Chapter 42
Dante
I'm on the bike before I can process what happened.
The Ducati roars beneath me, eating up blocks as I weave through traffic. My left hand is pressed against my side, blood soaking through my shirt, my jacket. Every bump in the road sends a fresh wave of pain through my ribs.
Think. Focus.
We have a protocol for this. Every Sartori soldier knows it. You get hurt, you call the number. A doctor shows up, wherever you are. No questions, no hospitals, no police reports. Clean and simple.
I've never needed it.
Twenty years in this life and I've never taken a bullet that stuck. Grazed, sure. Cut, beaten, broken—all of that. But never this. Never a piece of metal lodged somewhere inside me, grinding against things it shouldn't touch every time I breathe.
I pull over in an alley. Lean against the brick wall. Pull out my phone.
The screen is slick with blood. My blood. I wipe it on my jeans and stare at the contact list.
One call. That's all it takes.
My thumb hovers over the number.
The world is starting to blur at the edges. Blood loss. Shock setting in. I know the signs. I've seen them in other men. Men who didn't make it.
I should call.
Instead, I pull up a different app. The one I check every morning. The one that shows me a little blue dot on a map of Denver.
She's home.
I close my eyes. Her face swims up from the darkness. The way she looked at me in that hospital room, broken and bruised and still so fucking beautiful it hurt to breathe.
Leave, she said. Don't come back.
I left.
But if I'm going to die tonight—
I open my eyes. Shove the phone in my pocket. Kick the Ducati back to life.
The ride is a blur. Streetlights smear into streaks of gold. My vision tunnels. I run two red lights, maybe three. A car horn blares somewhere behind me.
I don't care.
I just need to see her face. One more time. That's all.
Her building is a four-story walk-up in a quiet neighborhood.
I park the bike at the curb. Nearly fall getting off. Catch myself on the handlebar, leaving a bloody handprint on the chrome.
The front door is locked. Security panel. I lean against the wall, trying to think through the fog in my head.
Then the door opens.
A kid in a pizza delivery uniform steps out, box balanced on one hand, phone in the other. He doesn't even look at me as he passes.
I catch the door before it closes.
Inside. Stairs.
Four flights.
I've climbed mountains. Fought men twice my size and walked away standing.
Four flights of stairs nearly kills me.
By the third, I'm counting each step like a prayer. By the fourth, I'm not sure I'm going to make it.
But I do.
Her door is at the end of the hall. 4B. I've memorized the number. Dreamed about it. Imagined knocking a thousand times.
I never did.
Until now.
I lean against the doorframe. Raise my fist. Knock.
The sound is weak. Pathetic. I try again, harder.
Footsteps inside. Light, careful. She's checking the peephole. Of course she is. She's smart.
"Who is it?"
Her voice.
Christ.
Her voice cuts through the fog like a blade. Clear and sharp and real. I close my eyes. Let it wash over me.
Two years. Two miserable fucking years of watching her from the shadows, and her voice still does this to me.
I should leave.
I should turn around, go back down those stairs, call the number, do the smart thing. She told me to stay away. She meant it. And here I am, bleeding on her doorstep like some wounded animal crawling home to die.
This isn't fair to her.
I push off the doorframe. Take a step back.
"Dante."
The word comes out before I can stop it. My name. Just my name. But it's enough.
Silence.
Long. Heavy. The kind of silence that stretches into forever.
I wait for her to tell me to leave. Wait for the sound of her footsteps walking away. Wait for the rejection I deserve.
Instead, I hear the locks.
One. Two. Three.
The door opens.
And there she is.
Marina Reeves.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
I try to speak. Try to explain. Try to say something—anything—that makes this okay.
Instead, my knees buckle.
The last thing I see before the darkness takes me is her face.
There she is.
Marina
Dante collapses at my feet.
For three seconds, I don't move. Can't move. My brain short-circuits, stuck in a loop of this isn't happening, this isn't real, this is a nightmare and I'll wake up any second now.
Then I see the blood.
It pools beneath him, dark and spreading, soaking into the carpet of my hallway. The copper smell hits me and my stomach lurches.
"No. No, no, no."
I drop to my knees beside him. My hands hover over his body, shaking, useless. Where do I even start? His face is gray. Waxy. His breathing is shallow, ragged.
"Dante." I grab his shoulder, shake him. Nothing. "Dante, wake up."
He doesn't respond.
The blood keeps spreading.
I press my hand against his side where the jacket is soaked through. Warm. Too warm. It seeps between my fingers and I gag.
Think. Think. Think.
I can't call 911. I know that much. Whatever happened to him, whatever he did—hospitals mean police. Police mean questions. Questions mean the Sartori family.
And the Sartori family means—
I shove that thought away. Focus.
He's too heavy. I try to hook my arms under his shoulders, try to drag him inside, but he's dead weight. Two hundred pounds of muscle and bone and I can barely shift him an inch.
"Come on." My voice cracks. "Come on, you bastard, help me."
Nothing.
A door opens somewhere down the hall.
My heart stops.
Footsteps. Someone walking toward the stairs. Mrs. Patterson from 4A, probably. She takes her dog out every night at this time.
I flatten myself against Dante's body, trying to shield the blood from view. Trying to look like anything other than what this is.
The footsteps pass. Fade. A door closes.
I exhale.
