CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Implicatio
Just saw matching numbers on the clock. Could he be thinking of me??? #FreeMarino (@deisebloombastic)
I kept checking the time while calling witnesses for the case. Joseph was working on my filing system. We had eight days until the first hearing, and I couldn’t miss a single detail. Maressa was counting on me. Dante trusted me.
When the clock hit two in the afternoon, I nearly jumped out of my chair.
“You scared me.” Joseph jumped from his chair.
“Sorry. I need to go.”
I flew to the car and tossed my purse on the passenger seat. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror and smiled. Even though the neutral look washed me out, the red lipstick warmed my skin.
Then I headed toward Braxton. This time I wasn’t going just because I needed to, but because I wanted to. We hadn’t spoken since I sent the letter, and the wait had consumed the last forty-eight hours.
As soon as Dante entered the room, I knew.
I knew he had read the letter because his eyes locked onto mine instantly.
I felt like a damn teenager torn between wanting to hear what he had to say about it and wanting to pretend I’d never let myself get carried away by the reckless emotion we’d shared at our last meeting.
“Doctor.” He gave a half smile.
“Dante,” I replied, watching him sit down.
The guard moved to cuff Dante’s arms to the table, but I touched the guard’s arm.
“I need his hands free,” I said when the guard gave me a curious look.
Dante was watching me too, but there was no curiosity in his gaze. It was something far less noble. He was amused.
“You know what? I think one hand is enough.” I changed my mind.
Dante raised one eyebrow. There it was—I got him.
The guard cuffed one of his hands and left.
Dante tilted his head to the side, watching me organize the folders in front of him.
“Mr. Marino…” I met his eyes. “The detective assigned to your case seems interested in filling in certain gaps in your statement.”
I pulled a sheet from the pile in front of me.
“I want to make sure you say the right things.” Dante’s eyes, which had been on mine, dropped to my lips and seemed ready to keep traveling downward. “Are you paying attention, Dante?”
My question brought his eyes back up to mine.
“All ears, Dr. Torres,” he said with a hint of irony, shifting in his chair.
“In your initial statement, you mentioned you were going to the gym…”
“Yes.”
“Biceps? Back?” I asked, deliberately eyeing his arms straining against the red jumpsuit.
“Does the detective want to know my training schedule?”
“Have you been training here? What did you do today?” I let my gaze drop to his legs.
“Or is it you who’s interested, Doctor?”
“Dante.” I leaned slightly over the table. “Avoid answering questions with other questions.”
“Why?” He mimicked my movement, bringing us close together.
“First, because it’s irritating. And second, because it makes it seem like you’re trying to buy time.”
Dante didn’t move. Neither did I. For a fraction of a second longer than necessary, we stared at each other.
“Muay Thai.” He pulled back, leaning into the chair again.
“Like Thai boxing?”
“Surprised?”
“A little,” I said, not mentioning that I loved fighting. I’d practiced various martial arts throughout my life, but Thai boxing was an old passion of mine.
“Why? You like punching guys when you’re not humiliating them in court?”
“How long were you there?”
“Answering a question with another… that makes you seem guilty.”
“Dante. Focus.”
“I have no idea,” he said, sounding bored. “Until my shin was swollen and my knuckles were bleeding.”
I swallowed hard.
“Avoid saying that out loud again. It makes you sound aggressive.”
“To people who believe I killed a guy? Does that matter?”
“It matters if we’re trying to keep you from spending the rest of your life in prison,” I said sharply.
“Right.”
“When you checked into the hotel… you said you panicked about your identity. Why?”
Dante looked at the handcuff on his wrist.
“The receptionist was talking to someone about the news—they’d found Quentin’s body.”
“That was what? Around six in the morning?” I checked the paper. “But you weren’t a suspect yet.”
“It was only a matter of time.”
“Because of the fight? Why did you fight anyway?”
“Because he was a worm.”
“The witnesses at the restaurant said you were fighting over a woman.”
Dante’s eyes returned to mine.
“Is this about your girlfriend?” I said, watching his reactions.
“I don’t have a girlfriend, Doctor.”
Should I be... relieved?
“So what were you arguing about?”
“I already told you. He was a worm. Bragging about a bunch of crap. Looked like a drunk pig,” Dante said with disgust.
“Okay. This only gets worse.” I pulled the next paper from the pile. “Let’s talk about your key witness that no one can find. The prostitute.”
“What about her?”
“You said you were with her the night everything happened.”
“Yes.”
“Where did you pick her up?”
Dante licked his lips.
“On the road, while I was driving out of Heritage.”
“And she just agreed to go with you? Just like that?”
Dante laughed.
“Why wouldn’t she?” His eyes pierced through me.
