CHAPTER 2
967 Words
The night was too quiet.
Alina stood at the kitchen sink, her hands wet, the glass she was washing forgotten between her fingers. The message still sat on her phone. The words were simple. Clean. Cruel.
“You can run, little dove. But you’ll always be mine.”
She didn’t recognize the number. But something deep in her chest said she didn’t need to. That voice, the way it felt like fingers curling around her ribs, it belonged to someone she hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
She had spent three years building this life.
A new name. A modest job. A rented apartment that smelled like old rain and lavender oil. She never let anyone in. She never looked back. Until now.
She dropped the glass.
It shattered in the sink, water splashing up her wrist. She didn’t flinch. Her eyes were fixed on the black screen of her phone. One message. No reply. No name.
She knew better than to ask who.
...
Across the city, beneath the velvet hush of midnight, a man lit a cigarette with gloved fingers.
He leaned against the hood of a black car, smoke trailing like whispers from his lips. Around him, the city stretched like prey, sleeping, unaware.
Dante Moretti didn’t chase.
He hunted.
He stared out over the skyline like he owned it. Like he built it. His dark eyes caught the moonlight, but his expression was unreadable, carved from shadow and silence.
“She read the message,” Luca said beside him, phone still glowing in his palm.
Dante didn’t look away from the horizon. “And?”
“She dropped a glass. She’s nervous.”
“Good.”
He didn’t ask how Luca knew. His men were everywhere. Security cameras. Burner phones. Whispers in hallways. The world had eyes, and most of them worked for him.
“Should we move in?”
Dante finally turned, the corners of his mouth tugging into a smile that wasn’t warm at all.
“Not yet,” he said, flicking ash to the ground. “Let her breathe. Let her wonder if it’s really me. Fear is foreplay.”
...
Alina locked every door.
She paced her bedroom like the floor might collapse if she stood still. Her heart was racing in a way it hadn’t in years, not since the fire. Not since the blood. Not since the man with the slow smile and the voice like sin had whispered, “I’ll find you when you forget how to hide.”
She had tried. God, she had tried to forget.
But how do you forget a man like Dante Moretti?
She went to the window and pulled the curtains shut.
Too late.
Across the street, a car idled in the dark. Black. Tinted. No headlights. No plates. It hadn’t been there an hour ago. She would have noticed.
She turned off the lights.
The silence in her apartment was heavy now, breathing with her. The shadows shifted like they were watching. She moved backward, toward the bedroom, trying to be quiet, trying not to let her mind spiral..
And then her phone buzzed again.
This time, it wasn’t a message. It was a photo.
Her building. Her window.
Taken from across the street.
She felt it like a punch to the stomach.
...
Dante sat back in the leather seat, watching her light go off.
“She knows,” Luca said.
“Of course she does.”
“She’ll run again.”
“No,” Dante said, his voice low. “Not this time. This time, she’ll wait for me. Because the only thing more dangerous than fear... is hope.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, the cigarette dead between his fingers.
“She wants to believe I won’t touch her,” he said. “She wants to believe I’m not the same man I was three years ago.”
“And are you?”
Dante smiled again, darker this time. “No. I’m worse.”
...
Alina didn’t sleep.
She sat on the edge of the bed, holding a knife she found in the kitchen drawer. As if that could stop him. As if a blade could make a difference when the devil himself came knocking.
She had heard the stories.
Of what Dante had become since she disappeared.
The cartel war. The bloodbath in Rio. The underground auctions. The man who walked through fire with a girl’s name on his tongue.
Her name.
Some said he loved her.
Some said he wanted her dead.
She wasn’t sure which scared her more.
...
Somewhere in the city, in a private underground room laced with gold and velvet, Dante stood before a table of men who owed him everything.
“She’s in,” he said simply. “It’s begun.”
“What if she escapes?”
Dante poured himself a glass of scotch. “She won’t. She’s already tangled in me again. Whether she admits it or not.”
He raised the glass. “To Alina.”
“To the queen who ran,” someone muttered.
Dante drank. “And to the king who never stopped chasing her.”
...
Back in her apartment, Alina stood barefoot in the hallway. She walked to the front door with slow, hesitant steps.
She knew what was coming.
She could feel it in her bones.
The way the air grew colder. The way her skin itched like eyes were crawling over it.
She pressed her palm to the door, her heart loud in her ears.
And then, three knocks.
Not loud.
Not rushed.
Just… certain.
Like he already knew she was there. Like he already knew she wouldn’t run.
She stepped back, breath trembling.
He was here.
And the game had finally begun.
- Writer
