The Woman In His War

Chapter Seventeen: Space Between Us

Her door stayed closed for the rest of the afternoon.

Dante knew because he walked past it twice, once at four and once closer to six. He had stood at his own door at the end of the corridor both times, listened to the compound move around him and felt the closed door at the far end of the hall. He went to the operations room and opened three files. Read the first page of each and retained nothing. Luca also tried to knock on her door at seven with a tray. He heard nothing from inside the room and decided to inform Dante in the operations room.

"She said she wasn't hungry," Luca said.

Dante looked at the tray. "Did she eat anything today?"

Luca hesitated just long enough to answer honestly. "She had coffee this morni,ng. I don't think… I didn't see her at lunch."

"Leave the tray outside her door," Dante said.

Luca lingered for half a second like he wanted to say something else. Then thought better of it and left. Dante stood at the window and looked at the compound below: the gate, the road and the dark beyond it. He felt something he had been declining to name for weeks, and was rapidly running out of room to keep denying it.

He lasted until nine. Then he put on his jacket and walked out of the compound. The cold night air hit him like something he hadn't realized he needed until it arrived, and stopped on the road outside the gate.

He lit a cigarette, which was his first in four months, that he had kept in his jacket pocket for some reason. The city glowed indifferently on the horizon.

While he smoked, he thought about Serena, about her voice on the phone with her father and the conversation they both had. He knew that Viktor was probably planning to convince Serena to go against him. Behind him, the gate opened. He didn't turn around because he already knew. Marco came to stand beside him and didn't speak immediately. They stood on the road outside the compound in the dark and the cold as the cigarette smoke drifted between them.

"You don't smoke anymore," Marco said finally.

"Yeah, I don't"

Marco looked at the cigarette with the expression of someone deciding which version of what he wanted to say was the right one. He had been with him longer than ten years. The relationship between them had grown beyond a boss and a subordinate. Marco was the only one who could have deep conversations with Dante, so he knew him well.

"How long have you been outside without a reason?" He asked.

Dante drew on the cigarette. "What makes you think I don't have a reason?"

"Because I know every reason you've ever had for leaving this building." Marco put his hands in his pockets. "And none of them look like this."

The road was quiet. A distant engine somewhere past the treeline. It was too far to be relevant. The world continued its business in the dark. Dante looked at the city glow in the street lights and thought about saying something that would redirect the conversation into territory he could manage. He said nothing.

Marco let the silence sit for a moment. Then… "Serena didn't eat. And Luca said she looked… " He stopped and tried to choose a different word. "Different when she answered the door."

Dante's jaw shifted. “I know. She had a difficult afternoon."

Marco was quiet for a moment. "I heard the call with her father." Dante looked at him. "Not the content," Marco said quickly. "Just that I was in the corridor and I heard her voice afterward."

Dante turned back to the road. "And?"

Marco exhaled slowly through his nose.

"And she sounded like someone who had just understood something she wasn't ready to understand. The one that happens when people find out the people they trusted have been arranging things around them without asking."

"She doesn't know everything, only what she needs to know,” Dante said.

"Dante… " Marco stopped and started again. "I have known you for years and I know you would never do things irrationally. The security arrangements you changed last week… It is not what I am thinking, right?” He hesitated for a while and noticed that Dante's expression had changed. Then he continued. “You don't like Serena. Do you?”

The words landed on Dante way harder this time. Marco had never questioned him this way before. And what he had asked him was something that even he had never thought about before. No matter how hard he tries, he just can't hide things away from Marco. He quickly moved his eyes away from Marco and looked at his hand. The cigarette had gone out.