39. CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY
Dante
The house felt smaller now, like the walls had closed in around them.
Every window reflected the sickly pallor of overhead light, every shadow stretched across the marble like a scar.
The hallway hummed with the low, uneasy static of armed men pretending not to panic.
Dante’s shoes left streaks on the polished floor as he stalked the perimeter, his restraint as thin as a fuse, the red heat of his temper blurring the world into single points of failure and threat.
He spun on the nearest guard—a boy, really, with hair still soft enough to hold a cowlick. The kid’s hands wouldn’t unclench from the weapon at his hip. “How did he get in?” Dante said, cold as a bone saw.
The boy tried: “We—we’re checking the feeds now—” but the tremor in his voice made everyone else shrink back.
Dante didn’t shout. He didn’t have to. “Wrong answer.”
Silence rippled down the line. Most of these men had never seen him furious in daylight. Most thought they understood the hierarchy until the ground shifted under their feet.
Luca stepped in, a palm held to Dante’s chest—control, but not challenge. “Dante—”
“Move.” It was an order, not a plea. Luca’s hand didn’t drop, but his eyes flicked sideways, calling attention to the observer framed by the kitchen door: Alina, upright, wrapped in a loose blanket, her expression glinting with something between fatigue and defiance.
“Boss,” Luca murmured, “Alina’s watching.”
Dante’s attention stuttered, rebooted. He turned.
She stood exactly in the center of the tile, body set as if bracing for aftershocks.
Her cheek was still smeared with blood—her own?
the intruder’s?—and her right hand clutched the edge of the counter as if it were the last part of the world that wouldn’t move.
Everyone else seemed to dissolve. The guards retreated without being told, their boots mouthing apologies in the hush. Even Luca faded: one last check to see if Dante was intact, then a slow, deliberate exit, leaving the two of them alone in the echo.
At first, neither spoke. The silence wasn’t empty; it was humid with everything they hadn’t said last night, and the night before, and every night since the first bullet shredded the perimeter of Alina’s life. She was the one who broke it.
“I’m okay,” she said. Her voice was flat, almost clinical.
Dante’s jaw worked against itself. “You shouldn’t have had to be.”
She moved around the island, the blanket trailing like a ghost. Her movements were measured—nurse movements, Dante realized, the economy of someone who learned very early to ration out her own pain. She stopped a full arm’s length away.
He wanted to touch her. Instead, he turned that urge into kinetic energy, rounding on the guards at the far end of the hall.
“I want every inch of this house swept. If there is a hole in my security, I will find it, and I will bury whoever created it.” He didn’t need to raise his voice—every syllable snapped clean and deadly.
The message was for her, too. I will protect you, even if I have to burn the world to do it.
She watched him, unblinking.
He turned back, posture iron-straight but barely holding. “You could’ve been hurt.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You could’ve been,” he repeated, as if the words themselves might bend her to his logic.
“I wasn’t,” she said. “And neither were you.”
He almost laughed, but it came out as a sharp exhale. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
He looked at her, really looked, and saw the purple shadow blooming on her arm, the way she didn’t mask the limp in her left leg, the way she squared her shoulders against the next impact. His throat thickened.
He said, “You are the only thing I can’t lose.”
The words sat between them, awkward and naked.
For a long moment, Alina did nothing, just let the truth draw blood.
Then she stepped forward, one silent footfall at a time, until they were close enough that he could smell her—hospital soap, cordite, the singe of near-miss gunpowder.
He could see every fleck of color in her irises, each one a battle report.
Luca, who had not gone far, reappeared at the edge of the doorway and nodded once—a micro-expression, a permission. Then the rest of the world receded entirely.
Dante tried to say something, but the words caught in the tangle of his own need.
He looked away, just for a second, because looking at her meant admitting what she was to him, and he could not afford to do that—not now, not ever, not with the whole house listening.
And yet she wasn’t going to let him escape.
“You don’t understand,” he managed. “When I heard that noise—when I realized you weren’t in the room—everything just stops. I can’t function when you’re in danger. I—” His voice broke, and he hated himself for it.
She shook her head and cut him off before he could retreat.
“No. Let me finish.” A step closer, until their bodies were nearly aligned.
Her forehead almost grazed his chin; he could feel the heat rolling off her skin.
“You fought today. You were brave. And I am proud of you. But I am never going to be calm about you being in danger. Ever.”
Her hand came up, not tentative at all, and she touched the line of his jaw with the backs of her fingers. He exhaled again, this time slower, as if breathing were something she had to teach him.
“Dante,” she whispered, and he hated how much it mattered, her saying his name like that. “I don’t want you to be calm. I want you to care. I want you to protect me. I want you to be angry when someone threatens me.”
He pressed his palm to the back of her hand, trapping it to his skin. She didn’t pull away.
“I’m trying,” he said, and for the first time all day the admission cost him something. “I know,” she said.
He let the moment hold, then: “And I’m failing.”
She shook her head. “No. You’re learning.”
His eyes stung with the effort not to blink. He wanted to drag her into a room with no windows, wanted to chain the world outside and keep her where bullets and traitors couldn’t touch her. But she wouldn’t stand for that, he realized, not really. She was only here because she chose it.
He pulled her into his arms, his grip desperate but not rough, and rested his forehead to hers. Their shared breath fogged the air between them.
“You scared me,” he said into her hair.
“You scared me too.”
He laughed, dry and low. “I’m in too deep.”
“Good.”
He closed his eyes, knowing she was right.