"Don't leave me," she whispers.
"I won't. I promise."
She closes her eyes, but her grip on my hand doesn’t loosen.
So I sit beside her and wait until her breathing evens out and her fingers relax.
Then I carefully extract my hand and stand.
The velvet box sits on the dresser where Dante left it.
I stare at it for a long moment before crossing the room and picking it up.
The box is small and worn, the fabric faded in places.
I open it slowly.
Inside is a single pearl earring.
My breath catches.
I remember this earring.
They were my mother’s.
I wore them all the time before I lost one, including the night Dante saved me from Antonelli.
I remember looking everywhere for them a few days later, only to find one stuck in the neckline of the dress I wore that night, and the other never turned up.
I must've lost it when we tore at each other's clothes like sex-starved lunatics.
He kept it.
For six years, he kept a pearl earring that belonged to a woman he spent one night with.
A woman he never expected to see again.
What the fuck is that supposed to even mean?
I close the box and set it back on the dresser.
My hands are still shaking, and I don’t know what to make of this.
I don’t know what it means that he saved something so small and meaningless.
Or maybe it wasn't meaningless to him.
I walk to the window and look out at the garden below.
The sun is fully up now, and guards patrol the perimeter with weapons visible at their hips.
The gate I almost reached is locked and reinforced with chains.
There's no way out without help now.
Not without a plan better than running blindly and hoping for the best.
I think about what Dante said.
