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CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

Author: Wren Gray
last update publish date: 2026-04-10 17:29:14

“DO YOU LIKE-LIKE HIM?”

Sofia's POV

I haven't seen Dante all day.

Which should be a good thing. I'm the one who's been trying to stay away, trying to maintain distance, trying to pretend that what happened in the warehouse didn't change everything.

But instead of relief, I feel uneasy.

Where is he? What's he doing? Is he okay?

I hate that I care. Hate that I'm looking for him in every room I enter. Hate that his absence feels like a physical ache.

The evening passes slowly. I supervise the staf
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  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO

    "THE PROBLEM WITH SECRETS IS THEY ALWAYS PICK THE WORST POSSIBLE MOMENT TO BECOME COMPLICATED."VIVIANMy brain does several things simultaneously in the two seconds after I hear Dante's voice through the door.First it confirms that yes, that is definitely Dante Valentino standing outside my apartment at this hour.Second it registers that Nico Barbieri — the man I have been meeting in secret for three months, the man nobody is supposed to know about, the man who is currently standing in my living room looking entirely too calm for this situation is also here.Third it begins the extremely rapid calculation of how to get from current situation to a situation where those two facts do not exist in the same space at the same time.I move."Vivian—" Nico starts."Shh." I grab my jacket from the floor where it landed. Yank it back on. Look at my reflection in the dark window for half a second hair presentable enough, hickey covered, expression approximating normal. Good enough."Just open

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE

    "The problem with no strings attached is that someone always starts pulling at them anyway."VIVIANThe girls night was exactly what I needed.Sofia laughing across a table from me. Too much food. The comfortable back and forth of two people who knew each other before life got complicated and are finding their way back to that knowing despite everything that happened in between.I needed that more than I admitted to anyone including myself.I am thinking about it on the drive back to my apartment — replaying the dinner, the laughter, the moment Sofia clocked the hickey on my neck and I nearly choked on my water. That woman sees too much. She always has. It is one of the things I love most about her and occasionally find genuinely inconvenient.The hickey.I reach up and touch my neck briefly in the darkness of the car.I specifically told him not to do that.I said it clearly. I used plain language. I was very direct about it because I am always very direct about things — it is one of

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY

    "Three months is not long enough to forget. But it is long enough to start remembering what safe feels like."SOFIAThree months.It doesn't feel like three months. It feels both shorter and longer than that simultaneously — the way time moves when you have been through something significant and your body and your mind are processing it at different speeds and neither of them has agreed on a timeline yet.Three months since the stress, anguish, pain and constant difficulties we’ve had to deal with.We are in Italy now.Dante's compound outside Florence — a place I had never seen before we moved in but that felt immediately like somewhere built to keep people safe rather than just to keep people. High walls. Careful security. The kind of place that Dante has spent years making into something that cannot be easily touched.It took Isabella approximately forty eight hours to decide she loved it.She made her assessment on the second morning — standing in the garden with her hands on her

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN

    "The thing about blind spots is that you never see them until someone else points at them."DANTEThe corridor outside Sofia's room is not comfortable.There are chairs — the standard hospital variety, designed by someone who clearly never had to sit in one for longer than five minutes — and I have been in one of them for considerably longer than five minutes staring at a closed door and trying not to think about how long fifteen minutes has turned into.Vivian has been in there for thirty seven minutes, what could see even speaking about?I look at the closed door.I cannot hear anything through it which is probably good. Raised voices would mean stress and stress is the one thing Elena told me specifically to keep away from Sofia and so silence from that room should be reassuring.It is slightly less reassuring than it should be because I do not know what is happening in there and I do not know Vivian and I do not trust things I cannot see clearly.Which is most things, most of the

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN

    "Some friendships are so real that even nine years cannot touch what they were."SOFIAI am alive.The baby is alive.Those two facts keep cycling through me every few minutes like my brain cannot quite let them settle into something permanent. It keeps needing to confirm them. To check again. To make sure they are still true the same way they were true five minutes ago.They are.Still true.Still real.Dante is sitting in the chair beside my bed that he has clearly pulled as close to me as physically possible. His elbows are on his knees and he is leaning forward in that way of his — like he cannot quite make himself sit back and relax while I am in a hospital bed, like the distance of a few extra inches would be unreasonable.He has been talking to me for a while.Not about anything heavy. Nothing about Marco or Salvatore or Shadow or any of the enormous complicated things that are apparently happening simultaneously outside this room. Just talking. The way he talks when he wants m

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN

    "Family is the people you would burn the world down for, even on the days they drive you completely insane."LUCAOkay so let's recap because somebody needs to, and apparently I am the one elected to do the internal narration here since everyone else is too busy being mysterious and traumatized.Dante was dead. Then he wasn't. Then Marco turned out to be a snake who also got tortured and then kidnapped by some shadowy ninja person who may or may not also be a vigilante with morals, which honestly is a confusing character arc for a guy I just met. Salvatore is missing. My brother got abducted by said tortured snake's torturer, came back completely fine, and refuses to tell me a single thing about it. And now there's a woman in this hospital corridor who Nico apparently met in Spain, gave him a dance that broke his entire central nervous system, and who currently looks like she would end my life without blinking if I made one wrong joke.So basically a normal Tuesday.I lean against the

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER SIXTY ONE~~

    "The most dangerous thing a man can do is love someone he was never supposed to want."MARCO (INTERLUDE)My hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel the entire drive across the city.Three days. Three days since that ring flashed on Cassandra's finger and I haven't slept once. Haven't eaten. H

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER SIXTY ~~

    "I WANT TO RUIN YOU SLOWLY. WITH NOTHING BUT MY VOICE AND THE DARK BETWEEN US."DANTE. The house was quiet, but my blood was roaring. It hadn’t been too long since we got back from the arena. I had left Nico and Luca back at the bar there, cancelling out our original plans to get some drinks becau

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER FIFTY NINE~~

    “IF YOU WERE A BOOK, I’D OPEN YOUR LEGS, LICK THE WORD FROM YOUR PAGES AND DRINK ALL YOUR INK”SOFIA.His hand slips free and I whine at the loss, but then he’s dropping to his knees behind me. The movement is smooth, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world even though we both know we don’

  • HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS)   CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT~~

    “LET MY TONGUE EXPLAIN HOW BADLY I CRAVE YOU.”SOFIA.The kiss breaks and we’re both breathing hard. His hands are still on my waist, mine are still tangled in his hair. We should stop. I know we should stop. But when he says “Bend over the table, baby,” in that rough, commanding voice, I find myse

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