It’s deep. Purposeful. It reminds me of a stab delivered with devotion, not malice. Not an attempt to kill him, but a mark—an imprint of possession, passion, loyalty.
A memory floods me: sitting on the couch, her cake melting on my tongue while Cane spoke of this very scar. And the look in her eyes… The look of someone who doesn’t pretend. She never promised she wouldn’t do it again. She never lied likethat. Because she absolutely would, if someone she cared about pushed her too far.
Estella loves hard. She loves with force, with hunger, with the kind of intensity that claims and brands. She craves control—and yet, paradoxically, she wants to be cared for, steadied, held in a way that doesn’t dim the power she carries but recognizes it.
She wants her loved ones to feel the weight of her presence, to know what she’s capable of, and at the same time, she wants the closing of wounds, the soft hands, the gentle reclamation of control. She wants someone who understands that she can change the course of anything—if she chooses.
This is why Cane and Estella have such a powerful bond. I saw it from the very first moment in Mexico. He carries the weight of a father figure in her life—but unlike her real father, the one who crushed her spirit and made her feel small, Cane lifts her above everything else. It was obvious from the second we spoke, when he warned he’d kill me if anything happened to her.
Their connection is its own breed of strange and unbreakable. He talks as if he’s already adapted to her nature, as if he alone can withstand the intensity that would suffocate anyone else.
But he’s blind to the most important part.
His words don’t push me away. They pull me closer. I can understand the stakes. I can move toward them. I can endure the pain, even if the cost is steep and irreversible.
“This is her thing,” Cane goes on, letting his T-shirt fall back into place. “She needs to feel in control, and that kind of need crushes anyone who gets too close to her. One day, I went to pick up my daughter after her classes… and she was gone. Not a trace. I searched the entire city, every street, every corner, but she wasn’t anywhere. It was like she vanished.”
His voice trembles just enough to expose the wound underneath. The memory rests on him like a bruise no time has healed. Coming from someone like him, it almost feels unreal.
“And the next day,” he continues, “after I hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, while my wife ran around screaming her lungs out, Estella knocked on my door. Hand in hand with my daughter.”
He stops, lips pulling tight before he wets them with a slow drag of his tongue. I can practically feel his throat drying, his composure thinning to threads.
“She said she just wanted to meet her.” His laugh scrapes out of him, brittle and humorless. “Said they had a wonderful day. Amusement park, games, food… they got to know each other. Meanwhile, my wife and I were losing our fucking minds, thinking she was dead.”
He draws in a sharp, trembling breath, trying to stitch himself back together.
“And on top of that,” he mutters, “she put a crack in my marriage. My wife thought she was my lover. She still doesn’t trust me. Every time I’m working late, she thinks I’m with Estella.”
Cane completely unravels, the thin, cracked veneer of his composure splintering before my eyes. I push off the doorframe and head to the kitchen. My fingers wrap around a glass, the cool surface grounding me for a brief second. I twist the faucet, letting the water run, filling it with fresh, cold clarity.
I return to him, stepping carefully, the apartment silent except for the soft clink as I set the glass in his trembling hands.
“Thank you,” he mutters, gripping it with both hands, lifting it to his lips. He gulps the water in one desperate swallow, fingers tapping faintly against the glass, betraying the tension coiling in his chest.
Seeing Cane here, in my apartment, exposing his story to me was never on my agenda. Not today. Not ever.
“She didn’t stop there,” he continues, voice low, raw, as if each word costs him a piece of himself. “Sometimes, she visits my daughter at school. Ballet classes, events—she always makes sure Iknowshe holds the power. And yes, I transferred my girl, moved her to another place, but nothing works. If Estella is obsessed, she will bend every rule, break every expectation, and still make it seem harmless. That’s who she is.”
I stare at him, frozen, my mind scrambling for something to respond with. But there’s nothing. No words take shape. Just fogged thoughts swirling in a haze, pressing against the edges of my skull, pulling me into their quiet embrace.
I am…fascinated.
When I first stepped into this mission, I had no illusions about the people I’d meet. Another assassin, I thought. Another orphan thrown to the streets, a shadow pulled from prison walls, hardened by necessity and cruelty. I braced myself for another version of the same.
But Estella defies every expectation. Her story is a tragedy, yes, but it’s more than that: a flower blooming in the dirt, growing in the filth of a world that shredded her petals, forcing her into one prison after another. Every hardship carved her, but didn’t break her entirely. She remains something dangerously beautiful, raw and uncontained.
She is the most compelling person I have ever met. I know, with a certainty that chills me, that I will never meet anyone like her again. So broken, so whole, soalive.
It feels like being drawn to a shattered mirror, the shards catching weak sunlight, throwing kaleidoscopic colors across the floor. I know touching it would slice me open, tear me in ways I cannot yet name, but I also know that the pain will be worth it. That the sensation, the gravity of it, will root me to the place, impossible to run from.
“I’ve spent years with her, Dante,” Cane says, his voice quieter now, stripped of the earlier urgency but heavy with weight. “I pulled her out of the hell she was trapped in, stitched the shattered pieces back together. But those pieces don’t all fit. There are cracks everywhere—fucking jagged, endless cracks.”
His eyes drift, haunted, as if he’s staring at memories that refuse to fade. “Everyone who was close to her is either dead or broken in ways that make living a normal life impossible. And trust me—the ones who died were the lucky ones. They found a better way out.”
I nod, the truth settling like a stone in my chest. Only a day ago, I added to that list.
I wonder what Cane would say if he knew.
