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Chapter 2

Author: Ivy June
Dante walked me through the back door of his club and announced to the room that I was back.

He said it the way a man calls out a winning hand at a poker table, loud enough for the bar to hear.

"You remember Elena," he told two guys nursing drinks.

I remembered them. They had walked me out to a sidewalk three years ago.

Two flights up, a suite that smelled of cigar smoke and lemon cleaner.

"The doctor," he told Nick. "Ours. Not the clinic one."

Nick left at a run. He came back twenty minutes later with a doctor .

The doctor laid a towel under my arm and the doctor cut my sleeve open with scissors.

"The bullet's still in there," he said. "I'll need to dig."

he said. "This will hurt."

"Then be quick."

Dante watched the whole thing.

He paced the carpet. He lit a cigarette, crushed it, lit another one.

Sal pushed the forceps in.

I bit down on my lip, but a cry still broke out of me.

Dante went white.

"Stop! Is she okay? Sal, she's in pain!"

"That's what happens when you remove a bullet," Sal said dryly.

"Then give her more of the numbing stuff!"

Now he looked ready to shoot the doctor for me.

I kept my mouth shut.

That rattled him more than screaming would have.

His pacing got shorter. His hands opened and closed at his sides.

"Give her something for it," he said.

"Not until the bleeding stops."

The bullet clinked into a steel dish.

Sal wrapped my arm in white gauze, and my body finally stopped shaking.

Dante crouched at my chair and studied my face, hunting for the crack he was owed.

The door opened and Mia walked in.

She carried a glass of water and a folded shirt, and she entered like the woman of the house.

"Elena." Her palm pressed against her chest. "You poor thing. What did they do to you?"

She set the water on the table and leaned over me, and the ceiling light caught her hand.

The diamond threw back a white spark. My diamond.

She held it there a half second longer than she needed to.

"Isn't it funny?" she said softly. "Some things just find their way home."

I looked at the ring.

I felt nothing at all.

"It suits you," I said,and drank.

Mia blinked. She had expected tears, or a scream.

Dante shifted beside the counter. "Elena, say something real."

"I just did."

His jaw tightened. He seemed irritated, though he couldn't have said why.

Mia's eyes dropped to my left hand.

"Wait." She leaned in. "That band on your finger. It's so plain. No stone at all." She gasped, delighted. "Elena, did you get married?"

I turned the silver band once with my thumb.

"Mm," I said.

Mia pressed both hands to her chest. "Oh, that's wonderful! I'm so happy for you. I truly hope you find happiness."

Dante frowned hard. "Don't be ridiculous, Mia. She's my fiancée."

"But the ring..."

"She wears it because she wants me to see it." He gave a short, ugly laugh and looked straight at me. "Same reason she took a bullet. It's all part of the act, right? You thought I'd lose my mind with jealousy."

"And I hope you and Mia will be happy too," I said.

"There's nothing between me and Mia!"His voice climbed. "How many times do I have to say it? It's you. It's always been you."

"Three years," he said. "One ring. Was it worth it?"

"It was your ring," I said. "You could give it to whoever you wanted."

"Don't." he said. "Mia has depression. Her father took a bullet for this family. I can't let her feel wronged. You knew that."

"You've said that already."

"So it's jewelry," he said. "And you disappeared for three years to punish me."

"I didn't disappear."

I looked up at him calmly.

"Do you know what these three years were, Dante?"

"What?"

"You weren't missing me. You were paying a debt. To Mia, to her father, to your guilt." I kept my voice quiet. "You never once looked for the woman you lost. You just tried not to feel bad."

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out.

He stopped talking.

"Mia can't be wronged," I said. "Twice today, you've told me that. Which means for three years you've been paying her back." I looked up at him.

"That isn't the same as loving her. And the ring was never the point."

He stood over me with his mouth half open.

For one second, the man I used to know looked out of his face. He looked scared.

I looked away first.

At eleven, Nick came back and bent to Dante's ear.

The shell casings came from a batch that walked out of an evidence locker in Newark two months ago.

The two sedans were stolen in Yonkers and burned out in Queens.

And the ambush had been timed to the minute.

Someone had my schedule for the day. Someone knew about the grave.

Dante's face went gray.

"Want me to push on it?" Nick asked.

Dante's eyes went to the door. Then to my arm. "No. Drop it."

If someone else wanted me dead, then I hadn't come back for him, and his whole story came apart in his hands.

He stood in the doorway a long while with his palm flat on the frame.

His eyes dropped to my gauze.
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