The rain had stopped by the time they reached the gates.
They loomed like black steel ribs, swallowing the headlights in their sheen. Elena tightened her grip on Mateo who slept against her side, his small head resting on her coat. The car rolled forward, slow and silent as if afraid to wake the house itself.
It wasn't a house though. It was a fortress.
Tall stone walls, dark windows and armed men barely visible in the shadows. The mansion rose out of the fog like something ancient and alive. Elena's stomach twisted as the gates shut behind them with a metallic groan.
There was no going back now.
Dante stepped out first. The driver rushed around to open her door, but it was Dante's hand that appeared instead — large, steady, the kind of hand that could break or protect. She hesitated only a second before taking it, if only because her knees were shaking.
"Welcome to your temporary home," he said voice low.
Elena looked up at him, rain still glistening on his collar. "You call this a home?"
"I call it secure."
She almost laughed. The word felt foreign in her mouth.
Inside the air was warm but heavy, perfumed faintly with leather and something darker, smoke perhaps, or gun oil. The entryway stretched upward, a cathedral of shadow and stone.
A woman appeared, older, elegant, wearing black. "Mr. Moretti." She inclined her head. "I've prepared the west wing."
"Good," Dante said. "See that they have everything they need."
Elena turned sharply. "We're not staying long."
He looked at her then something dangerous flickering in his eyes. "That's not your call."
She swallowed hard, biting back the retort on her tongue. Mateo stirred in her arms and she whispered to him softly until his breathing evened again.
When she looked up Dante was still watching her, not like a threat but like a puzzle he hadn't solved yet.
Dante's POV
He told himself this was logistics. Nothing more.
Keep her alive. Keep the boy safe. Find whoever ordered the hit. End it. But the longer she stood there in the doorway, the harder it was to believe his own excuses.
He'd dealt with witnesses before, scared people who begged, bargained, ran. Elena Marquez wasn't like them. She looked him in the eye when he spoke. She pushed back when he gave orders. There was steel under all that fear and for some reason it made him want to test how much pressure she could take before she broke.
"Upstairs," he said. "You'll stay there until I say otherwise."
She shifted Mateo to her hip and followed reluctantly, her steps echoing on marble floors. He walked behind her, close enough to feel the tension radiating off her.
At the top of the staircase, she turned. "So that's it? We're your prisoners now?"
His mouth curved faintly. "If I wanted you as prisoners, I wouldn't bother giving you bedrooms."
The retort caught in her throat and he almost smiled. Almost.
But when he looked at the boy asleep in her arms, something in him twisted. The kid was small, too small for this world. Dante had grown up in a house like this, surrounded by marble and silence but never warmth. He didn't want that for them.
He'd already decided he wouldn't fail them, though he wasn't sure when that promise had formed.
Elena's POV
The room was beautiful, high ceilings, cream-colored walls, a balcony overlooking the gardens but it didn't feel like hers. It felt like a stage where someone else's life was playing out.
When the housekeeper left, she turned to Dante. "You don't expect me to sleep here like this is normal, do you?"
He stood near the window watching the reflection of the city's faint glow in the distance. "Normal doesn't exist here."
"That's comforting," she muttered.
"You'll get used to it."
"I don't want to get used to it.",
He turned and she felt the weight of his stare, heavy, unrelenting. "You think I do?"
The air between them thickened. His tone wasn't angry this time, it was raw, almost human. For the first time she saw something in his expression that looked like exhaustion, not the kind that came from lack of sleep but the kind that came from years of carrying ghosts.
"Why me?" she asked quietly. "Why go through all this for someone you don't even know?"
He hesitated before answering. "Because I owe you something I can't explain yet."
The words shouldn't have made sense, but they did. Because she felt it too, that invisible thread tying them together since the alley, since the moment he spared her life.
Dante took a step closer. Not fast, not threatening. Just deliberate.
"You're trembling," he said softly.
She shook her head. "I'm not afraid of you."
He tilted his head. "Then what are you afraid of?"
She met his eyes, dark, unreadable, far too close now and felt something inside her chest pull tight.
"Of what happens next," she whispered.
For a second, neither of them breathed.
Then he turned away sharply, like a man stepping back from the edge of a cliff. "Get some rest Elena. Tomorrow we talk about what you saw."
When he left the door clicked shut with quiet finality.
Dante's POV
He didn't sleep that night.
He stood on the balcony outside his own room watching the mist crawl over the gardens. Somewhere in the west wing, he knew she was awake too. He could feel it, that restless energy, that quiet fear.
He'd seen it before in people who had no idea what kind of world they'd stumbled into but this was different. Elena wasn't fragile. She was defiant, unpredictable. And that made her dangerous.
He couldn't afford distractions. Not from her eyes, not from her voice, not from the faint memory of her hand in his earlier.
He told himself it would fade. Everything did, eventually.
But when he closed his eyes, all he saw was her standing in the rain, head high, shaking but unbroken.
And something deep inside him whispered that this woman might be the one thing even he couldn't control.
Elena's POV
Sleep refused to come. Every creak of the mansion sounded like footsteps. Every shadow felt like a pair of eyes.
She rose quietly, walked to the window and opened it just enough to feel the night air. The garden stretched out below symmetrical hedges, still fountains, the faint glow of lanterns.
Somewhere beyond that darkness, men with guns stood guard. Somewhere below the man who had killed someone in front of her slept or didn't.
And yet for the first time since that night, she didn't feel completely alone.
That terrified her more than anything