10. CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
Dante
The footsteps stopped, and the world became so still Alina thought the pressure in her own skull might betray them.
Dante shifted, a single fluid movement that planted his body between her and the hallway, his gun a natural extension of his arm.
She’d seen violence before—enough that the memory of it had a texture, a taste—but she had never seen a body load itself for killing so quietly, so perfectly.
He looked back at her, his finger pressed to his lips.
She nodded, more in reflex than agreement.
Her pulse screamed in her ears while the house held its breath, blanketed in darkness and the wind’s insistent search for a way in.
The sudden silence of the dead generator was heavy.
When the microwave’s digital clock vanished into the dark, it felt as though time itself had just cut its anchors.
Every step Dante took was deliberate. She lost sight of him as he pressed himself into the line between shadow and wall, his silhouette collapsing into negative space.
Something—a draft, or perhaps something worse—had nudged the front door ajar.
Dante placed his back to the frame, gun raised, and with a slow exhale, nudged the door wider with his instep.
It was empty. For an instant, so empty it seemed the night itself was mocking his vigilance.
Then, a movement: a shadow peeled itself from the thicket at the base of the driveway, resolving into a man.
Dante’s finger tensed. The shadow raised both hands, palms outward, in a gesture that did not quite surrender.
“Boss. It’s me,” Luca whispered.
The tension in the air snapped, replaced by something that felt, to Alina, almost like disappointment.
Dante stood down, lowering the barrel in increments—never all at once, never completely unready. “Do you have a death wish?”
Luca shook his head, as if it were a possibility he’d weighed and dismissed. “Couldn’t reach you on comms. Figured you were down a cell signal, but just in case—” He flicked his eyes toward Alina, a silent apology for the scare. “The wind must’ve caught the latch. I checked back before I came up.”
Dante barely registered the explanation. He stepped onto the porch, sweeping the darkness with his gaze as if searching for a sniper’s glint. From where Alina sat, she saw how the wind toyed with his shirt, the outline of his shoulders tensed for a second assault.
There was nothing. The world was silent except for a far-away dog, the click of a branch against the gutter, and the low murmur of two men who lived in the constant anticipation of death.
“Next time you announce yourself,” Dante said, his voice not quite angry, not quite amused, “don’t get creative.”
“Understood,” Luca replied, though his eyes said more: a catalogue of grievances, a list of warnings, and something that looked like concern.
After a time, Dante returned inside, shutting the door with a firmness that made the frame shiver.
He engaged the lock, then the deadbolt, and moved from window to window, checking latches and sightlines.
Alina watched him—half in awe, half with the detachment one develops around wild animals.
Her lungs only settled when he ran a hand through his hair and gave her a nod: All clear.
She didn’t lie back down. Something in Dante’s posture made it clear this wasn’t over. He crossed the living room, his movement less fluid now, more like a marionette whose strings had started to fray.
In the kitchen, Dante leaned against the counter, head bowed, one palm pressed to the cool granite. The gun was tucked into his waistband, but his hand hovered near it, as if he expected the house to grow teeth. A few seconds passed before he noticed her stare.
“Do you want me to go?” Alina asked, her voice brittle.
He looked at her, eyes sharp. “Not unless you want to get shot before sunrise.”
She almost laughed, but the humor collapsed under its own weight. “Is it always like this?”
“Only when it matters.” He didn’t add for whom.
It was Luca who broke the tension. He stepped into the kitchen, taking up a silent position at the opposite counter like a chess piece blocking the next move. “Are you going to tell me what you found?”
Dante produced the flash drive. He spun it on the counter once, then trapped it under his palm. “Not here. I don’t know what kind of hardware is in this house. I want a clean machine—no keyloggers, no beacons.”
Luca grunted. “Are you planning to stay or move?”
Dante’s jaw flexed. He glanced at Alina, his gaze landing on the bruising at her temple, “We’re here for the night. We leave at daybreak.”
“Then I’ll sweep the perimeter again. Once at midnight, once at three.” Luca faded back into the dark hallway, silent as mist.
Dante exhaled, his shoulders dropping by degrees. He turned to Alina with something almost like an apology. She shrugged, unwilling to grant him that much.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
He weighed the question, then offered a sliver of truth. “If the Vescari sent a hit team, they wouldn't stop. Whatever’s on this drive—someone expects it to never see daylight.”
She looked at the drive. It was so small. She wondered what her life would have looked like if she’d refused it, if she’d pretended not to hear the courier at the airport.
“You want to see what’s on it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
He nodded. “Tonight.”
Dante took a flashlight from a drawer and the battered laptop from the counter. He swept the machine for tampering, removed the battery, and checked the casing. Only when satisfied did he reassemble it, setting up on the kitchen table with the flashlight angled to avoid the windows.
Alina drifted over, curiosity outweighing her fatigue. She watched as Dante powered up the machine, navigating the boot screens with impatient precision. The operating system was grayscale, functional, devoid of logos. He inserted the drive. Nothing happened.
Then, a folder appeared: two files, cryptically named.
He opened the first. A spreadsheet. Thousands of rows of names, dates, codes. Bank records, or bribes—something she couldn’t interpret. Dante scanned it rapidly, absorbing and sorting.
He clicked the second file: a video.
He muted the audio, but Alina felt the violence in it—men in masks, a warehouse, the flicker of gunfire. Her stomach turned cold. She gripped the back of a chair.
Dante paused the video, rewound, and stilled the frame. He pointed at his face.
“That’s Rossi,” he said.
She didn’t know the name, but she remembered the way Dante’s voice changed at the hospital, how every syllable had become a blade.
“Who’s he?”
“Dead man walking,” Dante said, his mouth not quite smiling.
He closed the file and wiped the laptop’s memory of the drive. When he ejected it, he snapped the casing back together with a sharp clack.
“What happens now?”
He looked at her, as if taking her measure for a final time. “We end it before they get a second shot.”
The rest of the night passed in fragments: the scrape of a chair, the click of a lock, the low, weary murmurs of men who had survived more than their share.
Dante sat at the table, watching the slow creep of dawn, one hand wrapped around a glass of water, the other tapping silent rhythms on the wood.
He didn’t sleep. Alina tried, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw the flash drive and the impossible loop of what her life had become.
When the sky was finally more steel than black, Dante stood and stretched, wincing. He took the laptop and the drive, returning minutes later fully dressed, his hair slicked back, his jaw set.
He looked at her, then at the door. “It’s time,” he said.
She stood, feeling the aches she hadn’t noticed the night before.