6. Dante #2
When morning light smeared across the floor, duty returned. A text blinked on my phone from Enzo reading: schedule at dawn. Mirella's thumb hovered over her own screen before she passed me the device and said, "You handle them today. Don't let them set me up."
I hit send on a quick message I didn't fully explain to her. It was blunt: I'll be with her.
She smiled with that half-grimace that meant both gratitude and a challenge. "Big man," she teased.
"Shut up," I said, but my grin was real.
She stood at the doorway with her jacket over one arm. Her fingers found the small talisman in her pocket and she held it like a secret. She looked at me—something feral and soft—and crossed the room to kiss me once more, a short, consuming press.
"I don't want you to get in trouble," she whispered, lips near mine.
"Then don't let anyone hurt you," I said. My hand found the back of her neck and held.
She moved toward the door. When her foot touched the hall mat a soft sound—just the whisper of forced air—shifted us both.
I stepped forward, intending to follow, but my foot hit the threshold and stopped.
I should have been by her side. Instead, I watched her pull the door closed, the chain still latched, and then I saw it: a thin movement under the door.
An envelope slid, deliberate and slow, across the polished wood. It stopped at her scuffed boot. Someone had pushed it from the corridor.
Mirella's fingers tightened on the handle. She looked down. The color left her face a little. My throat closed.
She bent, picked up the envelope, and for an instant I wanted to wrench it from her hand. It was addressed in blocky, anonymous print. Her name.
"Doesn't look friendly," I said.
She didn't answer. Instead she opened it with a flick of nails. A folded photograph slid out. She didn't need to unfold it for me to know who it was—her younger self, on the floor of a stairwell, blood dark on her arm. A single line of ink ran beneath: Good to be remembered.
Silence roared in the hall. My muscles went hot with protective fury. The old promise she had given—of not being abandoned—felt like a knife in both our hands.
"We have to go," she said, voice small and sharp.
"No," I said. My fingers closed around her wrist. "We read this together. Right now."
She tried to pull free. Her jaw worked. Then she let me take the picture and we both looked. Whoever had sent it had shown they knew where we slept, that Mira's past could be dug up and displayed like evidence.
"Marco," she breathed. Or maybe it was hope. Or maybe a curse.
I crumpled the photograph in my fist, peering at the name across the top of the envelope. The signature was unfamiliar. It wasn't Marco's style, but it said someone was watching.
"We're not alone," I said.
She stared at me as if measuring whether that was a comfort or a threat. I felt the old terror—if I stayed, would I make this worse? Would someone come for her or me because I chose to fight?
Then I step closer, close enough that my ribs brushed hers. "I said I wouldn't let you be alone," I said. "I meant it."
Her eyes flashed something—relief, fear, desire—and she reached up and kissed me hard, like sealing a pact.
Footsteps approached in the corridor. Voices, distant and careful. We didn't move.
Somebody leaned low on the other side of the door, a voice I didn't trust. A single sound—mail, or a message—fell into the hall and then stopped. Whoever was out there had made a point.
I folded the photograph, slid it into my pocket, and turned the key in the lock.
"Stay," I told her, blunt as a blade. "Inside. Don't go anywhere alone."
"I'm not an errand," she said.
"You're not alone," I said. "Not while I'm here."
She sneered, soft, a fox with a bruise. Then she sank back against the door and kicked her boots off, talisman still in her palm.
The hall light flicked. Someone moved faster now. A shadow passed under the peephole and a low laugh—someone who knew more about our nights than we wanted—brushed the floor.
I slid my hand over hers and squeezed. The talisman warmed between our fingers.
Someone had taken a photograph of her wounded past and sent it to our doorstep. Whoever it was knew she was here. Whoever it was could be the start of something worse.
I leaned close, my breath fogging the glass of the peephole. "Whoever did this," I said, voice flat, "tells them Dante Costa is not someone you threaten with a photo."
Mirella looked at me with bright wet eyes. She hadn't said the words, but I knew. She was asking me, silently, to stay.
I pressed my forehead to hers. The hallway hummed with distant movement. I had made a choice in the corridor. Now it was time to live with it.
The lock clicked. The envelope lay on the mat like an open wound. Whoever had pushed it under our door had made their mark.
Footsteps stopped in the hallway outside. A hand rapped the wood twice. A voice—male, unhurried—said, "Mirella Esposito? We need a word."
My jaw set. I moved to the door and held the talisman in my palm as if it could be armor. The penthouse hummed around us, suddenly small and exposed.
"Tell them we're busy," I said.
She looked at me, lips parted. "And if they're not leaving?"
"Then they'll learn to ask twice," I said.
She smiled a little, reckless and frightened. "You sound remarkably confident for someone who threatened a consigliere."
"I have reasons to be," I said. My hand tightened on the knob.
The knocking came again, harder.
We both waited. Then I opened the door.