Chapter 25 - Dante
Three in the morning, and I hear her in the kitchen.
The sound pulls me from the guest room where I've been staring at the ceiling, counting her breaths through the walls. Three days since I showed her the truth. Three days since her world inverted. Three days of giving her space to process what I've hidden for a decade.
My feet find the floor before I can stop them. The need to see her, to confirm she's still here, drives me toward the door. But I freeze with my hand on the handle. She needs time. Distance. Room to grieve the girl who lived for revenge.
I force myself back to the bed, fingers clenching into fists.
Every instinct screams to check on her, to make sure she's eating, drinking, existing as more than a ghost. The sound of cabinets opening, water running, the soft clink of a mug.
She's making tea. The same jasmine blend she discovered her third night here.
Details I've memorized like a stalker, cataloging her habits like intel on a mark.
When her footsteps fade back toward our suite, I wait another twenty minutes before venturing out. The kitchen still smells like jasmine and something uniquely Ana that makes my chest tight and my cock twitch with the memory of tasting that scent on her inner thighs.
By five-thirty, I'm at the coffee maker, preparing her morning ritual. Two sugars, splash of cream, the exact temperature she prefers. The movements are automatic now, muscle memory from weeks of watching her routine. The mug sits perfect on the tray, steam curling up like an offering.
My cock hardens thinking about her lips on that mug, the same lips that screamed my name when I took her virginity on my desk. I grip the counter until my knuckles match the white marble. Fuck. Even her absence makes me ache.
I set it outside her door, knock twice, then retreat before she can open it. Small gestures that say I'm here without demanding anything in return.
An hour later when I check, the coffee's gone. Good. She's accepting something, even if it's just caffeine.
The paper sits on my desk, and my clumsy fingers attempt what should be simple.
Fold here, crease there, but the crane comes out lopsided, one wing higher than the other.
Nothing like the perfect birds she creates from grief and memory.
Still, I place it beside where the coffee was, this pathetic attempt at speaking her language.
When that disappears too, something loosens in my chest. She's taking what I offer, even if she's not ready to face me.
"She's still here."
Luca enters my study silent as death, his observation hanging in the air like smoke. Three days of waiting, and my psychopath brother chooses now to visit.
I nod, not looking up from the contracts I'm not actually reading. For now, she's still here. The leather chair creaks under my weight, the same sound it made when I watched her sleep for two weeks, when I sat hard as steel, fighting not to climb into bed and remind her body who it belongs to.
"You showed her the truth?" His pale blue eyes track across my desk, noting the scattered papers, the full ashtray, evidence of my vigil. The cigarette burns between my fingers, nicotine the only thing keeping me from losing my mind completely.
Another nod.
"Dangerous." He circles the room like a restless predator, fingers trailing along surfaces. "Truth breaks people. Shatters them into pieces too small to reassemble."
"She needed to know."
"Did she?" That terrible smile plays at his lips. "Or did you need to stop being her monster?"
The question cuts deeper than it should.
Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe I just got tired of carrying her hatred when I could barely carry my own guilt.
My scarred throat aches like it's being cut fresh, phantom pain from swallowing words I can't sign, can't write, can't scream into the silence she's left behind.
"She came here with purpose," Luca continues, stopping at the window. "Kill Dante Rosetti. Avenge family. Very clear, very focused." He turns, those unsettling eyes finding mine. "Now what? What fills that hollow space where revenge lived?"
"She'll find something."
"Will she?" His laugh is soft, wrong. "Broken things don't always mend, brother. Sometimes they just stay broken. Hollow. Empty vessels making the right sounds but holding nothing."
The words hit too close to my own fears. I've watched her these three days through shadows and doorways. She moves through the house like a ghost, there but not present.
"You're afraid she'll leave," Luca states, reading me with that uncanny accuracy.
"I'm afraid she'll stay from obligation. Guilt. Because she thinks she owes me something."
"She won't stay from obligation," Luca states with certainty.
"Then I'll make her stay for other reasons." The words escape before I can stop them, dark and possessive.
Luca's smile widens. "There's my brother. The one who takes what he wants."
"Not by force."
"No. By making yourself necessary. Like oxygen. Like addiction." He moves closer, and I smell copper on him. Fresh blood from whatever he's been doing. "You're letting her fade when you should be making yourself unavoidable. Undeniable. The one solid thing in her collapsing world."
"That's manipulation."
