and the truth of it felt like stepping off a cliff and finding my hands in his.
We lay there, gathering breath, building a fragile domestic from the wreckage. Dante reached for my phone. His thumb brushed the screen and a message threaded up from Marco, name only—You remember the terms—then an image. My stomach turned at the sight. He didn't look up; his face went stony.
"Let me see everything," he said.
"No," I answered, half out of instinct and half out of habit. I had been trying to keep him safe. I had told myself I could handle this without making him an accomplice.
"You won't," he said, quiet and absolute. "This is mine if you're in it."
I hesitated. I could feel my old reflexes—protecting people by keeping them ignorant—pulling at me. He saw it; he reached up and curled a finger under my chin until my face turned toward his. His thumb brushed the place where the scar caught light.
"Trust me," he said, voice low. There was no demand in it. Only a hunger to be included.
I let him take my phone. I watched him scroll and read. His expression tightened at the corners. He didn't say anything about my shame or my past. He only said, "We'll break him."
I laughed then, a short sound that was nearly a sob. "Is this your plan now? Break people?"
"It's different," he said. "This one cornered you."
"Good," I said. "Then corner him back."
We made a plan in whispers and clipped sentences—small movements that leaned toward offense instead of flight. It felt good to have Dante's hands on the strategy for once. His fingers brushed my ribs when he pointed at a message. Each brush was a vow.
I was about to suggest we leave—move before Marco had time to realize we'd regrouped—when a sharp, metallic snap broke the night like a gunshot.
Dante froze. I did too. The rooftop air sharpened.
He reached instinctively for his gun and looked at me, eyes shadowed with warning.
Then a comms click—low, urgent—split the silence.
"Movement on the east stairs," a voice hissed, too close, too precise. "Two in black. Approaching."
Dante's mouth was a thin line. He didn't reach for me or pull away. He held me there, forehead to forehead, breath hot and trembling.
"I choose you," I said again, softer, and meant it more than I had anywhere.
He nodded, a grim little bob. "Then hold on."
He kissed me hard enough that the world blurred and then he was already moving, gun up, shadow and intent.
The comms clicked again, faster this time, and then a third voice cut through—an unfamiliar accent and the single word that made my blood run cold: "Marco."
We had just promised each other everything, and somewhere outside the rooftop, the man who had once left me bleeding in a stairwell was coming for his terms.