"You stayed," he murmurs, his voice a deep, gravelly rumble in the quiet corridor. He lifts a hand, tracing the curve of my cheek with a thumb that is coated in someone else's blood. "You saw what I am. You heard what I am. You stayed."
"Where else would I go?" I offer a small, broken smile. "Besides, I'm fairly certain if I tried to run, you would just throw me over your shoulder again."
A faint ghost of a smirk touches the corner of his bearded mouth. It is the first genuine expression of amusement I have seen from him since the alley where we met.
"I would," he agrees. The possessive fire flares back to life in his eyes, but it is no longer frantic. It is deeply rooted. Calm. Absolute. "You belong to me."
"I am currently covered in elevator grease, dust, and wearing ripped clothes," I point out, gesturing to the disaster of my outfit. "You sure you want to claim this mess?"
"I don't care.” He doesn't hesitate. He sweeps his thumb across my lower lip, his touch gentle for a man with hands built for violence. “Every piece. Every curve. All of it belongs to me."
His.
He leans in and presses his mouth to my forehead. It is not a sexual claim. It is a vow. A silent promise.
He pushes himself up from the wall, bringing me up with him effortlessly. He stands tall, the borrowed trauma no longer bowing his shoulders. The memory of the alley still exists, but the timeline is corrected. He knows where he was. He knows what he is.
He walks over and picks his weapon up from the concrete floor. He checks the chamber with a smooth, practiced motion. The lethal protector is back online, but the frantic hypervigilance is gone. He is focused. Lethal. Precise.
"They are waiting below," Dante states, his dark eyes scanning the shadows of the tenth-floor corridor. "They will realize the elevator is empty. They will start sweeping the floors upwards."
"So we go down," I confirm, stepping to his side.
He reaches out and grabs my hand. His fingers interlock with mine, a solid, firm grip that sends a possessive ache radiating through my chest.
"We go down," Dante agrees. "We clear the path. We survive this."
He leads the way through the dark corridor. The terror is gone. The Bellanti hitmen might be sweeping the lower floors with automatic weapons. The Costa family war might be raging across the city of Chicago. The safehouse might be compromised.
None of it matters.
I am walking in the dark with a man who just tore down his own psychological fortress for me. A man who will burn the city to ashes before he lets anyone touch me. A man who has finallystopped fighting the ghosts of his past and started fighting for the reality of our future.
The scent of gun oil, rain-soaked concrete, and black coffee surrounds me like an impenetrable shield.
We move toward the stairwell at the far end of the hall. The shadows lengthen. The danger intensifies. But my hand is locked in his, andI am exactly where I am meant to be.
8
Dante
Her hand in mine.Small. Warm. Real.
The phantom smell of rain is gone. The alley is gone. The wet copper is gone.
For two decades, I carried a corpse that didn't belong to me. I carried my brother's nightmare because I couldn't carry his actual burden. The boy I used to be is finally breathing.
Gemma did that.
She broke the armor. She stripped the weapon down to the man.
She is the only thing that anchors me to the present.
We move through the fire doors into the stairwell of the tenth floor. The air in here is stagnant. Dust motes dance in the weak beam of my tactical flashlight. Concrete steps spiral down into the abyss.
I pull her close. Her scent wraps around me. It grounds me. It erases the stale rot of the Grand Continental.
I listen.
