Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Dante
Ihave never felt so helpless in my entire life.
Dylan is burning up. His skin is flushed and damp with sweat, his breathing labored and rattling in a way that makes my stomach clench with fear. Every few minutes, he shivers violently despite the blankets I’ve piled on top of him, his body caught in some terrible war between fever and chills.
I don’t know what to do. I am a man who always knows what to do.
I have built my entire career on being calm, controlled, and competent in the face of any situation.
I have dealt with bullet wounds and broken bones and men who begged for death.
I have never once felt this gnawing, desperate uncertainty.
But I have also never cared whether any of those men lived or died.
I press another cool cloth to Dylan’s forehead and watch his eyelids flutter. He mumbles something I can’t make out, his head turning restlessly on the pillow. His strawberry-blond hair is dark with sweat, plastered to his temples in damp curls.
This is my fault. All of it. The days of stress and trauma that weakened his immune system, the cold shower I left him in for hours while I uploaded a video of myself murdering a man.
The hypothermia I didn’t get him any medical help for.
Every single thing that led to this moment can be traced back to my decisions.
If he dies, I will have killed him. Not with my hands or my tools, but with my carelessness and my cruelty and my refusal to believe the truth when it was staring me in the face.
The thought makes something twist in my chest. Something that feels dangerously close to panic.
I need help. I need someone who knows more about medicine than I do, which admittedly is not a high bar. I know how to hurt people. I know anatomy from the perspective of maximizing pain and extracting information. But healing? Keeping someone alive when their body is trying to give up?
That is not my area of expertise.
I reach for my phone and scroll through my contacts. Dr. Torrino is the obvious choice. The old man has been patching up members of our organization for decades. He is discreet, professional, and excellent at his job.
But Dr. Torrino will ask questions. He will want to know who Dylan is and how he came to be in my care. He will report back to Dario, because that is what he does. And I am not ready to explain this situation to anyone, let alone my boss.
What would I even say? I tortured the wrong man for days because I was too incompetent to see the truth, and now I’m keeping him prisoner in my home because I’ve developed some sort of twisted attachment to him and I can’t bear to kill him and tie up the loose end like I should?
No. Dr. Torrino is not an option.
My thumb hovers over Nicolo’s name. Nicolo is loyal, discreet, and surprisingly resourceful. But more importantly, his boyfriend has been training with Dr. Torrino. Learning to be the old man’s eventual replacement.
Liam. The pretty one with the haunted eyes and the steady hands. I remember that day at Nicolo’s apartment, the way he’d trembled when I looked at him. The way Nicolo had put himself between us like a human shield.
I remember recognizing something in Liam. A kindred spirit, perhaps. Someone who understood darkness because they’d lived in it. Someone who’d survived things that would have broken lesser people.
But there was a gentleness to him too. A softness that hadn’t been completely destroyed by whatever he’d endured. The kind of person who might understand why I need help, without judging me too harshly for how I got into this situation.
Or maybe he’ll judge me. Maybe he’ll refuse to help. Maybe he’ll tell Nicolo everything, and Nicolo will tell Dario, and this whole fragile house of cards will come crashing down.
Dylan makes a sound. A small, pained whimper that cuts through my spiraling thoughts like a knife. His face contorts with discomfort, and his hands clutch weakly at the blankets.
Fuck it. I’ll take the risk.
I dial Liam’s number before I can talk myself out of it.
It rings three times before he answers. His voice is cautious, uncertain. “Hello?”
“Liam. It’s Dante.”
Silence. I can practically hear him tensing on the other end of the line. It’s understandable. It’s definitely no less than I deserve.
The first time we spoke directly, I was invading his home and making him shake with fear.
I like to think I made amends for that when Nicolo delivered Liam’s rapist to my care and I dealt with him.
But I think it’s more a case that we’ve reached an uneasy truce. There have been dinner parties, and Christmas at Dario and Molly’s. Occasions where we have been thrown together. But I’ve kept my distance, and he’s stayed away from me warily. Like I’m the shark in the room.
This call must seem like a nightmare come to life.
“Dante,” he says finally. His voice is steadier than I expected. “What do you want?”
Straight to the point. Good. I don’t have time for pleasantries.
“I need your help,” I say, and the words taste strange in my mouth. I can’t remember the last time I asked anyone for help. “Medical help.”
Another pause. When he speaks again, there’s a note of surprise beneath the wariness. “You’re hurt?”
“No. Someone else. Someone I’m...” I trail off, unsure how to describe what Dylan is to me. My prisoner? My victim? My responsibility? “Someone in my care.”
“In your care.” The words are flat, carefully neutral. He’s not asking questions, but I can hear them hovering in the silence between us.
“I think it’s pneumonia,” I continue. “High fever, labored breathing, chills. It started yesterday and it’s getting worse. I don’t know how to treat it, and I can’t take him to a hospital.”
“Why can’t you call Dr. Torrino?”
The question is reasonable. Expected. I don’t have a good answer that doesn’t reveal too much.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
Liam is quiet for a long moment. I can hear him breathing, can almost hear him thinking. Weighing whether to help the man who terrified him, or hang up and pretend this call never happened.
“How old?” Liam asks finally.
“Twenty-five.” I have Declan’s file and Dylan is his twin. It is one thing I at least know for sure.
“Any underlying health conditions you know of?”
“No. He’s...” I think about Dylan’s soft hands, his freckled skin, the way he talked about his bakery with such genuine love. “He’s healthy. Was healthy. Before.”
Before I broke him. The words hang unspoken in the air between us.
I close my eyes. The truth rises up in my throat like bile, demanding to be spoken.
