Chapter 11
Nita
Thirteen years was long enough to convince yourself a wound had healed when all it had really done was scar over. The marks were soul deep but barely visibly to anyone else. I knew they existed though.
I had learned how to live with scars.
Washington, D.C. had a way of demanding that from you—polished surfaces, sharp elbows, and the quiet understanding that everyone in the room was carrying something they didn’t talk about.
I had built a career in the spaces where secrets lived.
Special federal investigator. Political orders.
The kind that didn’t make headlines but shifted lives anyway.
I was good at it. Clinical. Precise. Detached when I needed to be.
It was the only way I had survived losing Lamonte.
It was the only way I had survived Dante leaving.
I told myself that as the train rolled south, the city bleeding away into blur and trees, my phone face-down on my thigh like it always was when I traveled. I didn’t need distractions. I didn’t need reminders.
This weekend was about Char. My baby sister—though she’d been a mother longer than I had ever planned to be one. Kids weren’t in my future and I had accepted it. Once for a short stint I thought, maybe, but work was work and my particular job was demanding.
Char met me at the door with flour on her cheek and laughter in her voice, the house already loud with small feet and big feelings. Her husband, Elijah, lifted the youngest princess onto his hip while the oldest barreled into my legs like she was tackling a suspect twice her size.
“Aunt Nita!” she shrieked, wrapping herself around my knees.
I laughed, bending down, scooping her up. “You’re going to knock someone out with that kind of force.”
She grinned, missing a tooth, proud of it. Soon I wouldn’t be able to pick her up and spin her around like this. They were growing so fast.
Char watched from the kitchen doorway, arms folded loosely, her eyes soft in a way they hadn’t been in years. Not since before hospitals. Not since before ICU monitors and whispered prayers and the smell of antiseptic clinging to our clothes.
She looked happy.
Really happy.
And it still startled me every time.
We spent the afternoon on the floor, puzzles scattered, crayons rolling under furniture, the girls arguing over whose turn it was to be the “doctor” and whose turn it was to be the “patient.” Eli cooked dinner like he always did when I came—something hearty, something warm, something that felt like home even to someone who never quite trusted the concept.
Char caught me watching her more than once. She didn’t call me out on it. She never did.
Later, when the girls were finally asleep and the house had settled into that rare quiet that only parents truly appreciate, Char and I sat on the back porch with glasses of wine, the night air a soft kiss to our skins.
“You’re thinking too loud,” she expressed gently.
I exhaled. “You always say that.”
“And I’m always right.”
I smiled into my glass. “You look good.”
She shrugged. “I feel good. Most days.”
That mattered more.
I glanced at her left hand—wedding ring catching the porch light. “He good to you?” I asked even though the answer was clear as day. She was happy and he was the very best for my sister.
She met my eyes without hesitation. “He’s steady. Kind. He doesn’t try to fix me.”
My throat tightened. “That’s important.”
She tilted her head, studying me now. “And you? You ever going to let someone in again?”
I gave a half-smile. “I work with politicians. That answers your question.”
She laughed softly, but there was understanding there too. Char never pushed me about that part of my life. She knew better than anyone what happened when the ground disappeared under your feet.
What it cost to rebuild.
I went to bed that night content in a way I didn’t often allow myself to feel. Safe. Anchored. The past tucked neatly away where it belonged. I should have known peace didn’t last.
The phone rang the next morning while I was pouring coffee. North Carolina area code. I almost let it go to voicemail.
Almost.
Something made me answer. “Hello?” There was a pause on the other end. A breath. A sound I hadn’t heard in over a decade and somehow recognized instantly.
“Nita.”
My hand tightened around the mug so hard I felt heat spill onto my skin.
I didn’t drop it. I didn’t speak either. I would recognize his voice anywhere.
“Nita,” he said again, quieter. Like he wasn’t sure I was real. Like saying my name was an act of courage.
The world tilted. Every sound around me—coffee dripping, birds outside, the hum of the refrigerator—faded into nothing.
“Dante,” I finally managed.
Thirteen years collapsed into a single heartbeat. He sounded older. Rougher. Still steady in that way that had always made you feel like if he told you something was going to be okay, it probably would be—even if it wasn’t.
“I need your help.”
There it was. Not hello. Not how have you been.
Not I’m sorry I left you to pick up the pieces of losing Lamonte too.
I’m sorry that I killed a man for your sister to be able to breathe easy, but I never let you thank me for it.
Because I knew who did it. When the news said the body had been found, no evidence, not a single scrap of DNA left behind…
yeah only a cop can kill that clean. And I wasn’t mad at him for it.
