Chapter 6 — Distance

Dante pov

The hallway smells like damp carpet and old anger.

It’s narrow, poorly lit, the kind of place where sound lingers too long and nothing ever really dries. A television blares somewhere behind a closed door, laughter distorted and out of place. I stop in front of the apartment marked 3B and listen.

Glass clinks.

Music pulses, off-beat.

A voice slurs something ugly.

Jose stands half a step behind me, solid and quiet, like he’s always been. He doesn’t ask if I’m ready. He knows better than to ask questions with answers that don’t matter.

I knock once.

Not loud. Not polite.

The sound lands heavy in the small space.

There’s a pause. Then movement. The door swings open too fast, like whoever’s behind it forgot the world still exists.

Ricky fills the frame.

He’s drunk enough to be careless, not drunk enough to be unconscious. His pupils are blown wide, face flushed, shirt wrinkled and stained with something dark that smells like cheap whiskey. The apartment behind him is chaos—chair overturned, cushions on the floor, empty bottles scattered like casualties.

He blinks when he sees me.

Then he smiles.

“Well I’ll be fucked,” he says, voice loose and loud. “If it isn’t the man who thinks he owns my life now.”

I step inside without waiting for an invitation.

Jose follows, already scanning the room, cataloging exits, hazards, anything sharp or heavy enough to become a problem. Ricky stumbles back a step to make room, then laughs again, harsher this time.

“What, no entourage?” he sneers. “Just you and—” He flicks his eyes to Jose. “Who’s the friend? You bring him to watch?”

“I’m here for her things,” I say.

Ricky’s smile twists.

“Her things,” he repeats slowly, like the words are foreign. “You mean my girlfriend’s things.”

Mine.

The word lands ugly.

“She’s not your property,” I say.

Ricky scoffs, taking a swig straight from the bottle in his hand. “Don’t give me that shit. You think you’re better than me?” He gestures vaguely toward my chest, almost loses his balance. “You took her instead of money. Same thing. You just use nicer words.”

The room feels tighter.

For half a second, I let the thought exist.

The line between leverage and control.

Between choice and force.

It doesn’t last.

“You don’t get to compare us,” I say quietly. “You lost that right when you put your hands on her.”

Ricky laughs, loud and sharp. “Oh, come on. Don’t pretend you give a fuck about her. She’s a mess. You know that?” His eyes gleam with something ugly. “Lazy. Fat. Always taking up space like—”

The gun is in my hand before the sentence finishes.

The sound of it clearing my jacket cuts through the room.

I don’t raise my voice.

I don’t rush.

The barrel comes up level with his face, steady as a held breath.

Ricky freezes.

The bottle slips from his fingers and shatters on the floor, whiskey spreading dark and fast across the tile.

Jose moves instantly—not between us, never that—but close enough that I feel him at my shoulder.

“Dante,” he says quietly. Not a warning. A reminder.

Ricky’s eyes are locked on the gun now, terror leaking through the bravado.

“You don’t get to speak about her,” I say. “Ever again.”

He swallows hard. “You gonna kill me for telling the truth?”

I step closer.

Close enough that he can see his reflection warped in the metal.

“No,” I say. “I’m going to let you live knowing you lost her the moment you thought she was something you could spend.”

I don’t lower the gun.

“Jose,” I say without looking away. “Get her things. Everything that’s hers. Nothing else.”

Jose nods once and moves past us, already opening drawers, pulling open closet doors. The sounds behind me are methodical. Final.

Ricky doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. He barely breathes.

When Jose comes back with a bag slung over his shoulder, I finally lower the gun.

Not because I’m calm.

Because there’s nothing left here worth aiming at.

“We’re done,” I say.

Ricky sinks onto the couch like his bones give out all at once, eyes hollow now, rage burned down to something smaller and meaner.

I turn and walk out without looking back.

Distance isn’t always measured in miles.

Sometimes it’s the space between a man and the moment he realizes he never owned anything at all.

The bag is lighter than it should be.

