The devil's vow

Chapter 5

It started, as most of their arguments did, with Elena telling him something he didn't want to hear.

"Your uncle," she said, standing in the doorway of his study with her arms crossed, the words she'd been turning over for days finally spilling out before she'd fully decided to say them. "Russo. I don't trust him, Dante."

Dante didn't look up from the report in his hands, his jaw tightening in a way that told her he'd heard this coming and had already decided not to like it.

"You've said that."

"I'm saying it again because you haven't actually listened. Every time something goes wrong, the shipment, the tension with my family, all of it, he's the calmest person in the room. That's not confidence, Dante. That's a man who already knows the answer before anyone asks the question."

"He raised me." Dante finally looked up, something sharp and defensive in his eyes that she hadn't seen directed at her before. "He stood beside my father for twenty years. He's the only reason this family survived the transition after my father died. And you've known him for what, three weeks? Based on a feeling?"

"Based on watching people my entire life, which is apparently the one skill you don't seem to think is worth anything."

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant." Her voice rose, frustration boiling over from weeks of careful restraint. "I gave up trying to convince you because I thought you'd eventually see it yourself. I'm done waiting for that."

"Elena..."

"I need air," she snapped, already turning for the door. "I'll be back."

"Elena, it's late. Take Marco with you, at least..."

"I don't need a babysitter, Dante. I need five minutes away from this house."

She was already moving, too angry to hear the genuine concern underneath his voice and too frustrated to notice the way his expression shifted from irritation to something closer to alarm as she disappeared down the hallway alone.

The estate's private garden was quiet at that hour, moonlit and still, and Elena walked its far edge alone, furious with him and even more furious with herself for how much his dismissal had stung. She was halfway to the garden's old stone gate when she heard the first sound.

Footsteps.

Too deliberate to be staff. Too close to be a coincidence.

She turned too late.

There were two of them, dressed plainly, moving with the kind of trained efficiency that told her immediately this wasn't a random threat. A hand clamped over her mouth before she could scream, and an arm locked around her waist, dragging her back toward the gate as she fought. She twisted hard enough to break one man's grip for half a second before the other's hand closed around her wrist, wrenching it painfully behind her back.

She managed one strangled scream before the hand returned to her mouth. Somewhere behind her, blessedly, impossibly, she heard shouting. Marco's voice. Others. Security was closing in fast from the house, drawn by the disturbance or perhaps by a silent alarm she hadn't even known existed.

The men released her abruptly, one shoving her hard to the ground as they turned to flee. Elena hit the stone path with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs, pain flaring bright and sharp through her wrist and the side of her face. Then everything blurred into shouting, running footsteps, and Marco's voice, close now and urgent, asking if she could hear him.

She woke properly in a hospital room, fluorescent light too bright overhead, her wrist wrapped and aching, a shallow cut above her eyebrow stinging faintly with antiseptic.

Dante was in the chair beside her bed. He had clearly been there for some time, his jacket discarded and his sleeves rolled up. His expression was one she'd never seen from him before: raw, unguarded fear, still visibly working its way toward something calmer.

"You're awake," he said, his voice rough as he leaned forward immediately. "How do you feel?"

"Like I got thrown into a stone path." She tried for humor and mostly failed, her voice thinner than she wanted it to be. "I'm fine. Sprained wrist, a few bruises. The doctor said I was lucky."

"Lucky."

He said the word like it physically hurt him.

"Elena, if Marco hadn't reached you when he did..."

"I know." She looked away, old anger and fresh fear tangling together uncomfortably in her chest. "I know, Dante. You don't have to say it."

"I do have to say it, actually, because I told you to take him with you and you walked out anyway, furious with me, and it very nearly..." He stopped himself, jaw tight, visibly fighting to keep his voice steady. "I can't lose you over an argument about my uncle. I can't lose you at all."

Something in the admission should have softened her. Instead, exhausted and shaken and still faintly humiliated by how helpless she'd felt in that garden, she felt something closer to numbness settle over her instead.

"I need to rest," she said quietly, turning her face toward the window instead of him. "Please."

He hesitated, clearly wanting to say more, and then, to his credit, didn't push.

"Okay," he said softly. "I'll be right outside."

He wasn't lying.

He stayed in that hospital corridor the entire night, and for the three days that followed, at the estate, he tried. There were quiet knocks on her door, meals left outside when she didn't come down, and careful, patient attempts at conversation she wasn't ready to have.

Elena found herself avoiding him anyway, not entirely sure whether she was angrier at him, at herself, or simply at how frightened she'd been, and how much, despite everything, some stubborn part of her had wanted him in that hospital room instead of anywhere else.

She just wasn't ready to admit that yet, even to herself.