Blood vow

Chapter 3

Elena woke to sunlight, silk sheets, and the horrible feeling that she'd forgotten how to be afraid.

It had only been one night. She'd lain awake listening for footsteps at the connecting door, for the click of a lock, for any sign that Dante Moretti meant to collect on more than their contract. Nothing came. Somewhere around dawn she'd fallen asleep with the brass key clenched in her fist.

Now she stared at the canopy above her and made herself think clearly.

Three days. Then the wedding. Then three hundred and sixty-two more.

She got up.

The dress fitting happened in the sitting room, with three women who spoke very little and pinned a great deal. A designer with silver hair and sharp elbows circled Elena like a hawk.

"He chose the silhouette himself," the designer said around a mouthful of pins. "Very specific. No lace. No ruffles. He said you'd hate them."

Elena blinked. "He said that?"

"He said, and I quote, 'She'll want something she can move in.'"

She looked down at the ivory column of silk taking shape on her body. It was simple and clean, with sleeves to the wrist and a neckline that sat high on her collarbone. It was exactly what she'd have picked for herself, if she'd ever been allowed to dream of a wedding.

It unsettled her. A man who studied what she'd hate was a man who paid attention. And attention, in his world, was never harmless.

"Where is he?" she asked.

The designer's hands paused. "Mr. Moretti is working."

"Where?"

"Miss," said Rosa gently from the doorway, "the east wing is not somewhere you go."

Which, of course, was the first thing Elena decided to do.

She waited until the fitting ended and the house settled into its afternoon hush. Her escort, a lean young man named Enzo who looked barely older than her, trailed her through the gardens, bored and chewing gum. When she paused to admire a rosebush, he checked his phone. When she turned a corner, she slipped through a side door and shut it behind her before he looked up.

It was unkind, and she knew it. She told herself she'd apologize later.

The east wing was cooler than the rest of the house. A long corridor ran between dark wooden doors, and at the far end she heard voices, low and male. She crept closer, heart thudding, until she could see through a gap in a half-open door.

It was a study, all leather and shadow. Dante stood by the window with his back to her. Three men faced him, and one of them was on his knees.

Elena stopped breathing.

The kneeling man was middle-aged, soft around the middle, with sweat running down his temples. His hands were pressed together as if in prayer.

"Please, Dante," he said. "Please. I have a daughter."

"I know," Dante said. He didn't turn. "I've met her. She's seven. She likes horses."

The man made a small, broken sound.

"You sold the Calabrese shipment to the Rossis," Dante went on, in the same soft, even voice. "Eleven days ago. Forty thousand dollars. Do you deny it?"

"I had no choice. They threatened..."

"Do you deny it?"

A long pause. "No."

"Thank you." Dante finally turned. His face was a mask, empty and polished, nothing like the man who had given her a pen and said read before you sign. "That's the first honest thing you've said in a year."

He nodded once at the man beside the kneeling figure. A gun appeared in that man's hand, a black shape against the light.

Elena's hand flew to her mouth. A tiny sound slipped out anyway, no louder than a breath.

Dante's head snapped toward the door.

For a moment their eyes met across the dim room, and she saw something she would never forget. It wasn't anger. It wasn't even surprise. It was something closer to dread, there and gone so fast she might have imagined it.

Then his expression shuttered, and he looked back at his men.

"Not now," he said. "Take him downstairs. We'll finish it there."

She ran.

She made it to the garden before her knees gave out. She sat on a stone bench behind a hedge, shaking, her breath coming in short, ugly gasps. The roses smelled sweet and rotten.

He's a killer. You knew that. You signed a contract with a killer.

Knowing wasn't the same as seeing. She had imagined violence the way people imagined war, as something that happened somewhere else, to someone else. She hadn't imagined a man on his knees, begging, and her husband-to-be deciding his life in a voice as calm as a weather report.

"Elena."

She didn't look up. She didn't need to.

Dante stood on the path, still in his white shirt, his sleeves rolled and his hands clean. She didn't want to think about why they were clean. Enzo hovered behind him, pale and sick-looking.

"Leave us," Dante said. Enzo fled.

Silence stretched. A bee droned somewhere in the hedge.

"You weren't supposed to see that," he said at last.

"Oh, I'm so sorry my timing was inconvenient." Her voice shook, but she forced it out. "Did you kill him?"

"Not yet."

"Are you going to?"

"Yes."

The word sat between them, heavy and unadorned. She had expected him to lie. Every instinct told her to run, but the contract's fourteenth clause rang in her head: you don't lie to me. He had agreed. And he was keeping his word, even now, even when the truth was an ugly thing.

"He has a daughter," she whispered.

"I know." Something moved in his jaw. "He sold information to the Rossis. Because of him, two of my men were ambushed last week. One of them is dead. His wife is eight months pregnant."

She flinched.

"In my world, Elena, mercy is a debt that someone else pays." He said it flatly, as though reciting a creed he had long stopped questioning. "If I spare him, the next man learns that betraying me is survivable. Then there are ten more men, then twenty, and eventually the Rossis walk through my front door and your brother's debt is the least of your problems."

"That doesn't make it right."

"No." He looked at her for a long moment. "It doesn't."

She hadn't expected that either. She had expected defiance, or contempt, or an argument. Not agreement.

"If you want to leave," he said quietly, "I won't stop you. I'll find another way to settle Marco's debt. It will be uglier, and it won't be kind to him, but I will not hold you to a bargain you can't stomach."

Elena stared at him. It was a lie, it had to be. A trap, a test. Nobody gave away a leash like that.

But he stood there, perfectly still, waiting, and she understood that he meant it. He would let her walk, and he would pay for it in blood, and he'd do it without complaint.

That scared her more than the gun had.

"You'd really let me go," she said.

"If that's what you want."

"And Marco?"

"Marco would not enjoy the alternative."

There it was, the cold edge under the honesty. She nearly laughed. Of course. Even his generosity came with teeth.

She looked down at the ring on her finger. The diamond caught the afternoon light and threw it back at her, bright and merciless.

"I'm not leaving," she said.

"Then you should know what you're marrying." His eyes held hers, dark and unreadable. "I am not a good man, Elena. I won't pretend to be one for you. But I won't lie to you either, and I won't let anyone else touch what's mine."

What's mine. The words sent a shiver down her spine, and not entirely from fear. That was the horrifying part. Not entirely from fear.

"I'm not yours," she said.

"Not yet," Dante said softly.

And before she could answer, he turned and walked back toward the house, leaving her alone among the roses with her pulse hammering and the unwelcome, treacherous warmth of his last word curling in her chest.

That night she locked the connecting door.

Then she stood a long time with her palm flat against the wood, listening to the quiet on the other side, and wondered how a man could be so many things at once.

The monster in the study.

The man who remembered she hated lace.

On the other side of the door, floorboards creaked. Someone paced, back and forth, back and forth, a restless rhythm that went on past midnight.

He wasn't sleeping either.