Jose sets it down by the door without comment, the zipper half open, fabric slumped in on itself like it knows it doesn’t contain much. He looks at me once, question unspoken, then steps away. He gives us space the way he always does—by becoming part of the walls.

Nina stands a few feet from the bag, uncertain. Not afraid of it. Wary. Like it might bite if she touches it wrong.

“Take your time,” I say.

She nods, a small movement, and kneels. Her knees touch the floor first, careful. She opens the zipper and begins to look through what’s inside.

There isn’t much.

Clothes folded tight, worn thin in places that tell stories no one asked for. A pair of shoes with one heel scuffed more than the other. A charger with the cord taped near the base. A paperback with the spine broken like it’s been opened and closed too many times for comfort.

She picks up a sweater, pauses, then sets it back. Her fingers linger on the fabric like she’s confirming it’s real.

I watch her without hiding it.

Not the way men watch to take. The way you watch something fragile to make sure it doesn’t shatter under its own weight.

“That’s… most of it,” she says quietly, as if apologizing.

“For what?” I ask.

Her shoulders lift, then drop. “I thought there’d be more.”

“There’s enough,” I say. And I mean it.

She pulls out a small pouch next. Makeup. Minimal. Practical. She opens it, checks the contents like she’s counting to make sure nothing went missing, then zips it closed again.

She doesn’t cry.

That matters.

I notice the way she keeps her body angled away from the door, instinctively blocking it with her shoulder. Old habit. The way she braces for interruption even when there isn’t one coming.

I step closer, slow enough not to startle her.

“You don’t have to justify what you own,” I say. “Or what you don’t.”

Her eyes lift to mine. There’s something there now—curiosity edged with caution. She studies my face like she’s trying to learn a new language from context alone.

“You talk like you’ve done this before,” she says.

I consider the truth and choose the part that won’t burden her.

“I’ve watched people leave with less,” I say. “And survive.”

That seems to satisfy her. For now.

She closes the bag and stands, holding it against her side. The weight shifts her posture just a little. She adjusts automatically.

I see it then—the quiet dignity in the way she bears what she has. The way she doesn’t pretend it’s heavier or lighter than it is.

For a moment, the present slips.

Not into memory. Into echo.

A pair of eyes—bright then, unguarded—meeting mine at a time when I was something sharp and bleeding and unsure whether I’d choose destruction or control. The look had been the same: steady, unimpressed, alive.

The echo fades.

I’m here now. She’s here now. The inversion is not lost on me.

“I noticed you,” I say.

She stiffens just slightly. “At the club.”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“Enough.”

She considers that, lips pressing together. “You never said anything.”

“I wasn’t the person you needed then.”

She doesn’t argue. That tells me she understands more than she’s saying.

Her gaze drops back to the bag. “There isn’t really… anything else.”

“Good,” I say.

She looks up again, startled. “Good?”

“It means you’re not anchored to things that will drag you back,” I say. Then, because it matters: “We can replace what you need.”

She studies my face for the catch.

There isn’t one.

I gesture toward the hallway. “Get your jacket.”

She hesitates. “Where are we going?”

The question lands differently than it did when he asked it of her.

I hear the echo in her too—the memory of a voice that promised dinner and delivered debt. Of hands that pulled and eyes that measured her worth in loss.

“We’re going out,” I say.

Her shoulders tense on reflex.

I don’t rush the next words.

“Not to win anything,” I add. “Not to perform. Not to pay.”

She waits. I let her.

“To choose,” I finish.

Something shifts in her expression. Not relief. Recognition.

“What if I don’t know what to choose?” she asks.

“Then we’ll find out,” I say. “Together. In public. On your terms.”

She exhales slowly, like she’s letting go of a breath she’s been holding for years.

“Okay,” she says.

Just that.

I open the door for her—not because she needs it, but because the difference matters.

She steps through first, bag on her shoulder, spine a little straighter than it was a moment ago.

As we walk, I notice it again—the light. Not fully back. But flickering.

And this time, when she looks at me, she doesn’t look like someone being taken.

She looks like someone moving.

Distance, I’ve learned, isn’t only about separation.

Sometimes it’s the space you give someone to walk without being pulled.