CAN'T LOOSE YOU AGAIN

Elena stands outside the penthouse door the next morning, cart in hand, and tells herself this is just a job. Nothing more.

She has done this a hundred times before. Walk in, clean, walk out, report back to Victor. That is all this is.

Her hand shakes a little on the door handle anyway.

Inside, the penthouse is quiet. Sunlight cuts long gold lines across the floor. She half expects Dante to be waiting for her, arms crossed, that unreadable look on his face.

He isn't. The place feels almost empty, and something in her chest loosens and tightens at the same time. She doesn't know which reaction she wants more.

She starts in the kitchen, wiping down counters that are already spotless, just to have something to do with her hands. That is when she smells it.

His cologne. Faint, lingering on the air near the hallway. Cedar. Something dark underneath it, like smoke.

She freezes, cloth still in her hand.

She knows that smell.

Not from last night. From somewhere older. Somewhere she cannot reach, like a word sitting right on the tip of her tongue that won't come out no matter how hard she chases it.

"You're early."

She spins around. Dante is leaning in the kitchen doorway, sleeves already rolled up, watching her with an expression she cannot quite place.

Careful. Guarded. Like a man standing at the edge of something he isn't sure he wants to fall into.

"You didn't lock me out," she says. "I figured that meant I still had a job."

"I considered it." He steps into the kitchen, and she notices the way he tilts his head slightly as he studies her.

Just a small angle. Barely anything. But it hits something in her chest like a struck bell. She has seen that exact tilt before. She doesn't know where.

"Considered locking me out?"

"Considered a lot of things." He pours himself coffee, black, no sugar, and doesn't offer her any. "None of them made sense by morning."

"That's not really an answer."

"No," he agrees. "It isn't."

They stand there a moment, the silence stretched thin between them, neither one willing to break it first.

Elena goes back to wiping the counter, mostly to give her hands something to do besides shake.

"Can I ask you something?" she says finally.

"You can ask."

"Who is Elena?"

His jaw tightens. The coffee cup pauses halfway to his mouth. "I told you. No one."

"You don't say a name like that about no one." She sets the cloth down, meets his eyes straight on, even though every part of her wants to look away first. "You looked like the floor dropped out from under you."

"Drop it, Amara."

"That's not my name."

The words come out before she can stop them, sharp and sudden. She doesn't even know why she said it.

Except that something about hearing "Amara" out of his mouth has started to feel wrong. Like a coat two sizes too small.

Dante goes very still. "What did you say?"

"Nothing." She grabs the cloth again, heart pounding. "Forget it. I don't know why I said that."

"Amara." He says it slowly this time, testing it, watching her face while he does. "That is your name."

"Yes." Her voice wavers. "Yes, of course it is."

He doesn't look convinced. He doesn't push it either. He just watches her a moment longer, something dark and searching in his eyes.

Then he turns and walks out, leaving his coffee half finished on the counter.

The attack comes just after sundown.

Elena is in the hallway, arms full of clean linens, when the first window shatters. The sound is enormous. Glass rains down two floors below.

Before she can even process what is happening, gunfire cracks through the building like thunder splitting open the sky.

"Get down!" Dante's voice roars from somewhere behind her.

Then his hand is on her arm, yanking her sideways, hard. The wall where she had been standing explodes into a spray of plaster and dust.

She hits the floor with him half on top of her, his body a wall between her and the hallway, his arm braced over her head.

Another round of gunfire tears through the room, closer this time. She can feel his heartbeat hammering against her back. Fast. Furious. Alive.

"Stay down," he growls against her ear. "Do not move."

"What's happening?" Her voice comes out shaking, thin with fear she doesn't have the energy to hide anymore. "Who's shooting?"

"I don't know yet." His hand tightens on her shoulder, protective, absolute. "But I'm not letting anything happen to you."

Footsteps pound down the hallway. Gabriel, gun drawn, shouting something to Dante in short, clipped code.

Dante answers without looking away from her, his eyes locked on her face like he is trying to memorize it.

Like he is terrified this might be the last time he gets the chance.

"Third floor," Gabriel says. "Two shooters. Marco's already moving on them."

"Get her to the safe room."

"No." Elena grips his arm before he can pull away. "I'm not hiding while people are shooting at you."

"You are not a part of this."

"I'm already a part of this! I'm lying on your floor with plaster in my hair!" Her voice cracks, half fear, half something fiercer underneath it. "Let me help."

Dante stares at her. For one long second, something in his face breaks open. Fear. Real fear. The kind that has nothing to do with bullets.

"I can't lose you again."

The word again hangs there between them. Huge. Impossible.

"Dante—"

"Not now." He pulls her up by the arm, half dragging her down the hall as another round of gunfire echoes below. "We talk about this later. Right now, I need you safe."

He shoves her through a reinforced door into a small windowless room. All steel and silence. For a moment, his hand lingers on her face. His thumb brushes her cheekbone like he can't quite stop himself.

"Stay here," he says, voice rough. "Please."

Then he is gone. The door seals shut behind him. Elena is alone in the dark with her heart slamming against her ribs and his voice still echoing in her ears.

I can't lose you again.

---

The shooting stops sometime past midnight. She doesn't know how long she sits there in the dark before the door finally opens.

Dante steps through. Blood on his knuckles. Not his own. His shirt torn at the shoulder.

"Are you hurt?" She is on her feet before she even decides to move, hands hovering over him, checking for wounds she can't find.

"I'm fine." His voice is exhausted, stripped down to something rawer than she has ever heard from him. "Two of Victor's men. Marco handled the rest."

Her whole body goes cold. "Victor's men?"

"You didn't know?" He watches her carefully, and there is no accusation in it. Just tired, aching honesty. "Or you're a very good liar."

"I didn't know." It is the truth. She can feel it in her own chest, sharp and sure, even though nothing else about tonight makes sense. "I swear I didn't know."

He nods slowly, like he wants to believe her and isn't sure he's allowed to. "Come on. You shouldn't be alone tonight."

He leads her back to his room. This time there are no handcuffs. No locked doors. He just gestures to the bed, and when she hesitates, he pulls the chair to the corner again, same as the first night, and sits down without another word.

Elena lies down slowly, still trembling from the adrenaline, from his hand on her shoulder in the hallway, from the word again still ringing in her ears.

She watches him in the dim light. Jaw tight. Eyes distant. Staring at nothing.

"Dante."

"Sleep, Amara."

"Who was she?" Her voice is soft now. Careful. "The woman you buried. The one I remind you of."

For a long moment he says nothing. She thinks he isn't going to answer at all.

"Her name was Elena," he says finally, quiet, like the name itself costs him something to speak. "She died ten years ago. Or I thought she did."

"And now you think—"

"I don't know what I think." He rubs a hand over his face, tired in a way that goes bone-deep. "I just know that every time you look at me, I feel like I'm losing my mind."

"Maybe you're not."

"Go to sleep." His voice is gentler now, almost pleading. "Please. I can't do this tonight."

She doesn't push. Exhaustion drags her under faster than she expects, her body finally giving out after the fear and the adrenaline and the strange, aching pull she still can't explain.

She doesn't hear him move his chair closer to the bed sometime in the middle of the night. She doesn't feel his hand brush a curl of hair back from her forehead, slow and careful, like she might break.

She doesn't hear him whisper, so quiet it barely disturbs the silence at all:

"Come back to me, Elena."

But somewhere underneath t

he surface of sleep, something in her stirs anyway. A warmth.

A memory with no shape yet. Reaching toward a voice it has been waiting ten years to hear again.