The devil's vow

Chapter 14

Marco set up the estate's private range the next morning, tucked into a converted section of the old carriage house, well away from the main residence and any prying eyes. Elena arrived in practical clothes, her hair pulled back, with an ease in her posture that told him immediately this wasn't her first time in a room like this.

"Your father really did train you," Marco said, mild surprise coloring his voice as she checked the weapon he handed her with practiced, unhurried efficiency.

"He trained all of us. My brothers too, when I was younger, before either of them decided the family business wasn't for them either." She loaded the magazine with steady hands. "I was the only one who actually listened, ironically, despite spending the last several years trying to forget everything he taught me."

"Well." Marco gestured toward the target downrange. "Let's see how much you actually remember."

She remembered more than either of them expected. Her first several shots landed cleanly, forming tight groupings that made Marco's eyebrows rise with visible respect. Her old muscle memory was apparently intact despite years of deliberate disuse.

"Not bad," he said, understating it considerably.

"Not bad," she agreed, lowering the weapon as a grim satisfaction settled over her features. "It's strange. I spent so long trying to be someone who didn't know how to do this. Now I'm almost grateful my father never let me forget."

"Things change," Marco said simply. "People do what they need to do to protect what matters."

Dante found them there an hour later, leaning against the doorway and watching Elena work through a drill with quiet, focused concentration. Something unmistakably proud moved across his expression as he observed her from a distance.

"How's she doing?" he asked Marco quietly, though his eyes never left Elena.

"Better than most of the men I've trained," Marco admitted. "She's not just capable, sir. She's genuinely good."

Dante watched for a moment longer before Elena noticed him. She lowered the weapon, a faint smile crossing her face despite the seriousness of the exercise.

"Come to check up on me?"

"Come to admire you, actually." He crossed the range toward her, unbothered by Marco's presence. "Marco tells me you're better than most of his trainees."

"Marco's being generous." Something in her posture straightened with quiet pride anyway. "I'm out of practice. It's coming back faster than I expected, though."

"I believe it." Dante studied her for a long moment, something softer moving beneath the pride in his expression. "How are you feeling? Really. Not the range. The rest of it."

She considered the question honestly, resting a hand briefly over her still flat stomach.

"Tired some mornings. Terrified if I let myself think too long about everything ahead of us. But mostly..."

She paused, searching for the right word.

"Mostly I feel more certain than I've felt about anything in years. About you. About this baby. About what I'm willing to do to protect both."

Something in Dante's expression cracked open at that, unguarded and entirely in love.

"I don't deserve you, you know."

"Probably not," she said, teasing, though her voice carried real warmth beneath it. "But you have me anyway. So you'd better keep up."

He laughed, a real, unguarded sound, rare enough from him that Marco glanced over with quiet amusement of his own. Dante pulled her close, careful of the weapon still in her hand, and rested his forehead against hers the way he had in the garden weeks ago, before any of this had become quite so complicated.

That evening, after Marco had gone and the estate had settled into its usual quiet, Elena found herself in the nursery, technically still a guest room, though she'd started, almost without meaning to, picturing it differently over the last few days.

Dante joined her there, watching her trace a hand along the empty walls, something thoughtful and quiet in her expression.

"Thinking about colors?" he asked, leaning against the doorway.

"Thinking about whether this room will still feel safe by the time the baby actually needs it." She turned to face him, some of the earlier certainty from the range giving way to quieter vulnerability. "I want to bring a child into a world that isn't defined by what Russo built. I don't want them growing up the way I did, surrounded by threats and taught to calculate every room they walk into."

"They won't," Dante said, crossing the room to stand beside her and taking her hand. "I promise you that. Whatever it takes to finish this, Salazar or whoever else comes after him, I'm not raising our child in a house that isn't safe. I'm ending this before they're old enough to understand any of it happened."

"You can't promise that entirely. Not yet."

"No," he admitted. "But I can promise I'll spend every day trying to make it true."

He rested a hand gently over hers, still resting against her stomach.

"This child is going to grow up knowing their parents chose each other freely in the end. Not because two families demanded it. Because we actually wanted this. We wanted each other. We wanted this whole complicated, terrifying, wonderful life we're building together."

Elena leaned into him, some of the day's fierce resolve softening into simple, quiet gratitude.

"I like that version of the future," she murmured. "Let's build that one."

"We will," Dante said, holding her close in the quiet, half imagined nursery. For one brief evening, both of them allowed themselves to believe completely in the safety they were fighting so hard to build.