Chapter 10 Dante
DANTE
I lie on my bed, one arm behind my head, staring at the ceiling.
She’s less than twenty feet away. I can feel it. The thin wall between our rooms doesn’t change that. I’m aware of her the way I’m aware of a loaded weapon—silent, but impossible to ignore.
I haven’t slept in this room in years. Not since I moved into my apartment in the city, where the noise outside belongs to strangers and no one knows my name. I like the quiet there. The distance.
Here, there’s no quiet. Not with her.
I know she saw my scars. She tried to hide it, but I could feel her eyes on my back before she said a word.
Most people ask about them. Or pretend not to notice while staring anyway. She didn’t ask. She looked, then looked away, like she already knew they were something she shouldn’t touch.
I’m not sure if I like that or hate it.
Her voice is still in my head from earlier. Asking about her friend. Standing in that doorway in a ridiculous pink shirt, looking like she doesn’t belong here and somehow fits at the same time.
I should stop thinking about her.
But I can’t. Not when she’s this close.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
A message from Markov, one of my lieutenants: Possible sighting of Julianne. Upstate New York.
I stare at the words for a long moment.
When I first learned she’d left, and her sister was taking her place, I felt nothing. It was a problem solved before it became mine. But my father had other plans.
He meant to find Julianne, bring her back, and make an example of her. Not because he wanted her—but because the city needed to see what happens when you walk away from the Volkovs.
I tap out my reply: Keep an eye on her. And the man she ran with.
Another pause, then I add: One of Roman’s men, you said?
Markov confirms it.
That would be humiliating enough—knowing a Petrova ran off with someone inside her father’s own circle.
I set the phone down and close my eyes, but sleep doesn’t come. My mind turns over the details, calculating. Julianne’s face blends with Adriana’s. I picture them side by side—the one who ran and the one who stayed. The one in the next room.
I roll onto my back and stare into the dark. The night stretches on, and sleep stays out of reach, so I get dressed and go outside.
The back door opens to the terrace and then the lawn.
Stone still holds a little night cold. The grass is wet with dew.
The air smells like damp earth and the last of the rain that passed after midnight.
I wheel the freestanding bag out from under the awning and set it near the flagstones where the footing is good.
Wraps on. Gloves on. I start slow to wake my shoulders.
Jab, cross, hook. Breathe on the count.
The chain inside the stand clicks on each swing. In the distance a truck downshifts, then the sound fades. A bird starts up in the maple by the fence. The sky in the east trades black for a heavy gray. Dawn is coming on.
I move my feet on the flagstones, feel the seam lines through the soles. Sweat runs under the collar of my T-shirt. Scar tissue along my back pulls when I turn my hips. The rhythm settles my head.
Between rounds I roll my neck and look up at the house. Her window sits above the terrace, second floor, far right. Curtains are closed. I take a drink from the bottle on the step and go back to work.
On the next break the light has shifted. Gray to pale blue. I catch a change at the glass. A curtain moves a thumb’s width. Then a small shape. Hair loose. Pink sleep shirt. She’s there, resting her hands on the sill, watching.
I keep my eyes on the bag, let it swing, then turn with it as if it’s part of the drill. For a second, the glass gives me her face. Not clear. Enough. She realizes I see her and the curtain falls back into place. The window goes still.
I take the gloves off and set them on the step. My breath clouds a little in the cool. A sprinkler ticks at the edge of the hedge.
I keep seeing her the way she looked last night—in that baby doll, the hem riding up her thighs, the lace clinging to her tits. I never got to see them bare. Just the outline, the hard little peaks pressing through the fabric when I had my mouth between her legs.
Fuck, I wanted to tear it off. To get my hands on her tits, feel the weight of them in my palms while she gasped into my mouth.
I can imagine it too easily—her nipples hard against my thumbs, her back arching as I suck one into my mouth, her fingers pulling my hair while I work the other with my hand.
I’d have her moaning for me, shaking under me, begging for my cock before I even gave it to her.
My fist stills against the bag. Christ, I’m hard again.
I rake a hand through my hair, trying to breathe it off, but it’s no use. I grab my towel and head inside, the hallway cool and dim.
I step into the kitchen and almost run straight into my mother. She’s pouring tea, her robe wrapped tight around her, hair neat despite the early hour.
She glances up at me, one brow lifting. “Can’t sleep?”
I shake my head, reaching for a glass. “Something like that.”
Her eyes narrow slightly, like she’s trying to read me.
She pours a second cup and sets it on the table. Mint steam rises. Dawn is a thin line beyond the glass, the lawn wet and pale. I wrap my fingers around the mug and try to think about anything but the tea in front of me.
My mother watches me over the rim of her mug. “How is Adriana?”
I think of the pink sleep shirt, the way her curtain moved, the look on her face when she caught me putting my shirt on. “Settling,” I say.
“She is young,” my mother says. “Be patient.”
She turns to the window, then adds, “I met Julianne at church once. She is nothing like her.”
I raise a brow. “Is that supposed to be good or bad?”
