CHAPTER 8: THE WOMAN WHO SHOULDN’T HAVE LIVED
2122 Words
The gunshot cracked through the air with a violent finality that tore the breath from my lungs. Dust drifted slowly, almost gracefully, as the world around us fell into a terrible, ringing silence. I felt Dante’s body tense over mine, his muscles locking instinctively. My heart hammered against my ribs, waiting for the pain, waiting for the sharp burning impact. Waiting for death.
But it never came.
A dull metallic clatter echoed across the rubble. Lucia’s sharp inhale followed a heartbeat later, the sound of someone realizing their perfect kill had gone horribly wrong.
Dante shifted just enough for me to see what had happened. A broken steel beam jutted from the collapsed stairwell, wedged between shifting debris. The bullet had struck it instead of us. Sparks still glimmered faintly across the metal where the shot had ricocheted.
Lucia stood above us, shoulders rising as a furious breath escaped her lips.
“You are joking,” she whispered in disbelief. “I had you.”
Her disappointment felt colder than the concrete pressing against my back.
Dante’s arm tightened protectively around me. He didn’t speak. His silence carried a promise darker than any threat. His eyes, once sharp, narrowed with lethal intent.
Lucia raised her gun again, determination replacing frustration. The red emergency lights flickered behind her, painting her face in a shade of crimson that made her look more ghost than woman. Her gaze bored into mine rather than Dante’s. She wanted me to see this. She wanted me to feel the moment she ripped him away.
“Move and she dies first,” Lucia said, her voice a quiet command meant only for Dante. “Stay perfectly still and I might give her a cleaner end.”
Her words carved deep into the air, slicing through what remained of my courage. Dante adjusted his position slightly, trying to shield me completely, but the rubble pinned one of his legs. He couldn’t move without risking bringing the entire structure down.
He knew it.
Lucia knew it.
And so did I.
Her finger curled over the trigger again.
My body tensed in preparation for the inevitable.
But before she could fire, the debris beneath Dante’s left forearm cracked loudly. A slab of concrete began to shift. Dante braced it with both arms, grimacing. His muscles trembled with the effort.
Lucia smiled bitterly. “Look at you. Struggling. Bleeding. Weak.”
Her eyes glittered with triumph.
“You were a god once. Untouchable. And now you crawl through dirt for a girl who doesn’t even know the first truth about you.”
Dante’s voice was rough. “Do not involve her in your madness.”
“Madness?” Lucia let out a soft laugh. “You buried me alive. The only madness is pretending you ever loved me.”
“You destroyed everything I could have loved in you,” Dante replied quietly.
Lucia’s expression broke open at the edges, revealing a pain she was no longer strong enough to hide.
“That is the first honest thing you’ve said in years,” she whispered.
For a moment she stood very still, breathing shallowly, as if caught between her rage and the ghost of a woman she used to be. But then she blinked, and whatever softness had surfaced vanished entirely.
She lifted the gun.
“This ends now.”
Before she could fire, a voice echoed from somewhere above her.
“Boss.”
Lucia spun sharply, her hair whipping across her cheek. A figure stepped through the smoke at the top of the collapsed passageway. It was one of her remaining men. His clothes were torn, his face streaked with blood and dust.
“What?” Lucia snapped.
“There are people outside the compound,” he said, struggling for breath. “They are armed. They are surrounding us.”
“Whose men?” Lucia demanded.
“I do not know. They are not Bianchi. They move differently. Tactical. Clean.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Then she looked down at Dante.
Recognition flashed across her face.
Dante exhaled slowly. “You underestimated me.”
“You did not bring your own soldiers,” Lucia argued, shaking her head. “You would not risk exposing your compound.”
“I did not bring Romano men.”
Something in Dante’s tone made Lucia stiffen.
I reached for his hand instinctively, feeling his pulse racing under my fingertips. A strange realization settled heavy in the air.
He had called for someone else.
Someone who answered only to him.
Lucia’ guard checked the stairwell above nervously. “They are breaching the southwest entrance.”
Lucia’s jaw clenched with fury, her teeth grinding together.
“Hold them off.”
The man hesitated. “They have explosives.”
Lucia’s eyes widened for the first time since the confrontation began.
She fired her gun upward, missing him intentionally but close enough to make him flinch. “Buy me time!”
The guard sprinted away.
Lucia turned back toward us.
She fired again immediately. This time the shot hit stone directly above Dante’s shoulder. Dust exploded around us. Dante shielded my head with his arms as another slab began to slip.
“Lucia!” he roared. “You will bring the entire foundation down!”
“That is exactly the point!” she screamed. “You will not leave this place alive, Dante! Neither will she!”
Her eyes glistened with something deeper than hate. Something twisted by years of betrayal and abandonment. Something that had burned her sanity into ashes.
Lucia steadied her gun, not at Dante this time, but at the narrow space where the concrete held above us. She wanted to drop the slab. She wanted to end it fast.
I opened my mouth to scream, but something moved behind her.
Fast.
Silent.
A figure in dark tactical gear descended the remains of the staircase like a shadow slipping through smoke. No emblem, no markings, no hesitation. His gloved hand locked around Lucia’s wrist. The gun jerked upward. The shot fired harmlessly into the ceiling.
Lucia cried out, twisting violently. She kicked backward. Her heel connected with his knee. He faltered. She nearly slipped from his grip, her fingers clawing across the stone.
But he regained control instantly, twisting her arm until the gun clattered to the floor. Lucia shrieked, fighting like an animal cornered.
