Lark slowly stepped forward, and Dante reached for her instinctively. She looked back at him. "It's okay." He hesitated and then nodded because it was her decision, not his.
She crossed the distance until she stood only a few feet from her father. It was closer than she'd willingly been to him in years. He looked smaller somehow—not physically, but emotionally. The monster she'd built in her mind had become a broken old man bleeding onto a church floor, but that didn't erase what he'd done to her, and it never would.
Monsters weren't supposed to regret their actions. "I'm sorry." His voice barely carried to her.
"I know." Those two words surprised both of them. She wasn't forgiving him, but she was acknowledging him—nothing more.
With shaking fingers, she accepted the key. "I don't know if I can ever forgive you."
"I hope one day that you won’t have to carry my memory around with you anymore.” He smiled sadly.
"What?" she asked.
"Don’t let the anger you feel towards me weigh you down too much." His eyes glistened. “It will turn you into me, and I don’t want that for you, Lark. You deserve happiness.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. Not because she'd forgiven him, but because she'd spent twenty-six years carrying a burden that had never been hers to bear.
Gunfire erupted around them again. Keller’s men were much closer now. A bullet tore through the stone wall behind Rafael, and he stumbled. Dante lunged forward, dragging Lark backward as Rocco shouted, "Move!" The crypt exploded into chaos once more, and this time, the three of them moved as one. Not because anyone ordered them to, but because somewhere between escaping the mansion and finding the truth beneath an abandoned church, they had become each other's family.
Dante
The crypt erupted into chaos. Bullets chewed through ancient stone as Keller's men poured into the hidden passage. The confined space amplified every gunshot until Dante's ears rang. He shoved Lark behind a thick marble crypt.
"Stay down,” he shouted.
She grabbed his wrist before he could pull away. "Dante." He looked back and saw fear in her eyes. But there was something else too—determination. "Come back to me." The words stole his breath. For three years, she'd begged him to leave her alone, but now, she was asking him to come back.
He leaned down just long enough to press his forehead against hers. "I will." It wasn't a promise he could guarantee, but he'd die trying to keep it.
"Dante!" Rocco's shout snapped him back into the fight. He pivoted around the crypt and fired twice. One of Keller's mercenaries dropped instantly. Another dove behind a stone pillar.
"They're flanking our sides!" Avery yelled. Dante scanned the room. She was right. Two teams were surrounding them. One was pushing straight through the tunnel, and the other was circling through the crypt. They were trying to separate them.
"Keller wants Lark alive," Dante shouted.
"Which means?" Rocco asked.
"They'll sacrifice everyone else to get to her,” Dante said.
Rocco nodded grimly. "Then we don't let them isolate her."
Rafael Santos fired from the mouth of the passage. Even wounded, the man moved with terrifying precision. Years of violence had carved instinct into his bones. He dropped another mercenary before staggering against the wall as blood soaked through his jacket at an alarming rate. Dante caught his eye, and for a brief moment, the older man looked at him—not as an employee or as someone beneath him, but as a man.
"Get her out,” Santos ordered.
Dante frowned. "What?"
Rafael reloaded his gun with shaking hands. "That was always your job. Protect my daughter." Another burst of gunfire forced Dante back behind cover, and when he looked back again, Rafael had advanced farther into the passage, putting himself between Keller's men and Lark. The bastard was buying them time, and that realization hit Dante hard.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, and he looked back to find Rocco standing behind him. "We've got another problem."
"What now?” Dante mumbled. Rocco pointed upward at the cracks that had spread across the crypt ceiling. Dust drifted continuously now. The explosion upstairs compromised the foundation.
"This place is coming down,” Rocco said. Dante looked towards Lark. She was helping one of the injured operators wrap a tourniquet around his leg. She should've been terrified, but instead, she was taking care of someone else. God, he loved that woman. The thought came without hesitation or fear. He loved her courage and her compassion. He loved the quiet strength she'd never realized she possessed. He wanted a lifetime of watching her discover just how extraordinary she really was.Which meant that he had to keep her alive long enough to have that future.
"Dante!" Lark's voice broke through his haze, and he turned to find her. She held up Isabella's journal. "I found something."
"What?" he asked.
She quickly flipped through the pages. “I think there's another exit."
