Dante did not sleep that night.
He sat in the chair by the window with his gun on the table beside him and his eyes fixed on the street below. The black car that had been sitting outside his building for the past hour was gone now, but he did not trust the silence. Silence in his line of work was usually a trap.
Who was watching? he asked himself as the first light of dawn began to creep through the curtains. Don Vitale? The cops? Someone else?
He did not have answers, and that bothered him more than he wanted to admit. Dante liked control. He liked knowing exactly what was happening and exactly what was going to happen next. But tonight had thrown everything off balance.
A girl named Sloane was sleeping in his bed, and he did not know why he had brought her here.
He heard movement from the bedroom, soft footsteps on the wooden floor, and then the creak of the door opening. Sloane appeared in the hallway, still wearing his jacket over her torn clothes. Her hair was messy and her face was pale, but the cut above her eyebrow looked better than it had last night. Less red. Less swollen.
She stopped when she saw him sitting by the window, and for a moment, neither of them spoke.
"You didn't sleep," she said. It was not a question.
"No," Dante replied, his voice rough from hours of silence. "Neither did you."
"I slept a little." Sloane walked into the kitchen, her bare feet making soft sounds on the cold floor. She opened the refrigerator and stared inside like she was looking for something but did not know what. "You don't have much food."
"I don't eat here often."
"Where do you eat?"
"Restaurants. Takeout. Places where no one knows my name."
Sloane closed the refrigerator and turned to look at him. There was something different about her this morning. The emptiness in her eyes was still there, but it was buried deeper now, hidden behind a layer of curiosity.
"Why do you live like that?" she asked. "No pictures. No food. No neighbors who know your name. It's like you're not even real."
Dante stood up from the chair and walked to the kitchen, stopping on the other side of the small table. He was close enough to see the bruises on her arms again, and he noticed that she had stopped trying to hide them.
"Because I'm not real," he said quietly. "Not to the people in this city. I'm a ghost. I come and go and no one remembers me. That's how I survive."
And now you're here, he thought, looking at her. And I let you in. And I don't know what that means.
Sloane nodded slowly, like she understood something he had not said out loud. "My stepfather used to say that I was invisible. That no one would notice if I disappeared. He said it to hurt me, but after a while, I started to believe it."
Dante felt that tightening in his chest again, the one he had felt last night when he first saw her bruises. Why does she keep telling me these things? he asked himself. Why does she trust me?
"Your stepfather," Dante said carefully. "What's his name?"
"Marcus. Marcus Webb."
"Does he know where you are?"
Sloane shook her head. "I left the house yesterday morning. I told my mother I was going to the library. I never made it there." She paused, and her hands started shaking again. "The man in the alley... he grabbed me near the train station. I don't think Marcus knows what happened. I don't think he cares."
Good, Dante thought, and he was surprised by how much he meant it. Let him wonder. Let him worry. Maybe he'll think she finally ran away for good.
"You can't go back there," he said, and his voice came out harder than he intended.
Sloane looked up at him, her hazel eyes wide. "I don't have anywhere else to go."
"You have here. For now."
What are you saying? a voice in his head screamed. You can't keep her here. This isn't a shelter. This isn't a safe house. This is your home, and you don't let anyone in.
But another voice, quieter but more insistent, said something else. She needs help. No one else is going to help her. You know what that feels like. You know.
Sloane stared at him for a long moment, and he could see the tears forming in her eyes again. But she did not cry. She just blinked them away and nodded.
"Okay," she whispered. "For now."
Dante turned away from her and walked to the small closet by the front door. He pulled out a clean shirt and a pair of sweatpants, both black, both too big for her. He handed them to her without meeting her eyes.
"Change into these," he said. "Your clothes are ruined. I'll wash them later."
Sloane took the clothes from his hands, and her fingers brushed against his for just a second. The touch was light, barely there, but Dante felt it like a shock to his system.
What was that? he asked himself as she walked back to the bedroom to change. Why did that feel like something?
He stood in the kitchen with his hands on the counter, staring at the wall, trying to make sense of what was happening to him. He had spent fifteen years building walls around his heart. Walls made of blood and violence and silence. Walls that no one had ever been able to break.