Dante’s body went still.
Even pinned under the rubble, even bleeding, even crushed by weight, he recognized the man.
“Rafe,” Dante breathed.
The name felt foreign on his tongue. Heavy. Filled with history I did not understand.
Rafe didn’t look at Dante. His entire focus locked on restraining Lucia as she clawed at him with nails like sharpened glass. Her scream tore through the corridor, echoing like a wounded siren.
“You,” she gasped. “You are supposed to be dead.”
Rafe’s voice was low and unyielding. “You did not bury me deep enough.”
Lucia’s eyes widened with recognition, then pure terror. Her breath stuttered, and she lunged not at Rafe but toward the narrow ledge beside her, as if seeking an exit only she knew.
But the rubble shifted beneath her. The ground cracked. She lost her footing.
Her scream cut through the air as her body slipped from the unstable surface. Rafe grabbed for her, but the debris moved too fast. Lucia fell with the collapsing rubble, tumbling down the broken slope.
Dust exploded upward.
When it settled a fraction, I could barely see her, lying between shattered concrete and twisted steel. Her body was twisted painfully. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, broken breaths.
She was alive. Barely.
Her eyes found Dante through the fog of pain.
“Even now,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You still will not let me go.”
Dante stared at her with something unreadable. Not pity. Not love. Not victory. Something far more complex. Something that made my heart ache.
“You chose your destruction,” he said softly.
Lucia let out a shuddering laugh that turned into a choked gasp. “I chose you. That was the first mistake.”
Her eyes fluttered as she coughed weakly.
“Kill me, Dante,” she murmured. “Or I will keep coming back.”
He reached for his gun.
My breath caught.
He didn’t aim it at her.
He slid it across the rubble toward Rafe.
“You do it.”
Rafe picked up the weapon and approached Lucia. She watched him with a strange, almost peaceful expression.
“So it is you,” she whispered. “It was always going to be you, wasn’t it?”
Rafe didn’t answer.
He raised the gun.
A c***k of thunder shook the building.
The gunshot echoed through the corridor.
Lucia’s body fell still.
Silence swallowed the compound.
Rafe lowered the weapon slowly, exhaling as if releasing the weight of a thousand memories. He looked down at Lucia’s lifeless form without satisfaction or cruelty.
Then he climbed through the rubble toward us.
“Get the stone off him,” Rafe ordered into the small mic at his collar.
Several more figures emerged from the shadows of the collapsed stairwell. They moved with quiet precision, clearing debris with practiced efficiency.
Dante’s jaw tightened as two of them lifted the slab pinning his leg. Pain flashed across his eyes, but he held himself still.
The moment his leg was free, he slid off me, bracing a hand on the floor. His breath shuddered, his body trembling from exhaustion and blood loss.
Rafe crouched beside him. “You look like hell.”
Dante glared weakly. “You always were dramatic.”
A faint, humorless smile tugged at Rafe’s lip. “Alive counts as dramatic now?”
Dante’s gaze sharpened. “You came when I called.”
“You only call when the world is burning,” Rafe said.
“And you only answer when you feel like starting another war.”
Rafe shrugged. “This was a small fire.”
I watched their exchange silently, feeling an invisible shift in the atmosphere. These men shared a history filled with things that did not need to be spoken aloud. Their loyalty was older than betrayal, older than grief, older than whatever had broken between Dante and Lucia.
Rafe finally turned his attention to me.
“You are her,” he said.
I blinked. “Who?”
“The reason he still breathes.”
The intensity in his tone made me swallow. Dante’s eyes flickered toward me, his expression unreadable.
Before I could process anything else, Rafe rose and signaled his men. “Secure the lower tunnels. Sweep for remaining hostiles.”
He helped Dante stand. Dante swayed slightly, gripping Rafe’s shoulder. His pain was clear, but his stare never left mine.
“Stay close,” Dante said quietly.
I moved to him without hesitation.
We started toward the exit Rafe had cleared, weaving through the broken stairwell. Gravel crunched beneath our feet. Smoke drifted thickly in the air. Sirens wailed faintly in the distance.
As we stepped into the faint glow of moonlight filtering through the shattered ceiling, Dante slowed.
He inhaled deeply.
Then he spoke words that made every muscle in my body go still.
“She was right.”
My heart lurched. “About what?”
Dante turned to face me completely, his eyes darker than the night around us.
“There are truths about me you do not know. And now that she is gone, you will have to learn them.”
A cold chill slid across my spine.
“What truths?”
Dante reached out and took my hand, his grip firm but trembling.
Rafe watched the exchange from several feet away, his expression unreadable.
Dante lowered his voice.
“The man you think I am is only the beginning. And the real danger has just started.”
My breath caught.
“Dante… what do you mean?”
He looked toward the shadows at the far end of the tunnel.
His voice was barely a whisper.
“My enemies are coming. Now that Lucia failed, they will not stop.”
I felt my pulse spike.
“And they want you alive.”
A c***k echoed somewhere behind us.
Not debris.
A deliberate step.
Dante dragged me behind him.
Rafe lifted his gun.
From the darkness, a new figure stepped forward.
Someone who was not supposed to exist.
Someone Dante clearly recognized.
His face drained of color.
“Not you,” Dante whispered.
The stranger smiled slowly.
“Oh, but it is me. And I have come to collect what she could not.”
My blood turned cold.
The stranger’s eyes locked onto mine.
“You.”
To be continued…
- Writer
