Chapter 4

Dante didn’t ask. His men stormed to my door in the morning, black cars lined up on the curb, like sentinels, engines idling, their tinted windows reflecting the pale light of dawn.

It was less a neighborhood than a war zone, ready to ignite, as he was living with his old father, and the street outside his house looked much different.

My father’s guards bristled: the weapons shifted at their sides, but people did not intervene to stop them. Not when Dante Romano stepped out of the lead car, shoulders squared, coat draped over him like armor.

His presence sliced through the air like a blade, hitting a knife into the throat. So he didn’t wait for permission to go inside. Didn’t knock, didn’t ask, didn’t even glance at men who ought to have set him back.

Walking through the threshold of my house, the black shoes on his feet never seemed to make a noise against the marble floors, the sharp, cold, confident gaze of his own.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

No preamble. No explanation. I crossed my arms. “Excuse me?” His brow arched in that exasperating manner of mine my childhood, always with the burden of knowing he was right and daring me to challenge him.

“Unless you enjoy sleeping in a house with paper-thin security and a target painted on your back,” Dante said, his voice low and deliberate. “Yes. Pack a bag.” I lifted my chin, in denial of his command. “I don’t take orders from you.”

The air shifted between us. His eyes pierced into me—the sharp-edged, cruel, steady, steady—and made my pulse beat a little in my chest.

“You’re my fiancée at this point,” he said cold-spoken as could be his steel. “My enemies think you’re mine too. That makes you my responsibility.” I scoffed.

“Possession, not responsibility.” Somehow the corner of his mouth curved, though not slightly in amusement, into something darker. Knowing. Claiming.

“Call it what you like,” he said. “But if somebody’s putting a bullet in you, they’ll think they’ve taken me down too. That’s not happening.” And then, before I could catch up, movement caught my eye.

My father came to the other end of the hallway, as still as ever. A stone carved unreadable face.

For a misguided, quick moment I thought he might battle it — that he might stand between us and remind Dante from the inside which roof he stood under. That’s the kind of thing he might say, That she stays here. She’s still my daughter.

But Don Moretti simply cocked his head, his eyes dark, his jaw set in iron restraint. “Do what you must, Romano.” And just like that, it was all done, the decision was final.

I desired to scream at each of them — for their arrogance, for their games, for treating me like a house that had been handed down by one hand to the other for someone else.

But the words lodged in my throat strangled by the truth: Dante was dead right. And I was safer with him than I believed I was in my own apartment.

*********

Dante’s penthouse was not a home. It was a fortress. The cityscape was alight, glass walls towering above its skyline, the blinking, glittering sprawl of lights endlessly reaching beneath.

But it wasn’t the perspective that my breath caught. It was steel. The shadows. The subtle heft of those cameras in the corners, the muted hum of the cameras, the subtle watching of our movements, the eyes being there.

Guards flanked every entrance, earpieces glowing, arms very much at arm’s length. Authority and fear hummed in the air, yet all danger had gone to the back but was on the move.

My family estate, even its stone walls and centuries of blood, looked frail in comparison to this one. Dante walked me through in my mind with quiet command and precision.

He marked the locked doors that led to blind spots and fallback exits. He roamed the room like a general looking up at the battlefield, every nook and cranny lined out in his mind and every flaw counted for.

And finally he paused at a sleek hall with dark wood and glass. “Bedroom’s there,” he said, gesturing toward a pair of double doors. “You’ll stay close. Easier to protect you.”

I buried my heels into the polished floor. “I’m not sharing your bed.” His smirk was pure sin. “I didn’t ask you to. Unless you’re offering?” My glare could have melted steel.

“Don’t flatter yourself." “Bella,” he said softly, that damned accent curling about the word, “if I were flattering myself, you’d be in my bed.”

The image flashed out of the blue —his body binding mine against silk sheets, his mouth burning against my skin, his weight heavy, stabilizing. Heat ran through me before I could stop it, a treacherous wave that made me hate myself.

I turned all my venom into that thought.

“This is temporary,” I snapped. “Don’t make any mistakes.” He got even closer, so far I nearly had to tilt my chin to meet his gaze.

It was his hand that lifted—a gentle motion of a finger brushing away a stray head of hair from my eye. Light. Careful. Infuriating.

“Temporary or not,” he whispered, a hushed promise, “you’re here. In my world. Which is to say you play by my rules.” I should have slapped him. Should have instructed him from where to put his rules.

But I let my body betray me, immobilized under the pressure of his proximity, pulse pounding out of time. And then he turned, pointed and glided, and abandoned me to stand alone inside the hall.

********

Night descended heavily on the city and devoured the horizon in black velvet gloved with gold.

I watched it burn from my borrowed bedroom: skyscrapers twinkling like embers in the glow from above, neon signs flashing into the darkness.

Beneath that beauty was a kind of depth of threat I could not name, an ocean of enemies circling in the darkness.

I hated it. Being here. Being trapped. Being dependent on him.

There I was at home, but that truth hung like a knife in my chest, too: I was safer here than anywhere else. Somehow, that made everything worse.

A knock broke the silence. I opened the door to see Dante leaning against the frame. He was wearing no tie, sleeves rolled to his forearms, his shirt's top buttons undone. A glass of whiskey hung from his fingers, amber liquid glinting behind the city.

He looked relaxed. Dangerous. Beautiful in the same way a knife was beautiful — sharp, cold, intended to kill.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked, sharper than I felt. His smile was weary, dry. "Sleep isn't easy when half the city wants you dead."

"Or when you plan to control me?" His eyes shone with dark amusement. “Control you?” He tilted his head. “Come on, bella. I’m trying to keep you alive. That’s far more difficult than it should be.”

He gave me the glass; the rim felt warm to me from his hand. I took it, against my better judgment.

The whiskey seared down my throat, hot and firm, grounding me. For a prolonged length of time we stood in silence, the city glowing behind him, all that was unsaid pressed against us.

Then he told me, a little softer than I imagined he would. “When I kissed you last night…” I stiffened. “Don’t.” But he ignored me. “…I didn’t mean for it to feel like that.”

My heart skipped. My lungs tightened. I compelled a brittle and sharp laugh. “Like what? Like a show?” His eyes never moved from mine, dark, unfazed. “Like it was real.”

The air grew dense, hazardous, and oppressive. I wanted to deny it, to cut him short using words cutting through the air tightly enough to rent the thread between us.

But I couldn’t. Because he was right. My hands trembled, and I set the glass down. “This is still a deal. Don’t forget it.”

His smile spread, slow, menacing, full of promise. “Oh, I won’t forget. But tell me, Isidora — are you so sure you still want me to?”

The words caught in my throat. Pulse is furious, my chest burning with flames and rage and something I won't even say.

Before I could reply, his phone vibrated. Dante raised a glance toward the screen. His face changed---hard, unreadable, shadows falling over his features.

At his feet, his head turned away and his narrowed eyes cut between his ears. "Stay here," he said.

Now his voice was so sharp that his expression acrid at every syllable. He came away and strode down the hall. The door clicked shut after him, and I sat there with his words echoing in my chest and the fire still burning.

Whatever he had recently read, I had one thing in common with him: By all means, our enemies were no longer circling. They were already at the door.