Dante's POV
I have not slept.
Not one hour.
I sit on her couch in the dark and listen to her apartment breathe around me and tell myself that what I am feeling right now is nothing more than the heightened awareness that comes from being in an unfamiliar space with an unhealed wound and enemies somewhere in the city.
I tell myself that.
I do not believe it.
Because the truth is I am not thinking about the wound or the enemies.
I am thinking about her.
The way her hands felt on my skin when she was cleaning the wound last night. Careful and steady and so gentle it made something in my chest do something I had no instructions for. The way she looked up at me when she was done and found me already watching her and did not look away immediately the way most people do when I look at them too long.
She looked right back.
Like she was not afraid of what she would find.
God help me.
I hear her before I see her.
The bedroom door opens quietly like she is trying not to make noise and I turn my head and she walks out and stops when she sees me awake and for one unguarded second I see exactly what she did not mean to show me.
Her eyes go from my face down my chest and back up.
She is in sleep shorts.
Small and soft and her dark curly hair everywhere and her cardigan falling off one shoulder and her bare legs going on for longer than I have any business noticing and I feel something tighten low in my stomach that has nothing to do with the wound in my side.
I look away.
I look back.
I cannot help it.
"You look terrible," she says.
Her voice is rough from sleep and it does something to me that I am choosing not to examine right now.
"Good morning," I say.
She walks to the kitchen without looking at me again and I watch her go and tell myself very firmly to stop watching her go.
I fail completely.
She makes coffee with her back to me and I sit on her couch and watch the morning light come through her curtains and hit the curve of her shoulder and the line of her neck and think about how a man can bleed in an alley and wake up in a stranger's apartment and somehow end up in the most dangerous situation of his life.
And it has nothing to do with Silvio Calabrese.
"How is the wound?" she asks without turning.
"Better."
"Let me check it."
"It is fine."
"You said that yesterday."
I stand up.
I cross the room and sit in the kitchen chair and she turns around and her eyes go to my chest and then she crouches down in front of me and reaches for the bandaging and her fingers are warm on my skin and the top of her head is right there and her hair smells like something simple and clean and I fix my eyes on the wall above the window and breathe.
In.
Out.
Her fingers press carefully at the edge of the wound and I look down at her without meaning to and she looks up at exactly the same moment and we are close like this.
Too close.
Her face is right there. Those warm brown eyes looking up at mine and her lips slightly parted and her hands still on my skin and the kitchen is completely quiet and I watch something move through her expression that she does not manage to hide fast enough.
She feels it too.
I learned about it last night. I know it now. The way she keeps pulling that cardigan tighter every time I look at her. The way she stepped back from the couch last night with too much speed. The way she is looking at me right now like she is trying to solve a problem she did not ask for.
"The wound is better," I say quietly.
"I can see that," she says. She does not move.
Neither do I.
"Aria."
"What."
"You are still holding my side."
She looks down.
Her hands are indeed still pressed flat against my skin.
She pulls them back so fast she nearly loses her balance and I catch her wrist without thinking and she goes completely still and stares at my hand wrapped around her wrist and then up at my face and the look in her eyes right now is something I am going to be thinking about for a long time.
"Let go," she says.
I let go.
She stands up and goes to the counter and I watch the back of her neck go pink and feel something in my chest shift in a way I have no name for.
She slides a cup of coffee across the counter toward me.
I reach for it and my hand closes over hers on the cup before she can pull back and she freezes.
The whole kitchen freezes.
She looks at our hands. She looks at my face.
I look right back and I do not move my hand.
"You are doing that on purpose," she says. Very quiet.
"Doing what?"
"Looking at me like that."
"Like what."
She pulls her hand out from under mine and takes her cup and goes to the armchair across the room and tucks her legs up underneath her and wraps both hands around her coffee like it is the only steady thing in the room.
"You need to leave today," she says.
"I know."
"I am serious. Today. Not tonight."
"I know that too."
"Then stop looking at me like you are not planning to."
I drink my coffee.
I look at her over the rim.
She narrows her eyes.
"Dante."
"Aria."
"Stop."
"I am drinking coffee."
"You know what you are doing."
I do know what I am doing.
I am doing it anyway.
Her phone goes off.
She grabs it and I watch her face change when she sees the name on the screen. Softer. The specific soft that only happens with people you love without conditions.
