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His eyes narrow, defiance flaring in them even at this moment, even in all this pain. I’d almost admire it, if it were anyone else. “Go fuck yourself,” he hisses, spitting out blood, and I laugh.
“That’s alright. I wouldn’t have let you live anyway.”
And then I pull the trigger.
Altiere’s body jerks backward, slumping onto the floor. I hear Emma let out a low, gasping sound, and I turn just in time to see her start to sag in Lorenzo’s arms. She meets my gaze, the look on her face somehow terrified and relieved all at once.
“Dante.” She whispers my name.
And then she passes out cold.
24
EMMA
Once again, I wake up in a room I don’t recognize. For a moment, I feel that cold knife of fear again, my hands clutching at the blankets as I try to push myself up. My body feels sore, and my head aches, but not the way it did last time. I feel as if every muscle in my body has been tensed for a long time, and briefly, I think that I’m still in Altiere’s mansion, just in a different room.
But then, as I sit up, everything starts to come back to me.
I press my hand against my stomach, letting out a gasp of relief as I feel that there’s no wound there. The memories start to come back in a rush—the sound of gunshots and shattering glass from downstairs, Altiere coming into my room and dragging me out of bed, a knife in his hand. His whispered promise that Dante would be upstairs soon, and he would make sure that I got to watch him die.
My hand covers my mouth, and I close my eyes, wishing I could block it all out. Even what came after—maybe especially what came after, because I don’t know how to feel about it. I don’t know how Ishouldfeel.
Dante saved me—he and another man I didn’t recognize, but who pulled me away from Altiere as if he knew I mattered to Dante. He came for me, exactly as I knew he would—but the violence of it shook me in a way that I don’t know how to recover from.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop seeing the blood, or hearing Altiere’s screams. I should be horrified by what Dante did—and I am—but a part of me is alsoglad. After what Altiere did to me—what he might have done to my child—I can’t find it in myself to feel any real sympathy for him.
I’m not sure what that says about me.
Slowly, I sit up the rest of the way, looking around the room, wondering where I am. It doesn’t feel like a hotel, but it’s even more luxurious than the bedroom I woke up in at Altiere’s mansion. I smooth my hands over the soft duvet, looking around for clues, but the room seems devoid of anything that might tell me who it belongs to.
I’m still wearing the clothes I was in when I passed out. I get out of bed slowly, waiting to see if the dizziness hits me again, but I feel mostly steady on my feet. When I walk to the door, it’s unlocked.
It leads out to a hallway, and then a long flight of stairs. I’m in a mansion—a fairly old one, from the look of things, although it’s well-maintained. There are pictures lining the walls, and I stop when I see one of a teenager who looks remarkably like a younger Dante next to three other children. One of them, the second oldest, looks very much like the man who helped him rescue me.
I must be in Dante’s family home.The thought sends an odd feeling through me—a sense of warmth at first, that he brought me here instead of his penthouse, that I’m seeing something that’s likely as close to his heart as my home is to mine…and then a tight knot of anxiety.What if he doesn’t let me leave?
I can’t imagine that Dante would do that. But I ran from him once, and if he knows that I’m pregnant—
I swallow hard, and keep going down the stairs.
When I step down into the entryway below, I hear voices coming from one of the rooms to my right. I follow them and walk into a huge living room, with long, soft couches bracketing a large unlit fireplace, and massive windows with light streaming in. Dante is sitting at one of them, the man I saw with him at Altiere’s to his left, and the two of them are talking quietly.
The moment I step into the room, Dante’s head snaps up, and his eyes widen.
“Emma.” He breathes my name in a way that no one has ever said it before, and my chest tightens, the urge to run to him flooding through me. I force it back, walking towards him instead as the other man stands up.
“I’m glad to see you’re awake,” he says, glancing at me. “I’m Lorenzo, Dante’s brother. I’ll give the two of you some time.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” I hesitate awkwardly. “Thank you for—what you did.”
“I’d say it was no problem, but—” Lorenzo chuckles. “I’ll just say that it was worth it, to see you safe. I know what you mean to Dante.”
And what is that, exactly?I look at Dante as he clears his throat, giving his brother a pointed look, and Lorenzo quickly makes his exit.
“Emma, you shouldn’t be up.” He walks towards me, his gaze sweeping over me as if to convince himself that I’m really here. “How do you feel?”
“Sore, but otherwise surprisingly alright.” I can’t resist the reflexive urge to touch my stomach again, and Dante’s eyes follow the gesture.
