16. Dante
DANTE
The heavy mahogany of my desk feels like a coffin lid.
I slide the false-bottom panel into place, concealing the weight of two Canadian passports, twenty-five thousand in untraceable bills, and a burner phone pre-loaded with extraction coordinates.
The forestry roads north of the pass are choked with hemlock and shadows—the kind of terrain that swallows lives whole and spits them out clean on the other side.
Setting this up feels like carving out a piece of my own chest. My Delta training screams that you never give up a tactical advantage, and Savannah is the greatest asset this club has ever seen.
But I don’t see an asset when I look at her anymore.
I see the jagged silver scar on her collarbone and the way she carves those wood birds when she thinks the world isn't watching. She’s someone I’m trying to bring back to life, and fragility doesn't thrive in a war zone.
The door creaks. I don’t reach for my sidearm; I recognize the predatory grace of her footfalls. Savannah stops short, her eyes fixated on the stack of blueprints and the black duffel I haven't hidden yet.
"Going somewhere, Dante?" Her voice is a lethal edge, her posture coiling into a strike. "Or am I being evicted before the first shot even lands?"
"It’s an exit, Savannah. Not a sentence." I lean back, the leather of my chair groaning. "There’s a truck gassed up in the north shed. This route leads to a contact in British Columbia. No cartel, no marshals, no Hell Court. Just a life."
She stares at the bag, her trigger finger twitching against her thigh. "You're letting me walk."
"I'm giving you a choice. If you stay, you'll probably die with us. If you leave, you get to find out who you are without a rifle in your hand."
The silence stretches, heavy as the mountain fog. For the first time, her calculation isn't about exits—it's about me.
"You're making yourself vulnerable," she whispers, her eyes searching mine for the catch.
"I've spent years burying people I commanded. I’m not burying you because I was too selfish to open the gate."
"You’d let me leave? Just like that?" Her voice cracks, a thin fissure in a glacier. She steps closer, the scent of gunpowder and mountain air clinging to her skin. "I’m the only one who can identify El Espectro’s lieutenants.
I’m the reason your gates are reinforced with steel plate.
The cartel will tear this place to the ground looking for me. "
"Then let them tear it down," I say, my hand tightening on the armrest. "I’d rather track your trail across the border for the next twenty years than haul your body out of the mud tomorrow morning because you felt obligated to stay. Loyalty shouldn't be a death sentence, Savannah."
She flinches as if I’ve struck her. Her gaze falls to the duffel, her fingers tracing the nylon strap. The first time someone puts her life above their own tactical gain, and it ruins her more than the violence ever did.
She pulls her hand back, tucking it into the pocket of her tactical vest. Her chin lifts. "I'm not leaving."
"The truck’s ready. Don't be a martyr."
"It's not about being a martyr, Dante." She looks me dead in the eye, her amber gaze startlingly clear. "I spent eight years waiting for someone to sell me out or use me up. I can’t run anymore, but I know how to stay. I trust you."
The word "trust" hits me like a point-blank round to the chest. For a woman who was raised by wolves and hunted by monsters, that word is a surrender. One I never expected to win.
I feel my jaw tighten. The muscle beneath my left eye twitches—a tell I haven't shown since Kandahar. My hands, which have remained steady through ambushes and interrogations, tremble slightly as I lean forward in my chair.
"Trust." The word scrapes out of me like shrapnel working its way to the surface.
"You know what trust gets you in my world, Savannah?
A knife in the back from your commanding officer.
A drone strike on coordinates you provided in good faith.
Brothers bleeding out in the sand because someone higher up the food chain decided your mission was expendable. "
She doesn't step back. Most people would. Instead, she watches the crack in my armor widen, her eyes tracking every micro-expression I'm failing to control.
"I built Hell Court because trust was the only currency that hadn't been devalued by bureaucrats and politicians.
" My voice drops to barely above a whisper.
"Every system I served—Delta, CIA, DOD—they all started with good intentions.
Brotherhood. Honor. Protecting something bigger than yourself.
But power corrupts everything it touches, and eventually, the only thing you can trust is that everyone will sell you out when the price is right. "
I push back from the desk, the chair wheels scraping against concrete. My hands find the edge of the mahogany, gripping hard enough that my knuckles go white.
"You just told me you trust me, and it's the first time in fifteen years someone has said that word to me without wanting something in return. Without an agenda. Without a fucking angle."
The confession hangs between us like smoke from a discharged weapon. Savannah's expression shifts—not pity, never pity, but recognition. She sees the wound now, the one I've carried longer than the bullet scar near my ribs.
"Dante." Her voice is softer than I've ever heard it, stripped of its usual tactical edge.
I stand, my movements deliberate despite the emotional storm tearing through my chest. The space between us feels charged, electric. She doesn't retreat as I approach, her breathing shallow but steady.
My hand rises slowly, giving her every opportunity to pull away, to remind me that touch has been weaponized against her too many times to count. Instead, she tilts her face up toward mine, those eyes searching mine for something I'm not sure I know how to give.
My palm settles against her jaw, thumb tracing the sharp line of her cheekbone. Her skin is warm, real, alive under my touch. Not the ghost I've been trying to protect, but the woman who chose to stay when leaving would have been safer.
"Savannah." Her name is a prayer I didn't know I still remembered how to say.
I lean down, my lips finding hers with the same careful precision I use when disarming explosives.
No urgency, no conquest—just the terrifying tenderness of someone who has forgotten how to be gentle trying to remember.
She melts into the kiss, a soft sound escaping her throat that nearly undoes me completely.
When the kiss finally breaks, neither of us moves immediately.
The world outside my office might as well have ceased to exist. Savannah's forehead rests against my chest, her breath warm through the cotton of my shirt.
My arms settle around her with a certainty I haven't felt since the last time I trusted my commanding officer—before Kandahar taught me that certainty gets good people killed.
But this feels different. Solid. Real in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with tactical advantage or strategic positioning.
Her fingers curl into my shirt, not clutching but anchoring, as if she's testing whether I'll disappear if she doesn't hold on tight enough. The gesture cracks something open in my chest that I've kept welded shut for fifteen years.
"I don't have a clue how to do this," she whispers against my collarbone, her voice barely audible. "The staying part. The trusting part."
My hand finds the back of her neck, fingers threading through the silk of her hair. "Neither do I."
Outside the windows, dawn creeps across the mountains like spilled honey, painting the peaks in shades of gold I haven't bothered to notice in years. The compound is still quiet—too early for most of the brothers, too late for the night watch to care about what happens behind closed doors.
"Dante." She pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, her amber gaze searching mine with the same intensity she uses to line up impossible shots. "What happens when the cartel comes? When El Espectro realizes I'm not running anymore?"
The question hangs between us, sharp as a blade. I could lie to her, tell her we'll handle whatever comes, that Hell Court has survived worse. But she's asking for honesty, and after everything she's given me, she deserves it.
"Then we fight. Together." My thumb traces her jaw, memorizing the curve of it. "Not because you're an asset or because the government says you're our responsibility. Because you chose to stay, and I choose to keep you."
Her eyes close, and for a moment she looks younger than her twenty-six years. Like the girl who watched her family die and decided vengeance was the only currency she had left to spend.
"I've never had anyone fight for me before," she admits, her voice breaking on the last word.
The confession is more painful than any round I've taken. Hell Court isn't just a fortress I built to survive corruption anymore. Somewhere between her first shot through the rain and the trust she offered me tonight, Savannah became something worth building a future around.
Something worth dying for, if it comes to that.
But more importantly—something worth living for.