“I hurt him,” I say quietly. “I thought he was someone else. Someone who deserved what I do. By the time I realized my mistake, he was already...” I can’t finish the sentence.
The silence that follows is heavy with understanding. Liam knows what I do. Knows exactly what “hurt” means in my vocabulary.
“And now you’re trying to fix it,” he says. It’s not a question.
“Yes.”
“By keeping him prisoner.”
The accusation stings, even though it’s accurate. “I can’t let him go. He knows too much. But I’m not...” I struggle to find the right words. “I’m not hurting him anymore. I’m trying to help him. I just don’t know how.”
More silence. Then, to my surprise, Liam sighs. When he speaks again, his voice has lost some of its wariness.
“Pneumonia can be serious, especially in someone who’s already weakened. He needs antibiotics, probably a strong broad spectrum one like amoxicillin or azithromycin. Do you have access to any?”
Relief floods through me. He’s going to help. “I can get them. What else?”
“Keep him hydrated. Water, clear broth, anything he’ll drink. The fever is his body fighting the infection, so don’t try to suppress it completely, but if it goes above thirty-nine degrees celsius, you’ll need to bring it down. Cool cloths, not cold. Lukewarm baths if necessary.”
I’m already mentally cataloguing what I have and what I’ll need to acquire. “What about the breathing? It sounds terrible.”
“Keep him propped up, don’t let him lie flat. Steam can help loosen the congestion. Run a hot shower and let him sit in the bathroom with the door closed. Or boil water and have him breathe the steam with a towel over his head.”
“Okay.” I’m committing every word to memory. “What else?”
“Rest. Lots of rest. And someone needs to monitor him. If his fever spikes suddenly, if he starts having trouble breathing, if his lips or fingernails turn blue, you need to get him to a hospital regardless of the complications. Pneumonia can turn deadly fast.”
The word “deadly” hits me like a punch to the gut. I look at Dylan, at his flushed face and labored breathing, and something cold settles in my chest.
“I understand.”
Liam makes a sound that might be a wry chuckle or might be something sadder. “You know, when Nicolo first told me what you do, I thought you were a monster. Pure evil. The kind of person who enjoys causing pain.”
I don’t respond. There’s nothing to say. He’s not entirely wrong.
“But monsters don’t call people for medical advice,” he continues. “They don’t worry about keeping their victims alive. They don’t sound like you do right now, scared and desperate and completely out of your depth.”
“I don’t know what I am,” I say honestly. “I’ve never been in this situation before.”
“None of us know what we are until we’re tested.” There’s an edge to his voice that speaks of his personal experience. “The question is what you do next. Not what you’ve done, but what you choose to do going forward.”
The words settle into me like stones dropping into still water. What I choose to do going forward.
I choose to keep Dylan alive. I choose to take care of him, to heal him, to somehow make amends for the unforgivable things I’ve done. I choose to be something other than the monster I’ve always been.
Whether Dylan will ever forgive me, whether any of this can ever be made right, I don’t know. But I have to try.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it more than I’ve ever meant anything. “For helping. For not hanging up on me.”
“I almost did,” Liam admits. “But then I thought about what it must have cost you to make this call. Dante, the man who never asks for anything, calling a person he barely knows to beg for medical advice. That’s not nothing.”
“It doesn’t make up for what I did to him.”
“No. It doesn’t. But it’s a start.” He pauses. “Call me if he gets worse. Day or night. And Dante? Be gentle with him. Whatever happened, whatever you did, he’s going to need gentleness more than anything else right now.”
The line goes dead.
I sit there for a long moment, phone in hand, staring at Dylan’s sleeping face. Be gentle. Such a simple instruction. Such an impossible task for a man like me.
But I’m going to try.
I get up and head to the kitchen to boil water for steam. I’ll need to make some calls, acquire the antibiotics Liam recommended. I have contacts who can get me pharmaceutical supplies without questions.
When I return to the bedroom with a bowl of steaming water and a towel, Dylan’s eyes are open. Barely. Just slits of hazel green peering at me through the fog of fever.
“Dante?” His voice is a ragged whisper.
Something clenches in my chest at the sound of my name on his lips. It’s the first time he’s used it since I told him what I was called. The first time he’s addressed me as anything other than a nameless threat.
“I’m here,” I say softly, setting down the bowl. “I’m going to help you breathe easier. Just some steam. Nothing that will hurt.”
He watches me with those fever-bright eyes as I arrange the towel, creating a tent to trap the steam. His expression is wary, uncertain, but he doesn’t flinch away when I guide him to lean over the bowl.
“Breathe deeply,” I instruct. “In through your nose, out through your mouth. Let the steam loosen things up.”
He obeys without protest, too weak and sick to argue. The sound of his breathing gradually eases as the steam does its work, the terrible rattling becoming slightly less pronounced.
“That’s good,” I murmur. “You’re doing well.”
I don’t know if he can hear me through the towel and the steam and the haze of his fever. But I keep talking anyway, a low, steady stream of encouragement and reassurance. Words I’ve never said to anyone. Words I didn’t know I had in me.
When the water cools, I help him lie back against the pillows I’ve arranged to keep him propped up. His eyes are closed again, his breathing still labored but less frightening than before.
I settle back into my chair beside the bed and watch him sleep.
This is my life now. Sitting vigil at the bedside of a man I nearly destroyed. Monitoring his breathing, changing his compresses, counting the hours until I can give him a dose of antibiotics.
It’s not penance. Nothing I do will ever be enough to make up for what I’ve done.
But it’s something. It’s a start.
And right now, that’s all I have to offer.