I was hurt that he didn’t allow us to support him in his pain while he gave my sister her freedom to breathe again. I closed my eyes.
“I don’t—” I stopped myself, forcing my voice back into shape. “You disappeared. You don’t get to call me like nothing happened.”
“I know,” he said. No defensiveness. No excuses. “And I wouldn’t if I had any other option.”
That was the thing about Dante. He never wasted words.
“What kind of help?” I asked wondering how I could help him.
I didn’t even know where he lived. The man literally had found a way to be a ghost. Even using my clearance to get into his department of defense records for the military disability check he received monthly turned up nothing except a mail box in one of those strip mall places that let you rent a box cheap.
“Federal.”
My pulse spiked. What had he gotten himself into?
“I can’t talk about details over the phone,” he continued. “But it involves people who think status erases accountability. I need you to come to Dreadnought, North Carolina.”
I stared out the kitchen window, sunlight cutting across the counter. Char’s life moving peacefully around me, unaware that mine had just cracked open.
“Why me?” I asked still not understanding how I could help him.
A beat.
“Because you know who I was,” he said. “You know the man I can be and the things I will do when necessary. You know me, Nita, better than just about anyone.”
That hurt more than it should have.
“You left,” I whispered. “And I’m supposed to help you.”
“I didn’t leave you to hurt you or Char,” he replied.
“I left so I wouldn’t destroy everything I touched.
Your sister, she cut me loose. We had a talk before he got to her.
She didn’t want the life I could give her.
In the end, what we had was nice, but it wasn’t everlasting.
Char opened my mind up to a possibility of something I had shut off.
In the end, that shit doesn’t matter because I’m not that man anymore either. ”
I swallowed hard. Lamonte’s name lived between us, unspoken and heavy.
“You’re asking me to step back into something I buried,” I stated unsure if I could see Dante Verdone without breaking apart inside once again. I had healed. I didn’t want to go back. Dante was a tie to Lamonte.
“I know,” he said. “And I won’t blame you if you say no. But people I care about are in real trouble.”
I believed him. That made it worse. Because I knew what having Dante Verdone in your corner meant. If I didn’t help him, he would still find away. So the least I could do was put my armor on to block my emotions, give him this favor, and then we both can move on for good. Nothing left between us.
I looked down at my coffee, now cold, untouched since the call began. Thirteen years of control, of balance, of carefully stacked pieces—shaking with every second his voice filled my ear.
“When?” I asked.
“As soon as you can.”
I exhaled slowly. “I need to think.”
“Of course.”
There was relief there. Gratitude. Restraint.
“Dante,” I added before I could stop myself.
“Yes?”
“You don’t get to disappear without answers again.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“I won’t,” he said. “Not if you’re standing on the other side of the line. I’ll text you an address.”
The call ended, and I stood there long after, phone still pressed to my ear, heart pounding like I’d just run headfirst into my past.
Char popped in on me minutes later, she was here for breakfast. I was stuck in place, leaning against the counter like my bones had gone soft.
“What happened?” she asked gently studying me. “Nita, who happened? Someone got you shook up.”
I looked at my sister—whole, alive, happy in ways we once prayed she would get the chance to be. He gave her this, gave us this.
“It was Dante,” I shared.
Her breath caught. While Charlaina told me over and over the same thing Dante said, it still didn’t feel right.
I knew the man Dante was with her. How could she not be in love with him?
She has told me many times over the years, Dante was a safe place to fall when she had to learn to rebuild herself.
But she knew Dante wasn’t her forever and that was why she ended things.
She enjoyed time with him, but the butterflies and excitement with every touch weren’t there.
She liked him well enough, but she simply found it wasn’t the forever kind of feeling she wanted.
I knew she hurt him. It was written on his face. Lamonte told me some too in casual conversation. Dante had been married before. Char was the first woman he had spent real amounts of time with. The fact he even considered a relationship with her was a huge thing according to Lamonte.
I get that it wasn’t meant to be fore them.
Kind of like it was never meant to be for me and Lamonte.
Fate was a cruel bitch that way. She gave me this beautiful, strong, protective, confident, sexy man.
She let me fall hard and fast just to rip him away from me where I could never have that again.
Yeah, fate was not fair because she gave some fairytales and others she left worse than nightmares, she left people like me absolutely empty.
I had buried all of these emotions. The ones where I wanted more than the life I had.
Which only frustrated me more because I had a good damn life.
I had a career, I had family, friends, and I literally loved waking up every day.
Yet, one call fate ripped all the good emotions away and brought me right back to the emptiness.
The world, which I’d finally put back on track, spun wildly out of control.
And I knew—before I even packed my bag—that nothing would ever be the same again.