Read His Christmas Reckoning Online Free by Leona White

We watch the car pull through the gates and disappear down the street.

Sofia takes my hand and squeezes it and then runs back upstairs to play.

I stay in the doorway for a moment longer and look at the empty street beyond the gates.

The house doesn't feel like a prison anymore, partly because I’m free to do as I please, but mostly because I choose to stay here.

I've come to realize I can never take the beast out of a man like Dante, but I can hope that one day, he will walk away from the beast he's been imprisoned by.

I close the door and lock it.

Then I walk upstairs to check on Sofia.

She's in her room arranging her dolls in a circle, humming a Christmas carol and making up stories about what each doll is saying.

I lean against the doorframe and watch her.

She's happy here, thriving in ways she didn't in Naples.

She has a father who loves her and stability—a home that's bigger than two cramped rooms and a kitchen that doubles as a living space.

This is what I've been trying to give her since the day she was born, and now she has it even if it came in a way I never expected.

It's unconventional the way Dante and I met or the circumstances under which Sofia was conceived, but we're no less a family than anyone else.

Except my partner is a dangerous man who puts himself in dangerous positions and may not come home at any given moment.

It's something I can't quite wrap my mind around but regardless, it's something I have to learn to live with.

Dante and I won't ever have the same relationship as a normal couple, but as long as he comes home to me, that's all that matters.

It's what I have to focus on.

And now, I'll grab my rosary and pray.

Because if he doesn't survive this test for Kemal, I may not survive losing him.

DANTE

The body camera feed flickers on my phone screen.

Two couriers and a tech move through the tunnel system.

Their headlamps cut narrow beams through the darkness and I watch from the back of the surveillance van parked three blocks from the port decoy site.

My jaw is tight as they navigate the cramped passageway.

It should be me.

I should be the one down there and I'm not.

I'm up here sitting in a van like a child waiting on his parents to return from the store, feeling like a waste of space, but this is what I promised Angelica.

I am not going to put myself into unnecessary danger because I have a little girl to come home to now.

I won’t do to her what happened to me.