3. Gun vs Dagger

Silence.

A deep, dead silence spread between us after he ordered every single person to leave the meeting room.

I flinched internally when I heard the loud click of the door lock, leaving the two of us completely alone.

I wanted exactly this. Right?

Then why was my stupid heart racing so fast? Why were my breaths suddenly so shallow and hot?

For a good two minutes, he remained unmoved in his spot, but his eyes slid down my body, slowly and dangerously, taking in every inch, assessing the changes.

My eyes too were on his face, which had not, too, become as hard as a stone. I could see a deep wound running across his left eyebrow, which looked old but not too old for me to be familiar with. Seven years had made him broader, colder, and terrifyingly handsome.

Just like me, everything about him had changed.

On the outside.

Slowly and deliberately, he pushed his chair back and stood up. He took small, calculated steps toward me while I stayed rooted in my place.

No words were spoken between us. Only stares and observations.

His dark eyes locked onto mine, burning with hatred and unspent rage.

He stopped just an arm's length away. No matter how hard I tried, memories from seven years ago came rushing back like an open dam. I clenched my fists at my sides, refusing to let my past affect my present.

Before I could even blink, his rough fingers wrapped around my throat and slammed me backward against the mahogany table. The blow knocked the oxygen out of my lungs, and the cold, metallic barrel of his gun pressed hard against my temple.

I swallowed down a cough, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me flinch.

"You have exactly five seconds to give me a reason not to put a bullet through your head right here," he said in a low and gravelly rasp.

We were so close that I could feel his chest vibrating against mine with every word he spoke.

"Oops..." A sharp smirk touched my lips as I flashed him my pearly white teeth. "What a loving way to greet your wife after seven years."

"You are not my wife," he growled into my face. His voice was so thick and rough that for a moment, I couldn't believe this was the same man from my past.

"You sure?" I challenged him.

His jaw clenched, and his hold around the gun became tighter. He wrapped his finger around the trigger and, with his other hand, squeezed my throat even tighter, making it hard for me to breathe.

He wanted to scare me, to break me so I could go back to where I came from.

My hand reached out for the gun, my fingers wrapped around its barrel, only to drag it down my throat, past my collarbone, and press it hard against the left side of my chest.

"Aim here, Dante," I whispered, leaning up until our lips were inches apart. "You used to say this was your favorite spot. Remember?"

For a heartbeat, we stayed frozen in place. We didn't move, we didn't breathe, hell, we didn't even blink.

Just stared into each other's eyes, trying to kill with a mere gaze because weapons could never do that.

"Ain't you satisfied ruining me already?" A muscle in his jaw twitched, and for a fraction of a second, the iron grip on his gun faltered. His breath hitched, hot and ragged against my skin. "What else do you want?"

"You got what you deserved, Dante," I purred. I grabbed his collar and pulled him down until our lips were barely an inch apart. "And what I want is for my Mafia husband to take me home and put his ring back where it belongs."

His breath quickened when I wrapped my legs around his torso and bit my lower lip. The heat radiated from his body penetrated mine. For a second, his hold on the falters and his other hand slipped from my neck down to my waist to wrap around it and crush me against him so hard I couldn't tell where my heartbeat ended, and his began.

My own breath went shallow as I was tempted by how his rough hand scraped against my smooth, bare back.

Our breaths mingled when he moved his face an inch closer.

Our noses brushed, and just when I thought our lips were about to meet, he pushed me away.

A soft gasp of surprise escaped my throat as the sudden force sent me stumbling back against the edge of the mahogany table.

"Dream on, Clara, because you lost every right to me the night you left me to rot," he spat venomously. "And the marriage... It was nothing more than a childish play. Not even a single soul knows we were ever married. It automatically makes it invalid"

My blood boiled so hot with humiliation that I was tempted to pull out my thigh dagger and plunge it directly into his heart.

"You can try every pathetic little trick in your power," he warned, leaning down into my space, "but you will never get what you want."

He pulled out a black metal lighter from his pocket and snapped it open to light up the cigarette. The flame illuminated the pitch-black rage in his eyes.

"Now get out of my sight."

He blew the thick smoke directly in my face, assuring me again that my Dante had died a long time ago.