Page 36 of Where Light Cannot Follow

I rush to Dante and attempt to grasp him once more. It's hopeless, but I cannot stop myself from trying. "Dante," I plead. "Remember who you are. It's Virgil, the infuriating ancient poet who pecks at you with endless riddles. Please. Break the loop while we can still walk from this place."

More water floods in, swirling around my ankles now.

I must leave before I'm taken with it. The bog is one of the few things that could capture me. No one cares for me enough to search in earnest. I would sink beneath it alongside Dante and unravel what few threads keep me tethered to sanity in this half-reality I inhabit.

Another tremor. Dust cascades from the ceiling. The water climbs toward my calves.

"Dante," I beg. "Dante. Come back to me."

He continues speaking of mergers and acquisitions and quarterly projections as though I do not exist.

We have found the beast that can slay the hero.

I am certain I still possess a heart, for I feel it fracturing within me. I turn and walk toward the door. I don't need to open it, as I can simply pass through, escape, survive.

I look back.

At that moment, Dante glances over his shoulder. He doesn't see me—not really—but it's as though something within him senses my departure. Some fragment buried beneath all that armor feels me leaving.

An expression passes across his face. One that reminds me of Mikey Dante begging his mother for food, of a twenty-seven-year-old Michael making promises he won't keep to a man he loves, of the wide eyes of the newly minted Mr. Dante as his worldview shatters, his capacity for trust explodes.

Maybe it's that look that turns me back.

The water rises. He's sinking into the bog. And he doesn't even know it.

I should leave. But to what purpose? To walk these endless paths again? To guide another lost soul only to watch them drown at some later junction? To beg and weep and witness, always untouching, always unhoping?

Perhaps I've finally found someone singular. Someone worth staying for.

PART IV

“Every man makes a god of his own desire.”

—Virgil, Aeneid

16

DANTE

A sinking feeling pulls at me, tugging against my enthusiasm for the deal at the table. Trusting my gut has served me well in business—better than any spreadsheet or due diligence report. The men continue discussing terms enthusiastically, as though they haven't noticed the shift in my demeanor. The quieting. The way I've begun watching all of them with the careful attention of a man who suspects he's being manipulated.

Something isn't right.

The terms are excellent. Too excellent. A twenty percent stake with minimal dilution, board seats without operational interference, a valuation that assumes growth projections we haven't even published yet. It's rare to land such a favorable arrangement, especially this close to the end of Q4. It would make our annual returns exceptional—the kind of numbers that get profiled in the Journal.

There's a buzzing sound in my ear.

I keep turning to look over my shoulder, certain a fly flutters nearby. Some irritant that draws my attention away. Yet nothing is there. Gleaming oak walls. Polished windows. The luminous, never-sleeping city sprawled beneath me like a kingdom.

My father once said I'd never work in finance again. Not after I walked out of his hedge fund with blood on my knuckles and ice in my chest. And he was right—I never did. Instead, I turned to private equity. Acquisitions. The patient art of identifying undervalued companies and reshaping them into something profitable. I started as an analyst at a mid-tier firm and vowed it would be the last time I used my father's name on my résumé. I had nothing left to live for aside from work. Aside from proving myself. Securing myself.

So I worked.

Eighty hours a week. Then a hundred.

And I rose. Up one building, then another. From analyst to associate to principal to partner.

Now I sit atop the world, looking down. My personal holdings are so well arranged that if I never worked another day in my life, I'd be secure for three lifetimes. But I'm good at what I do. Good at reading people. Good at numbers. Good at keeping emotion out of the equation and making decisions others find too cold to stomach.