9. CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER NINE
Alina
Night in the safe house was so thick with tension it could have drowned a city.
The generator’s pulse suggested distant thunder.
Shadows feathered the walls, stretched thin by the wan desk lamp in the next room.
Alina sat curled on the slate-gray couch, her arms wrapped around her shins, chin on her knees.
A hospital blanket cocooned her. Her whole body felt as if it were bracing for an impact that might never come.
On the coffee table in front of her rested the flash drive—a slip of black plastic, unmarked, so light it barely indented the battered wood.
She stared at it until its shape swam, until she could almost convince herself it was a mirage. If she blinked, maybe it would vanish.
She reached for it but stopped short, as if the thing was radioactive.
Even in the dim half-light, she could see a faint brownish fleck on its side—someone’s blood?
It was so easy to imagine it: the drive passing through hands, a shot, then a spray.
It had barely been three days. She could still feel the man’s weight in her arms, the heat draining from him as he lay there dying.
She had not known then what he was dying for.
Another set of footsteps approached—quieter than the first, but she already knew them.
Dante’s gait was deliberate, always even, like a metronome set slightly slower than the world.
He appeared in the doorway without preamble, cast in a ruffed outline from the lamplight behind him.
His shirt was rumpled, sleeves rolled to the elbow, his hair still damp from the shower.
He stopped beside the table, hands sunk in his pockets, and let the silence expand until it pressed at the edges of the room.
“You should get some sleep,” he said.
The words were gentle, but his voice was sanded raw. Alina didn’t look at him. “I can’t,” she said, and her tongue felt thick in her mouth. The truth was, sleep was a foreign country now—a place she’d once visited but couldn’t find on a map anymore.
He nodded, just once, his eyes fixed on the floor. “The first night is the hardest.” As if he had rehearsed it. As if he had said it to others, or to himself.
She glanced up at him, hunting for a seam in his armor. “How many first nights have you had?”
He took a moment too long to answer. “A few,” he said finally, and something about the way he said it made her think it was a lie by omission.
She studied his face. The new lines at the corners of his mouth, the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers curled around the edges of his pockets as if to keep from reaching for something—her, or the gun on his belt, or just a handhold against the gravity of the room.
She was still learning how to read him, but she saw how tired he was.
Not the punch-drunk exhaustion of adrenaline comedown, but the exhaustion of a man who’d lived too long on zero margin.
“Dante,” she said, and the sound of his name caught him by surprise. He looked up.
Her voice was almost a whisper. “Why did you come to the airport?”
He went very still, as if the question was a tripwire.
She pressed. “You didn’t know I was leaving. You didn’t know anything about me. But you were there.”
He exhaled, a slow release through clenched teeth. “Because I knew something was wrong.”
She swallowed, feeling the air thin between them. “How?”
His expression shuttered, then flickered—some muscle in his cheek jumping. “I just did.”
“That’s not an answer,” she said quietly.
He looked at her then—a directness that felt like a hand on her throat. “It’s the only one I have.”
She let it settle. Then, unable to stop herself, she unfolded from the couch and stood. The blanket fell away, pooling at her feet. She was close enough to see the pulse in his neck, the fine scars on his knuckles. “Dante,” she said again, “what am I to you?”
His jaw locked, but he didn’t move. “Don’t ask me that.”
She laughed. “Why not?”
“Because I’d tell you the truth.” The words came out flat, but there was a shiver in them.
She breathed in. “I want the truth.”
He closed his eyes, just for a moment. “You’re the first thing I’ve wanted in years,” he said, voice so soft she had to lean in to hear it. “And the only thing I can’t have.”
Her heart hammered—she could feel the power of those words everywhere. “Why can’t you have it?”
He didn’t look away. “Because wanting you puts you in danger.”
She took a half-step closer. “I’m already in danger.”
He gave a huffed laugh, bitter and barely audible. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t get to want things. Not in my world. Not in this war.”
Her mind reeled with everything that had brought her to this moment: the flash drive, the death of a stranger, and the force of Dante pulling her from the airport terminal shootout.
She was a simple person living a not so simple life now that she has been tangled with a man she didn’t even know existed until a week ago.
The only thought that Darcy could focus on was “Then why do you want me?”
The whisper slipped past her lips before she could stop it.
His pupils contracted. He looked strangled. “Because I can’t stop,” he said. “I’ve tried.”
The room felt charged, ionized. The generator’s hum faded, replaced by a long, taut silence. She could smell his cologne—a trace of cedar and sage, warmth and static. Every part of her buzzed with the effort not to close the last inches between them.
“Dante,” she said again, not a question, just a need.
He reached up, slow enough to give her time to refuse, and brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. His hand lingered, fingers grazing her jaw, as if memorizing the shape of her. “You’re safe with me,” he murmured, and every syllable hung between them. “Even if it kills me.”
Her breath hitched. “That’s not safe.”
He dropped his hand but didn’t retreat. “It’s the only kind I know.” His voice was unguarded now, all the brutal honesty he tried to keep caged.
She didn’t step back. He didn’t either. They stood in the hush of the room, the world outside pared down to generator thrum and their twin heartbeats.
She realized she’d stopped mapping the exit, stopped calculating what she would do if he turned out to be a monster or a martyr.
For the first time, she let herself wonder what would happen if she stayed.
They hovered like that, not touching, barely breathing, both waiting for the other to make the next move.
Alina let her eyes fall closed, just for a second, and it was enough; when she opened them, he was closer—close enough to count the flecks of gold in his irises, close enough she could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
She thought he might kiss her. She thought she might let him.
Instead, he drew back a fraction, a war inside his eyes. “You should sleep,” he said, softer than before, almost pleading.
“Stay with me,” she said, and the words came out so small it hurt.
He hesitated, and for a moment she saw the old world warring with the new—the man of certainty, and man of need. Then, at last, he sat beside her on the couch, both of them staring at the flash drive as if it were the only anchor left in the world.
Neither spoke. The silence was a third presence, binding them together and holding everything else at bay.
Time passed like water; she couldn’t say how much.
At some point, she drifted sideways, her head coming to rest against his shoulder.
His arm circled her—not possessive, just steady—and she let herself be held.
She barely registered when her eyes closed.
She didn’t hear the generator cut out, or the way the wind changed outside, or the faint click in the hall that meant the front door had unlatched.
She woke to the sound of footsteps, not Dante’s this time—he was still beside her, unmoving, but his hand had found the gun at his hip.