NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOU

Chap

Elena runs the last two blocks to the penthouse building. The note is crumpled in her fist. Her breath comes in ragged bursts that have nothing to do with the running.

The doorman barely gets her name out before she is already past him, into the elevator, jamming the button for the fortieth floor over and over like that will make it move faster.

By the time the doors open, her hands shake so hard she can barely get the door code right.

The penthouse is dim, lit only by a lamp in the study. She doesn't call out for him. She doesn't trust her voice yet.

She just walks, fast, past the black-and-white photographs she never let herself look at before. Now she understands why.

Because one of them, she realizes with a jolt, has a woman in the corner of the frame. Laughing. Curls escaping her pins. And it is her. It is her.

She doesn't make it to the study.

Halfway down the hall, the weight of it all crashes over her at once. Ten years. A stolen name.

A dead father who isn't dead because of the man she has been taught to hate. A note that says I am waiting. Her legs simply stop working.

She sinks down against the wall outside the bathroom, knees pulled to her chest.

The sob that comes out of her doesn't sound like her own voice at all. It sounds like something that has been locked away for ten years and just found the door.

"I don't understand," she gasps to no one, to the empty hallway, to the ghost of a life she can't quite reach. "I don't understand any of this."

She claws at her own temples like she can force the memories out through sheer will. Like if she just pushes hard enough, the wall in her mind will crack open the rest of the way.

It doesn't work. It just hurts. Sharp and useless. She cries harder because of it.

That is how Dante finds her.

He comes around the corner fast, already moving before he has even fully processed what he is seeing. He drops to his knees in front of her without a second's hesitation.

"Elena." Her real name, finally, spoken like it is the only word he has left. "Elena, look at me. What happened?"

She can't speak. She just holds up the note, hand trembling so hard the paper shakes between her fingers. She watches his face change the second he recognizes his own handwriting.

"Where did you get this?"

"Sofia," she manages. "Sofia told me everything."

Something breaks across his face. Grief, and rage, and disbelief, all tangled together. "Everything?"

"Victor killed my father." Her voice cracks on every word, but she pushes through it, needing to say it out loud, needing it to be real. "He killed him, and then he erased me, and he told me it was you. For ten years he told me it was you."

Dante's jaw is tight enough to ache. "Yes."

"You didn't kill anyone."

"No." His voice is low, rough, barely holding together. "I would never have hurt you. I loved you more than my own life."

The word loved undoes her completely. She reaches for him without thinking, without deciding to. He catches her, pulls her against his chest. She shakes there while he holds her like she might disappear again if he lets go.

"I think I loved you once," she whispers against his shirt.

He goes very still. His arms tighten around her.

"You did," he says, voice breaking now too. Ten years of grief finally cracking through the careful control he has held onto for so long. "You loved me. And I have spent ten years hating a world that took you away from me."

"Tell me." She pulls back just enough to look at him, tears still falling, her eyes searching his face like she is trying to memorize something she is afraid to lose again. "Please. Tell me everything. I need to know who I was."

Dante takes a breath, unsteady, and helps her up off the floor. He leads her to the couch in the study. He sits beside her, close, one hand never quite letting go of hers, like he is terrified that if he does, this will turn out to be a dream after all.

"Ten years ago," he starts, voice low, "I met you at a gala. My father's, your father's—some event neither of us wanted to be at. You spilled wine on my jacket and instead of apologizing, you told me it was an improvement."

A small, broken laugh escapes her, surprising them both. "That sounds like something I'd say."

"It is exactly something you'd say." His mouth almost curves into a smile, sad and soft. "You never apologized for anything you didn't actually regret. It drove me insane. I couldn't stop thinking about you for weeks."

"What happened next?"

"I found reasons to see you. Excuses. I told myself it was business, our families crossing paths, but it was never business. It was you." His thumb traces slow circles over her knuckles, like the motion steadies him. "We used to meet in a garden behind an old church, away from both our families. No guards. No names that meant anything. Just us."

"I dream about a garden," Elena breathes. "I've dreamed about it for months and I never understood why."

"That garden." Something aches behind his eyes. "We planned to run away together. Leave both families behind, the business, all of it. I was going to marry you in that church with no one watching but the two of us."

"What stopped us?"

His hand tightens around hers. "Victor," he says, the name coming out like poison. "He found out about your father discovering something he shouldn't have. About Victor's real business, the things he kept hidden even from your side of the family. Your father was going to expose him."

"And Victor killed him."

"Yes. And blamed my family for it, because he needed a war he could hide behind, and because destroying us solved two problems at once." Dante's voice shakes now, raw with ten years of buried grief.

"There was a shootout. I don't know all of what happened—I wasn't there in time. I found you afterward, bleeding, and I held you, and I thought—" He stops, has to stop, breathing hard before he can continue. "I thought I watched you die in my arms."

Elena's chest aches so hard it is difficult to breathe. "I'm so sorry."

"I buried you." His voice breaks completely now. For the first time since she has known him, Dante Moretti lets himself cry. Quiet and unashamed.

Tears cutting down a face that has spent ten years pretending it felt nothing at all. "I buried an empty casket because Victor made sure there was nothing left to bury, and I have hated myself every day since for not getting to you sooner."

"You didn't know," she says softly. She reaches up to wipe a tear from his jaw. The gesture is so natural it startles her. "You couldn't have known."

"I should have protected you."

"You're protecting me now." She holds his face in both hands, forcing him to look at her, forcing him to see her, really see her. Here. Alive. In front of him.

"I don't remember everything. I wish I did. But I remember enough. I remember the way your cologne feels like something I've known my whole life. I remember your voice from a dream I didn't understand until tonight.

My body remembers you even when my mind couldn't."

"Elena—"

"I choose to believe you," she says, steady now despite the tears still falling. "I choose to remember. Even the parts that hurt."

Dante closes his eyes. When he opens them again, something in his face has shifted. The careful control is gone. Replaced by something raw and open and terrified and hopeful all at once.

"I never stopped loving you," he says. "Ten years, and I never stopped, not for a single day."

"Then don't stop now."

He pulls her against him, slow, careful, like she is something precious he is terrified of breaking. She lets him. She lets herself lean into a warmth that feels less like a stranger's arms and more like coming home after a very long time away.

"What happens now?" she whispers against his chest.

"Now," Dante says, voice steadier, something like resolve hardening underneath the grief, "we make sure Victor never hurts anyone else the way he hurt you. The way he hurt us."

Elena pulls back to look at him. Something fierce sparks behind her tears. "I want to help. I'm not hiding from this anymore."

"He's dangerous, Elena."

"So am I." She wipes her face with the back of her hand. Beneath the exhaustion, something steel-like settles into her voice. "I spent ten years being his weapon without knowing it. It's time I decided who I point myself at instead."

Dante studies her for a long moment. Something like awe breaks through the grief on his face. "You really are still her," he murmurs. "Somewhere in there. Still exactly her."

"I'm trying to be." Elena laces her fingers through his, holding on like she is making a promise neither of them has said out loud yet. "Help me remember the rest. All of it. Even if it hurts."

"It will."

"I don't care." She leans her forehead against his, eyes closing. Ten years of stolen time finally starting to feel, just slightly, like something that might be given back.

"I've spent a decade being someone I'm not. I'd rather hurt as myself than stay safe as a stranger."

Outside the window, the city hums on, indifferent to the two of them sitting together in the dim light of the study.

Hands locked tight. A decade of grief and love finally spilling out into the open after ten long years of silence.