But this girl, this broken girl with empty eyes and bruises on her arms, had walked right through them like they were not even there.
She's dangerous, he thought. Not to my body. To my heart. And that's worse.
Sloane came back a few minutes later, drowning in his clothes. The sweatpants were rolled up at the waist, and the shirt fell past her hips. She looked small and young and fragile, and Dante felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to protect her.
No, he told himself firmly. You don't protect people. You kill people. That's your job. That's your life. Don't forget that.
"Thank you," Sloane said, pulling the sleeves over her hands. "For the clothes. For letting me stay."
"Don't thank me yet," Dante replied, his voice cold again. "You don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. We're both in the dark here."
Sloane walked to the window and looked out at the street. The sun was up now, painting the buildings in shades of gold and orange. It should have been beautiful, but to Dante, it just looked like another day in a city that never stopped trying to kill him.
"Who are you?" Sloane asked quietly, her back still turned to him. "Really. Not the fake name you gave me. Not the story you tell yourself. Who are you?"
Dante hesitated. He had never told anyone the truth about himself. Not all of it. Not the parts that mattered.
"My name is Dante Marchetti," he said slowly. "I work for a man named Don Vitale. He runs the Italian mafia in this city. I'm his soldier. His weapon. His cleaner."
Sloane turned to look at him, and her face was pale but calm. "You kill people for him."
"Yes."
"How many?"
"I stopped counting at fifty."
She flinched. Just a little. Just enough for him to notice. There it is, he thought. There's the fear. I wondered when it would come.
But instead of running away or screaming or calling him a monster, Sloane just nodded. "Fifty people," she repeated, like she was trying to understand what that number meant. "And you don't feel anything?"
"I feel everything," Dante said, and his voice cracked on the last word. "That's the problem. I feel everything, and I hate it, and I can't make it stop."
The silence between them was heavy and thick, filled with things neither of them knew how to say.
Then Sloane walked toward him, stopping just a few feet away. She looked up at his face, and he could see her studying him. The scars. The dark circles under his eyes. The gun on the table.
"You're not a monster," she said softly.
"How do you know?"
"Because monsters don't save girls in alleys. Monsters don't give them their jackets and their beds and their clothes." She reached out and touched his hand, her fingers light against his skin. "Monsters don't feel everything."
Dante looked down at her hand on his, and something inside him broke. Just a little. Just enough for him to feel it.
What are you doing to me? he wanted to ask. Why do you make me feel like I'm not already dead?
But he did not say any of that. He just stood there in his kitchen with a girl he barely knew, and for the first time in fifteen years, he did not feel alone.
A phone rang, cutting through the silence like a knife.
Dante pulled his hand away from Sloane's and walked to the table. The phone was not his. It was hers, the one he had taken from her pocket last night while she slept.
He held it out to her. "It's your mother."
Sloane's face went white. She took the phone with shaking hands and looked at the screen. The name on the display read "Mom," and underneath it, a picture of a woman with kind eyes and a sad smile.
"I have to answer," Sloane whispered.
"Then answer."
She pressed the button and raised the phone to her ear. "Hello?"
Dante could not hear what the woman on the other end was saying, but he could see Sloane's face change. Her eyes filled with tears, and her hands started shaking harder.
"I'm fine, Mom," she said, her voice barely steady. "I'm with a friend. No, you don't know him. I'll be home later."
There was a pause, and then Sloane's face went even paler.
"He knows," she whispered, looking at Dante with wide, frightened eyes. "Marcus knows I didn't go to the library. He's looking for me."
Dante took the phone from her hand and ended the call. He set it on the table and looked at Sloane, his mind racing.
If Marcus is looking for her, he'll find her eventually. And when he does, he'll hurt her again. Worse than before.
But there was another problem, a bigger problem, and Dante knew it even before Sloane said the words.
"Marcus knows people," Sloane said, her voice shaking. "Bad people. He used to work for someone. He has connections."
"What kind of connections?"
Sloane looked at him with tears streaming down her cheeks. "The same kind of connections you have."
Dante felt the floor drop out from under him.
Her stepfather is connected to the mafia, he thought. And if he finds out she's with me...
He did not finish the thought. He did not need to.
The danger had just multiplied.
And Dante had no idea how to protect her from it.