The voice comes from the doorway. I don't turn around—I'd recognize Dante's presence anywhere now, the way he changes the energy in a room just by existing in it. If I’m honest, I sensed him coming long before he ever said a word.
"Something like that," I say, my fingers tracing the edge of one of Mila's drawings.
He moves into the room with that predatory grace I've come to associate with him, settling into the chair across from me. He looks tired, I realize, studying his face in the moonlight. There are lines around his eyes that I don’t think I’ve really noticed before. His usually perfect hair is mussed like he's been running his hands through it.
"Rough day?" I ask.
"You could say that." He leans back in the chair, his blue eyes studying me with an intensity that makes my pulse quicken. "What about you? You look..."
"Terrible?"
"Raw," he finishes. "Like you've been thinking too hard about things you can't control."
The observation is uncomfortably accurate. "Isn't that what prisoners do? Sit around thinking about their situation?"
"You're not a prisoner."
"Right, I forgot. I'mcollateral," I make air quotes with my fingers. "My mistake."
A ghost of a smile crosses his lips. "Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Red."
"Neither does captivity, but here we are."
We fall into silence, but it's not comfortable. There's something electric in the air between us, a tension that's been building for days.
Since the day in his study.
I can feel it in the way he looks at me, in the careful distance he maintains even when we're in the same room.
We've been dancing around each other since that afternoon, both of us pretending that what happened was just physical release.
But we both know it was more than that, even if neither of us was going to say it.
"Why are you really awake?" he asks quietly.
The question catches me off guard with its gentleness. "Bad dreams."
"About?"
About you finding out I'm pregnant and deciding I'm too much of a liability to keep alive. About my baby growing up without a father, or worse, with one who sees them as just another asset to be managed. About falling in love with a man who built his empire on blood and violence.
"About things I can't change," I say instead.
He nods like he understands, and maybe he does. "I know something about those kinds of dreams."
"Do you?" I turn to face him fully, tucking one leg under me. "What keeps the great Dante Sokolov awake at night?"
For a moment, I think he won't answer. Then he says, "Ghosts."
The single word hangs between us, heavy with meaning.
I think about what he told me about Mila's mother, about the car bomb meant for him that killed the woman he loved instead.
"Katya," I say softly.
Something flickers in his expression—surprise, maybe, that I remember her name. "Among others."
"Must be crowded in here," I tap my temple, "with all those ghosts."