But my hands won't stop shaking. My whole body is trembling now, that familiar feeling crawling up my spine. The one that comes before everything falls apart.
Not now. Please, not now.
I look at Dante's face. At the sharp lines of his jaw, the dark stubble, the scar through his eyebrow. He looks younger like this. Vulnerable. Nothing like the man who threw me over his shoulder two years ago. Nothing like the enforcer who sat at my hospital bed for days.
He came here.
Of all the places he could have gone, he came here.
I don't have time to think about what that means.
"Stay here," I whisper, which is stupid because he's unconscious and couldn't go anywhere if he tried. But I say it anyway. "Don't you dare die in my hallway."
I scramble to my feet. Rush inside.
I yank open the cabinet above the fridge. My hands close around a bottle of whiskey. A gift from a coworker I never opened. I grab it, grab a dish towel, and run back to the door.
He hasn't moved.
The blood has spread further.
I kneel beside him again, uncap the whiskey with my teeth. The smell burns my nostrils.
"Okay." I pour some onto the towel. "Okay, this is going to work. This has to work."
I press the soaked cloth against his face. His neck. Under his nose.
Nothing.
"Come on." I slap his cheek lightly. Then harder. "Wake up. Dante, wake up."
His eyelids flutter.
My heart lurches.
"That's it." I pour more whiskey on the towel, hold it under his nose. "Come back. I need you to come back."
A groan. Low, pained.
His eyes open.
For a moment, they're unfocused. Glassy. He stares at the ceiling like he doesn't know where he is.
Then his gaze finds mine.
"Marina." My name comes out broken. Barely a whisper.
"Can you hear me?" I lean closer, searching his face. "Dante, can you hear me?"
He nods. Barely. Just a slight dip of his chin, but it's enough.
"Good. Okay." I wipe my hands on my jeans, leaving dark smears. "You need to help me get you inside. Can you do that?"
Another nod.
"You have to stay awake. Just for a few minutes. Just until we're inside. Do you understand?"
His eyes hold mine.
"Yes." The word is barely audible.
"Okay." I hook my arm under his shoulder, brace myself. "On three. One, two—"
He tries to rise.
His body lifts maybe two inches before his arms give out. He crashes back down with a grunt that sounds like it's ripped from somewhere deep in his chest.
"Fuck." He squeezes his eyes shut. "Can't."
"Yes, you can." I adjust my grip, pull harder. "Come on. However you can. Crawl if you have to. Just move."
He opens his eyes. Looks at me like I've lost my mind.
Maybe I have.
"Move," I repeat. "Now."
Something shifts in his expression. That stubborn set to his jaw I remember from before. From the compound. From the hospital.
He plants his palm on the floor. Pushes.
This time, he makes it to his knees.
I duck under his arm, take as much of his weight as I can. My shoulder screams in protest. He's too heavy. Too big. But I lock my knees and hold on.
"Good. That's good. Keep going."
We move.
It's not walking. It's not even crawling, really. It's something in between—a lurching, stumbling shuffle that leaves bloody handprints on the floor. His breathing is ragged. Mine isn't much better.
The hallway stretches forever.
Ten feet to the living room. Another fifteen to the bedroom. It might as well be a mile.
"Stay with me." I tighten my grip on his waist. "Don't you dare pass out again."
"Trying." His voice is strained. Thin.
We make it past the couch. Past the kitchen doorway. His feet drag against the hardwood, leaving dark streaks.
My right hand cramps.
I grit my teeth and ignore it. Not now. Not fucking now.
"Almost there." I don't know if I'm talking to him or myself. "Just a little further."
He stumbles. His knee hits the floor hard and I nearly go down with him.
"Get up." I pull at his arm. "Dante, get up."
He doesn't move.
"Get up!"
A sound escapes him. Something between a laugh and a groan. But he plants his hand on the wall. Pushes himself upright.
We keep moving.
The bedroom door is open. Thank God. I don't think I could manage a doorknob right now.
"The bed." I steer him toward it. "You need to lay down. Right now."
He doesn't argue. Just lets me guide him the last few feet until his knees hit the mattress.
He collapses.
"Okay." I'm talking fast now. Too fast. The words tumble out in a rush I can't control.
"Okay, you're inside. You're on the bed.
That's good. That's step one. Now I need to—I need to find a way to help you.
I need to stop the bleeding. Do you have a first aid kit?
No, that's stupid, why would you have a first aid kit, you're bleeding all over my apartment.
I need to call someone. No, I can't call anyone. I need to—"
"Marina."
His voice cuts through my spiral. Quiet. Calm.
I stop.
He's turned his head on the pillow. Looking at me with those dark eyes. They're clearer now than they were in the hallway. More focused.
"There's no need."
"What?"
"You can just..." He pauses. Swallows. "Let me die."
The words hit me like a slap.
"What did you just say?"
"Easier." His eyes start to drift closed. "For everyone."
"No." I grab his shoulder, shake him. "No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to show up at my door after two years and then just—just die on my bed. That's not how this works."
His lips twitch. Almost a smile.
"You can't die here." My voice cracks. "You hear me? You can't. I won't let you. You absolute asshole."
The smile spreads. Weak, but real.
"Happy to see you too, cara."
Then his eyes close.
His body goes slack.
"Dante?" I shake him again. "Dante!"
Nothing.
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