"Ciao," she says low.
Then she says Sofia and my whole body shifts to a different kind of attention.
She goes to her bedroom to take the call and I am on my feet before the door closes.
I go to the window.
I press myself against the wall and look down at the street and there it is.
Black car. Engine off. Parked at an angle that makes no sense unless you are watching something specific.
Watching this building.
I have been in this business long enough to know exactly what that looks like.
Silvio's men found me faster than I expected.
I pull out my phone and type Marco one message.
They found the location. Coming to you today.
The response comes in thirty seconds.
Ready.
Aria comes back out of the bedroom and she is saying something about Sofia coming over and I am already not listening because I am doing the calculation in my head.
How many men? What they know. Whether they are here to watch or here to move.
"Hey." Her voice sharpens. "Are you listening to me?"
I turn from the window.
She is standing in the middle of her kitchen with her cardigan finally sitting properly on both shoulders and her chin up and her eyes on me with that direct look that she has. The one that makes me feel like she is looking at something most people never bother to find.
"Someone is watching the building," I say.
The color in her face changes.
"What?"
"Black car across the street. They have been there since before you woke up." I hold her eyes. "They are Silvio's men."
She puts her coffee cup down on the counter very carefully.
"Silvio," she says.
"The man who wants me dead."
"The man you did not tell me about last night."
"There were more pressing things last night."
"Like bleeding on my couch."
"Yes."
She stares at me.
And then she does something I do not expect.
She laughs.
Not a real laugh. The kind that comes out when something is so far past reasonable that your body does not know what else to do with it. Short and sharp and over in a second and then she presses both hands flat on her counter and drops her head and takes one long breath.
When she looks back up her eyes are steady.
Scared. But steady.
"What do we do?" she asks.
And those three words do something to me that no one in a very long time has managed to do.
She said we.
Not what do you do. Now you need to leave. We.
Like she has already decided that whatever comes next she is not stepping out of it.
I cross the room.
I stop right in front of her and her chin comes up immediately and she does not step back and I look down at her face and think about how this woman found me bleeding in an alley and brought me home and checked my wound with steady hands and made me coffee and looked right back when I looked at her.
I think about the black car outside.
I think about Silvio knowing this address.
I think about her standing in this kitchen when they come through the door.
Something cold and certain moves through me.
Nobody is touching her.
"Pack a bag," I say.
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere they cannot follow."
She holds my gaze for one long second.
Then three loud knocks at the door.
We both look at it.
"Sofia," Aria breathes.
I step back.
But before I move to the bedroom I lean down until my mouth is close to her ear and I feel her go completely still.
"Pack light," I say quietly. "We leave the moment she goes."
She does not answer.
But I hear her breath catch.
And I go to the bedroom and close the door and stand in the dark and press my back against it and stare at the ceiling and tell myself for the last time that this woman is not my problem.
I have never been a convincing liar.
Not even to myself.
Sofia leaves forty minutes later.
I come out of the bedroom and Aria is standing at the door with her back pressed against it and her chest rising and falling faster than it should be and something in her expression that she has not had before.
I walk toward her.
She does not move.
"There is something on your phone," I say.
She frowns. Looks down. Picks up her phone from the counter.
Her face goes white.
She turns the screen toward me.
Unknown number.
One message.
Tell him to come outside, Aria.
Or we come inside.
Your choice. You have ten minutes.
I take the phone out of her hand.
I look at the message.
Everything in me goes completely quiet in the way it does right before something very bad and very final happens to someone who made the mistake of thinking I could be cornered.
I look up at Aria.
Her eyes are on my face and she is scared and trying not to show it. She is doing a better job than most trained men. I know what I should do at this moment and something about that destroys me a little.
"Dante," she says.
"Go pack your bag," I say.
"Dante what are you—"
"Aria." I step close. Right in front of her. My hand comes up and I cup her jaw and tilt her face up and make her look at me and her breath comes out shaky and those brown eyes go wide and I look at her and say the only thing that matters right now.
"Trust me."
She stares up at me.
My thumb grazes her cheekbone once.
Just once.
She closes her eyes for half a second.
Then she opens them and pulls back and walks to her bedroom and starts packing.
And I stand in her kitchen and dial Marco and watch the door of her apartment and feel the most dangerous thing I have felt in years.
Responsible.
For her.
Completely and without any way back.