All Chapters of HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS): Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

SO IT DOES BOTH AT ONCE."SOFIAThe morning is quieter than most.That is the thing I notice first when I wake up. The particular quality of the light coming through the curtains and the sounds of the house settling around me — Elena moving somewhere downstairs, Isabella's voice talking to one of her stuffed animals in the next room, the ordinary domestic rhythm of a morning that is not an emergency.I have learned to appreciate ordinary mornings.After everything that has happened in the past weeks I have learned that ordinary is not nothing. Ordinary is actually everything. Ordinary is Isabella's voice through a wall and coffee being made somewhere below and the ability to lie in bed for three minutes before the day begins without being afraid of what the day is going to bring.I sit up slowly.The nausea hits immediately.Not dramatically. Just a low persistent wave that rolls through me and settles somewhere in the back of my throat and stays there. I press my lips together and br

"THE LONGEST DRIVES ARE THE ONES WHERE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DRIVING TOWARD."DANTEI don't remember getting to the car.One moment I am in the corridor of the safe house with Elena's voice still in my ear and the next I am in the passenger seat and Luca is driving and the city is moving past the windows at a speed that would get us pulled over if anyone tried and I cannot find it in me to care about that even slightly.My phone is in my hand.Elena called four minutes ago.I have replayed those three sentences approximately one hundred times since then.Sofia. Hospital. Critical condition.Critical.I keep getting stuck on that word. Turning it over. Trying to find an angle where it means something less than what it means and not finding one because critical is critical and there is no softer version of it and Sofia is in a hospital right now and I am twenty minutes away and twenty minutes has never felt so long in my entire life."Talk to me," Luca says from the driver's seat.

"SOMETIMES THE ANSWER YOU NEED IS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU WANT TO LOOK."DANTE"Shadow is an assassin," he says. "Has been operating in high level circles for about six years. Nobody knows the identity. Not the gender. Not the nationality. Not the face." He pauses. "What we know is the work. The style. Very specific. Very precise. Only takes contracts from people with serious money and serious reach." He looks at Marco's back again. "The six cuts are a calling card. Anyone who has seen Shadow's work before recognizes it.""And who hired Shadow to do this," I say."That is what makes no sense," Caruso says. He looks genuinely puzzled in a way that men who have seen most things do not often look. "Shadow does not do jobs like this. Shadow kills. Clean and complete and final every single time. Six years of contracts and not one target has ever walked away. Not one." He gestures toward Marco. "This—" He stops. Shakes his head. "This is not a kill. This is a message. Shadow doesn't send mess

"The most dangerous questions are the ones you never thought to ask."NICOMy head. A dull insistent throb that tells me I was hit and tells me approximately how hard by how much it costs to open my eyes.I open them anyway.The room is dim. Stone walls as I suspected. A single light source — a lamp in the corner, warm and low, the kind of lighting that is almost deliberately unthreatening. A table. Two chairs. Mine, and one across from me that is currently empty.I assess the exits.One door. Behind me and to the left. Closed. The draft from under it tells me there is corridor on the other side rather than open space.I assess my restraints.Solid. I test them once with controlled pressure. Not testing to break them — not yet. Just mapping them. Understanding what I am working with.I assess myself.Head pain. Some stiffness in my left shoulder from however I was transported here. Otherwise functional. No significant injuries beyond the hit that put me under.Someone wanted me consci

"THE LONGEST WAIT IS THE ONE WHERE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE WAITING FOR."DANTEThe jet lands at five forty two in the morning.I know the exact time because I have been watching the clock on my phone for the entire flight in the particular obsessive way of a person who cannot do anything useful and cannot stop themselves from tracking the time anyway. Every minute logged. Every minute felt.The bottle is in my jacket pocket.I have checked it approximately every twenty minutes since Moscow. Taken it out. Looked at it. Put it back. Like checking will somehow confirm it is still real and still intact and still what we think it is.It is still real. Still intact. Still sealed the way it was when we found it in the car.It is the only thing I am certain of right now.Everything else is questions without answers and a clock running and the image of Sofia's face in a hospital bed that I cannot get out of my head no matter what else I try to put in front of it.Luca drives from the airfie