THE DON’S CAPTIVE

15

Chapter 15

I woke to an empty bed and raised voices below.

Not loud. Dante’s house did not do loud. But voices at this hour, past midnight, carrying up through two floors of stone and wood and expensive silence, meant something was wrong enough that the controlled quiet had fractured.

I was at the door before I was fully awake.

The hallway was lit low, two of the night security stationed at the staircase landing, both of them looking down with the focused stillness of men waiting for an instruction. I crossed to the railing and looked over.

Dante was in the entrance hall.

And standing six feet from him, coated in road dust and something that looked like dried blood on her left sleeve, was a woman I had never seen before.

She was maybe forty, dark haired, angular, with a face that had been striking once and was still arresting now. She stood with her arms at her sides and her chin up and looked at Dante like she had been rehearsing this moment for a long time and was not going to waste it by flinching.

Dante’s back was to me. I could not see his face.

I could see his hands.

Both of them were completely still at his sides. Not the controlled stillness of management. The absolute stillness of a man who has received a shock so complete his body has not yet decided how to process it.

Rafael was there too, two steps behind Dante, and his expression was the thing that sent cold water down my spine. Rafael, who was steady in every circumstance I had witnessed, looked like he had seen something he could not categorize.

I came down the stairs.

Nobody stopped me. The two men at the landing stepped aside and I descended slowly and came to stand at the edge of the entrance hall and the woman’s eyes found me immediately, sharp and direct and running a fast assessment that reminded me, uncomfortably, of Dante himself.

“This is her,” the woman said. Not a question.

Dante turned.

His face was something I had never seen before. Not cold, not warm, not the careful management mask or the unguarded thing that appeared sometimes in the dark. Something older than all of those. Something that had been buried so long it had almost become geological.

“Go back upstairs,” he said to me. His voice was entirely even.

“No,” I said.

His jaw tightened.

“Who is she,” I said.

The woman answered before he could.

“My name is Cora Vane,” she said. “I worked with Dante’s father for eleven years.” She paused. “I also knew Sofia.”

The name landed in the room like a stone into still water.

Every person in the entrance hall felt it. Rafael closed his eyes briefly. Dante went more still than I had believed a living person could be.

“I have been looking for a way back into this house for three years,” Cora continued, addressing me directly now, like she had decided I was the more useful audience. “Your arrival gave me one. The noise around you, the activity, the fact that Voss started moving. It opened a channel that has been closed since Dante locked me out.”

“Why did he lock you out,” I said.

“Aria.” Dante’s voice.

“Because I knew what was on that drive,” Cora said. “And because knowing it made me dangerous to the people who wanted it buried. Including people close to this family.” She looked at Dante’s back. “Including the man who actually arranged Sofia’s death.”

The entrance hall went absolutely silent.

I watched Dante from the side. Watched the muscles in his jaw work once. Watched his hands, still at his sides, close slowly into fists and then release.

“That is not a conversation for this hall,” he said. His voice was controlled and terrible. “Rafael. Take her to the east study. Do not leave her alone.”

“Dante.” Cora’s voice was firm. “I did not come here to be managed. I came here because Voss is going to move in the next forty eight hours and what is on that drive is the only thing that stops him. You need me.”

“I do not need anyone,” he said.

“You need me,” she repeated. “Because I know where the drive is. And because the man who had Sofia killed is the same man Voss works for. And because I have spent three years building the evidence to prove both of those things.” She paused. “And because Sofia would want you to finish it.”

Dante turned and walked out of the entrance hall.

I stood in the entrance with Cora and Rafael and listened to his footsteps recede and a door close and then nothing.

Rafael looked at me.

I looked at Cora.

“Are you hurt,” I said, nodding at her sleeve.

She glanced down. “Not badly. Road incident. I drove here directly.” She studied me with those quick assessing eyes. “He talks about you.”

I blinked. “Excuse me.”

“I have a source inside this house. Minor staff, loyal to me from the old days. She has mentioned you several times in the past weeks.” Cora’s expression was neutral but not unkind. “She said he smiles sometimes now. She said the house is different.” She paused. “She has known him for nine years and she has never used that word before.”

I pressed my lips together.

“He needs time,” I said. “With what you told him.”

“I know,” she said. “I have been waiting three years. I can wait another hour.”

I found him in Sofia’s room.

Of course I did.

He was standing at the window, not looking at the drawing, just looking out at the dark garden below, and when I came in he did not tell me to leave.

I crossed the room and stood beside him and did not speak.

After a long time he said, “I always believed it was random. A message. The way these things sometimes are.” His voice was very quiet. “Terrible and random and therefore something that could not have been prevented. Something I could build around and contain and never have to look at directly.”

“And now,” I said.

“Now it was not random.” He stopped. “It was chosen. She was chosen. By someone I may have trusted.”

I reached out and took his hand.

He looked down at our joined hands. Then he turned and looked at me and the thing in his face was grief stripped of every layer of management it had been buried under for ten years. Raw and present and real.

I put my free hand against his jaw and he closed his eyes and leaned into it the way someone leans into the first warmth after a long cold.

I kissed him softly. Not with urgency. With the specific tenderness of someone saying I am here and I am not leaving and you do not have to carry this alone anymore.

He kissed me back and it deepened slowly, both of us moving closer, and he pulled me in with his hands at my waist and I went without hesitation.

He walked me back toward the chair and I pulled him down with me and he settled over me and looked at me in the low light with all of it still naked in his eyes, the grief and the warmth and the need, all of it together and none of it hidden.

“Stay,” he said quietly.

“I am not going anywhere,” I said.

What followed was slow and consuming and laced through with everything the night had broken open. He held me like something he had decided was worth every cost. I gave him everything I had without calculating the risk because somewhere between the alley and this room the calculation had stopped and something simpler had replaced it.

When it was over he pulled me against his chest and his breathing slowed and his hand moved in my hair and the grief had not gone but it was no longer alone.

We lay in the dark in Sofia’s room and I listened to his heartbeat and thought about Cora downstairs and the drive and Voss moving in forty eight hours and the man who had chosen Sofia and the enormous machinery of consequence grinding toward us.

And then Dante said, against my hair, very quietly, “I love you.”

Not wrecked. Not desperate.

Certain.

Like a man who had been afraid of something for a long time and had finally decided the fear was less important than the truth.

I pressed my hand flat against his chest.

“I know,” I said. “I love you too.”

His arm tightened.

We did not speak again.

We did not need to.

But in the east study two floors below us, Cora Vane was sitting with Rafael, and on the table in front of her was a folder.

And inside the folder was a name.

A name that was going to walk through the front door of this house in less than twelve hours.

A name that Dante trusted completely.

A name that was going to change everything for the last time.