Chapter Thirty-Three A Line Is Drawn
They drove home in silence, the weight of Isabel's story settling over both of them like something physical. It was Elena who finally spoke, somewhere past the halfway point, watching the dark countryside blur past the window.
"I'm not going to let you shut me in a house and call it protection," she said quietly.
"Not after hearing that. Isabel wasn't destroyed by violence.
She was destroyed by silence and helplessness.
If you try to protect me the way Salvatore failed to protect her — by making decisions for me, keeping me in the dark, treating me like something to be managed instead of a person who gets a say — you'll break exactly the thing you're trying to save. "
Dante's hands tightened on the wheel. "I don't know how to keep you safe and give you everything Isabel never had. I don't have a model for that, Elena. Every instinct I have says lock the doors, hide you away, handle it myself."
"Then learn a new instinct." Her voice was steady, though her eyes had gone bright. "I am not asking you to stop protecting me. I am asking you to protect me with me. Tell me the plans. Let me help make them. Trust that I am stronger than you're afraid I am."
He was quiet for a long moment, the road unspooling dark ahead of them, before he reached over and found her hand in the dark, lacing their fingers together with a grip that felt, for the first time, less like possession and more like partnership.
"Okay," he said finally, roughly. "Okay. Tell me what you need."
"I need to know Salvatore's next move before he makes it.
I need to be part of drawing him out, if that's what it takes to end this properly, instead of waiting behind locked doors for the next envelope.
" She turned to face him fully. "I need you to trust me the way I've trusted you since the night in your study, when I had every reason not to. "
"You have my trust," he said quietly. "You've had it longer than I think I let myself admit." His thumb traced slow circles over her knuckles. "I love you, Elena. Enough to be terrified of losing you. Enough, apparently, to finally learn how to be brave in a different way than I'm used to."
"That's all I'm asking," she said softly, and settled her head against his shoulder for the rest of the drive home, the two of them quiet and resolved, already beginning, without either of them fully realizing it yet, to plan the confrontation that would finally end this.