“Why didn’t you go to a hotel near the highway? There are plenty,” I asked.
“I wanted to get away from the city.”
“What did you do when you got to the hotel?”
“Do you really want to know?”
I swallowed hard and straightened up.
“You can spare me the details.”
“No, no, Helena,” he leaned forward again, but this time his shadow crept further, touching my side of the table. “The details matter.”
Dante smiled like a predator that had cornered its prey.
“When we got to the hotel, I was so desperate to quench the fire burning in my chest that I barely made it past reception. I left a wad of cash on the counter and headed for the first room with an open door. She fell onto the bed, spread wide, waiting for me to devour her—but I didn’t have time for beds.
Didn’t even have time to take off my clothes.
” Dante leaned back again, restrained by the handcuffs. “Have you ever felt like that, Helena?”
My face was burning.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He savored his victory. We were miles away from where we should be. “When the fire died down, I left her on the bed—passed out, spent—and went back to reception to check in.”
“Spare me the... specifics.” I tried to regain my composure, even though my stomach was doing flips.
“Don’t worry, Helena. I save the extended version just for you.”
I shot him a deadly look, trying to get him back on track, but he seemed completely derailed.
“Now that we’ve gotten past the formalities, are you finally going to stop pretending you didn’t write that letter?” His eyebrow arched, matching the curve of his smile—which faded as he waited for my response.
“You forced me to answer them. Not to discuss them,” I replied, hoping that would be enough. Then Dante scratched his chin, settled into the chair, and began to recite it to me:
I shouldn’t write letters. I shouldn’t let you into my mind, either. But still, I have a piece of your soul in a dome beside my bed.
You wanted to know how the rose was...
It was black as pitch.
Like your eyes today, when my words struck your armor.
And I recognized the sound of a hammer shaping steel.
My arms still ache too.
You asked me if I knew what it was like.
I know.
I know when silence becomes absence.
When your chest weighs heavy, but your mouth stays shut.
When you learn not to feel—just to keep going.
I asked you why me.
But I never asked myself why I knocked on that glass and walked into that interrogation room.
Now I know.
Maybe our eyes said more than our mouths that Christmas.
You asked for my honest version—as if you knew that to give you that, I’d have to strip myself bare.
And even as I feel manipulated for giving you this power, I let your poetic hands reach me again.
P.S.: Despite everything, I like it when they seem consumed by darkness.
It’s like I’m looking at a place only I know.
“P.S. 2: I was talking about the roses,” I added. “Yeah, I know what I wrote.”
My body felt melted, molded into the shape of the chair—I’d sunk so deep while Dante recited what I’d written, line by line. It was impressive that he’d memorized it so quickly. But it seemed less impressive and more obvious when I thought about the man behind that red jumpsuit.
Dante was a strikingly intelligent young man who didn't fit the traditional mold for boys his age—especially not in his social class.
The only ways boys around here earned respect were through physical feats like soccer or basketball.
Dante could handle both with ease, but it was in the sciences where he truly shone, which was why he was considered the pride of the city.
It was also why girls camped outside the prison every day.
“I've lost count of how many times I've reread it in the last forty-eight hours.”
“We can't talk about this.” I glanced through the small glass window in the heavy door. The guard stood with the expression of someone who wasn't listening, but that could easily be a tactic.
“Why?”
“Because it's inappropriate.” I looked at Dante, and the bastard was clearly enjoying himself at my expense.
“It's poetry.” His eyes fixed on my lips without an ounce of shame. “I wondered what to expect from your first letter… but nothing could have prepared me for you, Helena. And yet I feel completely ready to discover every detail.”
“You have so much to worry about…”
“And yet your eyes are the last thing I see before I fall asleep.” He said it like those words couldn't blow up this entire case.
“Dante.”
“Don't deny me the right to dream about this, Helena.” His voice slid over me like silk, sending shivers from my nape to my ankles.
“C-can we get back to this?” I pointed to the papers in front of me. “And keep your mind focused on the case for now…”
“If you promise to give me more of you… not this gorgeous lawyer sitting in front of me.” His eyes traveled the length of my body. “The Helena who wrote that letter.”
“She should be dead.”
“I'd burn the world down before I let that happen,” he growled.
“Please…”
“Promise.”
“I promise not to kill her when I get home.” My eyes met his, and I surrendered. “Not yet.”
He smiled, his chest swelling with victory.
“Tell me what you need.” He nodded, adjusting his posture in the chair.
I spent the next half hour getting a better understanding of Dante's case, going over what he'd already told me—but this time with details, and sometimes too many of them.
Dante might be guilty of many things, but the one who'd been condemned seemed to be me.