The Doorbell Tolls
"Ten minutes." The words felt like a death sentence. Dante dropped the phone, and for a split second, the "Beast" looked paralyzed. He looked at the rumpled sheets, the discarded emerald dress on the floor, and the faint, red marks his teeth had left on my collarbone. "Elena, move! Now!" he barked, his voice snapping with a cold, survivalist edge. I scrambled out of bed, my legs feeling like jelly from the staggering length of our weekend. I grabbed a stray shirt of his—a crisp white button-down—and threw it on, the fabric smelling of him, a constant reminder of the sin I was trying to hide. Dante was a whirlwind of frantic motion. He kicked the shattered glass under the sofa, threw the silk sheets into the laundry chute, and sprayed a heavy dose of cologne to mask the thick, musky sce
- Writer
