“I know.”
16
DANTE
Peace never lasts long in my world.
I’ve learned that lesson the hard way again and again until it feels less like misfortune and more like inevitability. Every time I allow myself to believe the storm has finally passed, something darker gathers on the horizon.
Still… waking up this morning with Elena tucked against me nearly unraveled me.
For a few disorienting seconds, I didn’t remember where I was. The weight I carry every waking hour—my family, their betrayal, the blood that seems permanently etched into my hands—hadn’t found me yet. There were only warmth and the steady rise and fall of her breathing against my side to focus on.
My arm had been draped loosely around her waist, my hand resting at the curve of her hip from muscle memory. Even after everything, my body still remembered her without hesitation.
Sunlight filtered through the windows in pale ribbons, catching in the dark strands of her hair spilling across my chest. Shesmelled faintly of lavender soap and something softer beneath it that was simplyElena. Familiar enough to make my chest ache.
For one dangerous moment, I allowed myself to pretend we were just two ordinary people waking up beside each other after a night tangled together. Not two souls bound by grief and betrayal, bracing for a war already gathering strength beyond these walls.
The illusion was fragile, almost laughably so. But it was intoxicating.
Taking her to my bed last night had been reckless. Letting the distance between us collapse entirely had been even worse. Weeks of restraint and circling each other like adversaries pretending to practice indifference had finally shattered what little restraint I had left in me.
The hunger wasn’t just a physical thing. It never has been with Elena. It has always been much stronger than reason, deeper than any logic I could try to use to justify my actions. It’s an almost primal urge that recognizes her asminein ways I have spent years trying to discipline out of myself.
And last night, I stopped fighting it.
I allowed the part of me that has always wanted her closer than I have any right to want her to step forward without restraint. The man beneath the Don, the person under all of this armor had allowed, for one selfish and greedy moment, to finally allow for one moment of weakness.
But that in turn is exactly the kind of weakness my enemies would pray to use against me. Love is the most dangerous vulnerability a man in my position can possess. Anyone seekingto destroy me would only need to look at her to know precisely where to strike to take me down.
I am aware of this. Painfully so.
Which is why I know, with cold certainty, that this is something I may eventually regret.
And yet…
Lying there with her leg thrown carelessly over mine and her breath warm against my chest… regret felt impossibly far away.
Even thinking back on it now, hours later, it still makes my chest grow tight.
Bianchi’s call is what pulls me out of that deluded fantasy.
The phone vibrates against the nightstand, slicing cleanly through the fragile quiet I’d been clinging to. I don’t bother looking at the screen before sitting up. There isn’t a point to. No one calls me at this hour unless something has already gone catastrophically wrong or is about to.
For a split second, I consider letting it ring. Pretending, just for a little while longer, that this moment can remain untouched is entirely too tempting. Unfortunately, denial has never kept anyone alive.
I know better than to believe peace like this will last.
I ease myself out of bed carefully, determined not to pull Elena from her sleep prematurely. The mattress barely shifts beneath me, but she feels the absence anyway. Her fingers twitch where I’d just been lying, searching in that instinctive, unconscious way for warmth. They curl loosely around the rumpled sheets instead, a small frown tugging at her brows.
I pause there, watching her for one last beat. Her breathing stays slow and even and her lashes continue resting against her cheeks.
It nearly makes me sigh.
I turn away before I can talk myself into climbing into bed again and retrieve the phone off my nightstand. Pushing the feelings away, I cross the room, slipping a robe on as I go. The door closes quietly behind me, sealing her safely inside and me back into the version of myself that has steadily become a harder box to force myself back into.
My thumb swipes over the phone’s screen.
