For the first time since the phone rang, my mind went quiet.
She was breathing.
She was warm.
She was mine.
And I wasn’t letting go.
Chapter22
Nita
The fallout came fast.
It always does when men like that realize they failed.
By the time I was medically cleared, my phone was already lighting up—voicemails from my supervisor, encrypted emails marked urgent, texts from colleagues who knew better than to ask questions outright but needed reassurance that I was still standing.
The resignation letter I never meant to write had already been intercepted.
Pulled before it could do real damage.
But not before it rattled cages.
They called it an “administrative anomaly.”A “coercion attempt by a third party.”The official language scrubbed the terror clean, like bleach over blood.The fixer’s death was under investigation, but would be written off as self-defense at some point officially.My name was whispered in rooms I wasn’t invited into.
The senator’s name stopped being spoken out loud.
Instead, it was the matter at hand spoken in hushed tones.
The case stalled.Not dead, never that clean, but suspended in that gray space where justice waits for the political climate to change.I wasn’t naïve enough to think my survival meant victory.
It meant delay.
It meant pressure.
And it meant eyes on me.
I returned to work two weeks later, spine straight, shoulders squared, daring anyone to look at me like I was fragile.I wasn’t.I had been chained to a concrete floor and come back breathing.Paperwork didn’t scare me.
What scared me was Dante packing his bag.
He never said it outright.Never announced a timeline.But I could feel the weight of it between us every time his phone buzzed with club business.Every time he checked the news out of North Carolina.Every time he went quiet in that way that meant he was already preparing to leave.
One night, after dinner had gone cold between us, I finally said it.“You’re going back.”
He didn’t deny it.“My life’s there,” he reminded carefully.“The club.Responsibilities.People who depend on me.”
“And me?”I asked, hating how small my voice sounded.
He reached for me immediately, hands warm, grounding.“You’re my life too.”
But that wasn’t an answer.I didn’t want him choosing between worlds.I didn’t want him resenting me.I just didn’t want to be the place he passed through.
I needed to know where I belonged.I didn’t ask for more.I wasn’t sure I could take him telling me a deadline.
Needing clarity, I went to the one person who always gave it to me straight.Char’s place smelled like cinnamon and laundry detergent and the faint sweetness of the girls’ shampoo.Normal.Safe.The kind of domestic peace that still felt borrowed when I stepped into it.