“Neither,” she says. “Just true. The younger is made to be seen. The elder is made to endure. Men think they want the first until life happens. Then they learn the second is the one who does not break.”
My mother sits back down, her fingers curling around the mug. She’s quiet for a moment, then she says, “She’s innocent, you know. Adriana. I know your father says otherwise, but I disagree.”
I keep my gaze on the window.
“We don’t have to hurt her because of what happened,” she continues, softer.
My jaw tightens. That word—innocent. I almost laugh. None of us are innocent in this world, not really. But she means something different. She means not guilty. Not responsible for her blood, her name.
That’s the thing about families like ours. You never get to be just yourself. You’re always your father’s son, your mother’s shame, your grandfather’s debt.
I don’t answer right away, because I’m somewhere else for a moment. Somewhere colder. My hands tighten on the mug, and the memory comes up fast, sour as bile.
I was seven. My father stood in the rain in the Petrov courtyard, beaten and bruised, his suit muddy, his pride in shreds.
Adriana’s grandfather sat in a carved chair on the steps, silver hair slicked with drizzle, face set in contempt.
He ordered my father—ordered him—to his knees.
Made him crawl. Made him kiss the wet stone at his feet, then laughed and told him to lick the mud from his shoe.
I can still hear that laughter echoing against the marble. My mother cried silent tears behind me. The men in Petrov colors watched with flat eyes, as if it was nothing more than the weather changing.
I see my father’s face when he stood up—something broken, something hollowed out. That day he swore to make the Petrovs pay, to never bow again. He taught me that lesson with his fists and his words, again and again.
Never forget. Never forgive. Never let them think you’re weak.
Now the world is turned upside down. The Petrovs don’t rule the city, not anymore, but their name still opens doors and poisons blood.
And Adriana sits in a room connected to mine, her presence humming through the walls, carrying the weight of everything her family did to mine. I know she’s not guilty. But that doesn’t make me want her any less, or trust her any more.
My mother watches me, her eyes full of a sadness I pretend not to see. “Don’t punish her for another man’s sins, Dante.”
I swallow, the words stuck in my throat. Rage sits heavy in my gut, familiar and alive. I want to crush it, but it burns. I nod, not trusting myself to speak, and finish my tea in silence.
The sun breaks the horizon, gold spilling across the kitchen tile. But nothing in me feels light.
I climb the stairs, tea still burning in my chest, and push open the door to the upstairs hall. Her door is open a crack. I hear quiet movement—a drawer sliding shut, the sound of water running in the bathroom.
She’s already dressed when I see her. Her hair is pulled back loose, sleep shirt replaced with a faded blue sweater and jeans. She looks distracted, almost faraway, glancing at her phone, then out the window, then back at her phone.
I wait in the doorway until she senses me and glances up.
She doesn’t look afraid. Not the way most people do when they know I’m in the room. She doesn’t hide her gaze. She holds it, chin lifted a little, mouth set. There’s something electric in the air between us, like the memory of last night is a current we both keep touching by accident.
She doesn’t look nervous. She doesn’t look away. If anything, she looks like she’s waiting for me to say something dangerous.
I lean against the doorframe. “Did you sleep?”
“Not really,” she says, voice dry. “Hard to sleep in a new place.”
“Last night,” I say. “Did you want that?”
She flushes, but her eyes stay on mine. “Didn’t you?”
I almost laugh. “You didn’t answer.”
She looks away, just for a moment, then back at me. “I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to feel something.”
“Did you?” I ask.
She swallows. “Yeah. I did.”
The answer goes straight to my cock. That wasn’t the reply I was expecting at all.
I take a step closer. “You act like you’re not afraid of me,” I say.
She doesn’t flinch. “Should I be?”
Most people are. Most people know better. But she stands there, chin lifted, eyes searching my face for answers I don’t want to give.
“That depends,” I say quietly, closing the distance between us.
I remember how she tasted, how she gasped when I touched her, the way she arched under my mouth and then hid her face in the pillow afterward. I remember leaving her in that spare room, knowing she wouldn’t come to me, and not sure if I wanted her to.
I wanted to strip away every barrier until nothing was left but skin and her name on my tongue. My jaw tightens. I want her again, right now, but I force myself to keep it contained.
She watches me, breathing a little faster now. The air crackles between us, something restless and unfinished.
If I hadn’t stopped, I might have done something she couldn’t forgive. Because she looked at me like she wanted to be ruined, and I wasn’t sure if I could put her back together.
Before I can answer, footsteps sound on the landing. The tension breaks. One of the house staff appears in the doorway, eyes politely averted. “Mr. Volkov, someone is here to see Mrs. Volkova. She’s waiting downstairs.”
Adriana and I both step back, as if a spell just snapped. She brushes her hair behind her ear, voice unsteady. “Thank you. I’ll be right down.”
The staff member disappears. I glance at her, one last look, then step aside so she can pass. She hesitates, just for a second, as if she might say something else. Then she slips past me, her arm brushing mine, and heads for the stairs.
I watch her go, every nerve on edge. Whatever this is between us, it’s not finished.
Not by a long shot.