"That's love." The word sounds strange in his mouth, twisted but somehow true. "Love isn't patient, brother. It's selfish. It demands. It insists on existing even when everything else burns. Be unavoidable. Be the gravity she orbits around until she remembers she's real."
Marco finds me after Luca leaves, bringing the weight of real-world problems.
"Detroit's moving again." His voice carries that particular tone that means violence is coming. "Three more of our shipments hit this week."
I force myself to focus, to be the tactician he needs. But my hands move almost without thought: "Double Ana's security."
His eyebrow rises. "She doesn't even know if she's staying."
"Triple it. And if anyone even looks at her wrong, I want their eyes sent to Detroit in a box."
Marco nods, understanding the message. Touch her and die screaming. "Luca visited."
Not a question. Of course he knows.
"His advice is usually wrong," Marco continues, settling into the leather chair across from my desk.
"This time he might be right," I sign.
About being present. About not letting her disappear. About love being selfish enough to insist on existing.
"The Detroit situation needs resolution," Marco says, shifting back to business. "Killed two of their runners this morning. Message needs to be clearer."
"I'll handle it."
"After you handle your own situation. A distracted enforcer is a dead one."
After he leaves, I sit at the piano. Evening light slants through the windows, painting the keys gold. My fingers find the melody I wrote for her, the one that captured her contradictions in notes. The composition that made her listen, made her lean against the doorway that first time.
The music fills the house, deliberately louder than usual. Following Luca's disturbing wisdom. Making my presence known through sound since she won't accept it through proximity.
I play her song, the violent passages and tender phrases, the complexity of who she was and who she's becoming. Each note is a reminder: I'm here. I see you. You exist even without your revenge.
Mine. Even drowning in truth, even hating herself, she's mine. The music wraps around her like chains she doesn't realize she's already wearing.
Footsteps on the stairs.
I don't stop playing, don't acknowledge her approach, but every nerve comes alive. She appears in the doorway wearing my shirt over her nightgown, hair tangled, eyes swollen from crying. But she's here. She came to the music.
We stare at each other across the room, the melody continuing under my fingers. She looks fragile but also searching. Like she's trying to remember why she's here, who she is, what we are to each other without hatred as our foundation.
Her hands rise slowly, trembling as she signs: "Don't stop."
So I don't. I play through the piece, watching her watch me, seeing something shift in her expression. When the final note fades, she moves slightly forward. Not entering the room but not leaving either. She sinks down in the doorway itself, back against the frame, knees drawn up.
The nightgown rides up her thighs, and I see the fading bruise where I gripped too hard. My cock throbs remembering how she begged for harder, deeper, more.
Claiming the space between. Neither in nor out.
"Again," she signs, and there's something desperate in the movement. "Play it again."
I repeat the entire composition, start to finish, while she sits in that liminal space. When it ends, she signs once more: "Again. Please."
Three times. Four. My fingers never tire because each repetition draws her back from wherever she's been disappearing to. With every playthrough, she settles more firmly into that doorway, like the music is rebuilding her from sound and memory.
Somewhere during the seventh repetition, her breathing changes.
I glance over to find her asleep in the doorway, head tilted against the frame, my shirt pooling around her like armor. Even in sleep, she looks exhausted. The kind of bone-deep tired that comes from wrestling with everything you thought you knew.
I finish the piece before standing, moving carefully to avoid waking her.
The blanket from the couch settles over her gently.
I pull it up to her chin, tuck it around her shoulders, cover her completely in softness she won't ask for while awake.
I could carry her to bed, but that would be choosing for her.
She chose to come to the music. Chose to stay in this in-between space. That has to be enough.
I sink to the floor across from her, back against the opposite side of the doorframe. Guardian and watched, as usual. She shifts slightly, burrowing deeper into the blanket I've covered her with, but doesn't wake.
Tomorrow marks four days since she gleaned the truth and I told her the rest. Four days since her old self died.
The number feels significant. Death and resurrection, ending and beginning.
Will she wake as someone new? Or will she wake and walk away, leaving nothing but the ghost of jasmine and rage?
She chose to come to the music. Chose to ask for more. Chose to fall asleep trusting I'd watch over her even now, even after everything.
Her hand slips from beneath the blanket, fingers signing something in sleep. I lean closer, trying to read the movement, and catch fragments that stop my heart: "Dante" and "sorry" and something that might be "stay."