THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

ELENA'S POV

By the second morning, I had a routine.

Not by choice. Routines, I was discovering, were something Dante Moretti imposed on a space the way gravity imposed itself on objects.

I was absolutely falling into it.

The house was also very quiet. I knew he had security around the house but it was like there were invisible because I never saw any of them.

And I also discovered that he was rarely at work. I expected that they were time that he was going to be at work so I had more time to go through his house.

"You need clothes," Dante said that morning, not looking up from his laptop.

I looked down at the jeans I'd now worn for two days. They weren't wrong. "I have clothes."

He turned a page. "Rosa will take you."

"I don't need you to buy me clothes," I replied.

“You know that it wouldn't cost me anything to let Rosa take you to get as many clothes as you need,” Dante said. “Going back to your apartment is not safe.”

He pulled cards from his pocket and handed it to me without checking the one he was giving.

I stared at him with a frown. “I said I don't need you to get me clothes!” I resisted. “I would get my clothes from my apartment.”

He stared at me for a while before putting the cards back in his pocket.

"I’m having someone accompany you so you don't get picked up by the Kozlovs on the way to your apartment." He finally looked up at me. "That's the only way I'm letting you live this place.”

“Am I in a cell?” I asked, but he ignored me and just stared at me. The look was perfectly neutral but I knew that I had no choice but to do exactly what he wanted me to do.

"Fine," I said.

—–

When we got to the apartment, I pulled out my keys to open the door but it gave way… the lock had been picked. The room was scattered and everything was literally turned over. My clothes were scattered on the ground. I didn't know what they were looking for but Dante wasn't wrong…they had been to my house and if I had slept there, I would have been taken or killed.

I looked around the apartment and it looked smaller than I remembered.

Just three days. That's all it had been. And yet I stood in the doorway of my studio apartment in Queens and felt like I was looking at a life that belonged to someone I used to know. The coffee maker with the cracked handle. The stack of textbooks David had left behind and never came back for. The photo on the fridge, the two of us at Coney Island, two summers ago, him laughing at something I'd said, me squinting into the sun, I looked happy in it. But now it was clear that he was already cheating at the time.

I hissed at then took it down. Folded it in half, tore it without looking at his face and threw it in the trash.

Rosa waited by the door, that weird smile was still on her face. It was mechanical like she had a surgery that created that permanent curve on her lips. There was a man that stood close to the car. He was large, suited, somebody Dante had sent without mentioning.

In minutes, I was done. I picked the bag and stared at the room one last time. I was never going to be back there again. Even when this was over. I was going to leave the apartment. It reminded me too much of David.

I followed Rosa to the car.

—--

I told Dante about the lock when I got back.

He was on the phone. He held up one finger without looking at me. When he finished his conversation in what I was fairly sure was Italian and hung up.

"Sit," he said.

"The lock on my apartment was picked. Someone went through my things." I sat anyway because my legs were slightly less reliable than I wanted them to be.

"I know." He set his phone on the table. "Did they take anything?"

"I don't think so. I couldn't tell." I pressed my fingers against the edge of the table. "Dante. What do they want? David's debt, is that really what this is? Because they wanted to kill me. And I don't think this is about collecting money anymore."

He was quiet for a moment.

"The Kozlovs sometimes look for leverage," he said finally. "Information they can use. If David told them anything about you, anything that might make you more valuable than the debt…"

"I'm a waitress," I said flatly. "I was a waitress. What information could I possibly have?"

He looked at me. Something passed through his expression, not quite discomfort, it was something else, like he knew what this was really about but it was gone almost immediately.

"Probably nothing," he said. "But they don't know that yet."

It was a reasonable answer. I filed it away next to the other things about Dante Moretti that didn't quite add up. Questions like why was it there at that exact time. He was there too fast like he was expecting it to happen. The intervention that had been too fast, the way he'd known my name before I gave it; the way that those guys ran away from him. They knew him well. I didn't push. Not yet. I could just get into more trouble. He just had to see me like I didn't suspect anything.

"Thank you," I said instead. "For Rosa. And the other one.."

—

That afternoon when the house was quiet enough, I decided to go through the house. I intentionally avoided the door that I had seen him behind before. I knew that I wouldn't be able to withstand another moment like that with him.

I found the portrait in one of the hallways.

It was large. A formal portrait. The man in his fifties, dark-haired, silver at the temples, with the kind of face that suggested he'd spent his life in rooms where decisions were made. He was handsome in a way that had more to do with bearing than features. His eyes in the portrait were dark and direct.

There was something about the eyes.

I stood in front of it for longer than made sense, trying to identify the familiarity.

I heard a sound behind me and I turned. Dante leaned on the wall, his arms folded.

"I wasn't snooping," I said immediately, taking a step back away from the portrait.

He said nothing, just moved away from the wall and stood beside me, looking at the painting. Up close, I could see the resemblance, the jaw, the stillness, the quality of attention in the eyes.

“Your father,” I noted.

He was silent for a while staring at the picture.

“Stop wondering around,” he said and was out.

I turned back to the portrait. The dark eyes looked back at me, steady and direct, and I had the strange and entirely irrational feeling that I had seen that eyes before and it wasn't just from Dante. It was strangely familiar. But if I had stood in the presence of a billionaire at some point in my life, I would have remembered all the details about the meeting.

I wasn't that lucky.

I shook it off. Went back to the library. Picked up the Italian book I still couldn't read and held it in my lap.

Dinner was quieter than the night before, which I hadn't thought was possible.

It looked like the portrait had stirred up something in him. It was clear from his reaction that it was either his father was dead or he had a bad relationship with him when he was alive, or even both.

He looked up. "What?"

“I…I…” I breathed deeply. “Nothing.” There was no way I was going to ask him about his father. I could just make the annoyance worse and I could end up on the street. I couldn't push him because right now, it was obvious that I needed him more than he needed me…if he did.

“No one can get you in here, Elena,” he replied and was already walking out of the dining room. I paused for a bit. What did he mean? Because it was clear that this was more than me.

After dinner, I went to bed and stared at the ceiling and told myself that the warmth in my chest was gratitude. That it was simple and explainable and had nothing to do with candles or dark eyes or a man who fed me without asking and ate dinner with me because I shouldn't be alone, or made sure that I was protected.

I told myself that for a long time.

I didn't entirely believe it but it was clear that something had changed in just that line.