The motel room felt smaller in the dark.
Dante sat on the edge of his bed with his back against the headboard, his gun on the nightstand beside him and his eyes fixed on the door. He had not slept in almost two days now, and his body was starting to feel it. His eyes burned. His muscles ached. His mind felt foggy around the edges, like a photograph that had been left out in the rain.
But he could not sleep. Not here. Not now.
Every shadow looks like a threat, he thought as his gaze swept across the room. Every sound sounds like footsteps.
Sloane was asleep in the other bed, her body curled into a small ball beneath the thin blanket. Her face was relaxed in a way it never was when she was awake, the tension gone from her jaw and the worry erased from her forehead. She looked younger like this. Softer. Like the girl she might have been before the world broke her.
Dante watched her breathe for a long time, her chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. He had never watched anyone sleep before. Not like this. Not with something that felt dangerously close to tenderness.
What are you doing to me? he asked himself, though he already knew the answer.
She was making him feel again. And feeling was dangerous.
The clock on the nightstand read 3:47 AM. Outside, the world was dark and quiet, the kind of quiet that felt heavy and thick like a blanket. Dante had spent most of his life in this kind of quiet. The quiet before a kill. The quiet after a kill. The quiet of an empty apartment at three in the morning when there was no one to talk to and nothing to do but think.
But this quiet was different. This quiet had Sloane in it.
He heard her stir, a soft sound somewhere between a sigh and a whimper. Her face twisted in her sleep, her brow furrowing like she was having a bad dream.
She's seeing him again, Dante thought. The man in the alley. Or Marcus. Or both.
He wanted to wake her. He wanted to reach across the space between their beds and touch her shoulder and tell her that she was safe. But he did not know if he had the right. He did not know if his touch would comfort her or scare her.
So he just watched. And waited.
Sloane's eyes flew open.
She sat up fast, her breath coming in short gasps, her hands clutching the blanket like a lifeline. Her eyes were wide and wild, darting around the room like she did not know where she was.
"Hey," Dante said softly, keeping his voice low and calm. "You're okay. You're safe."
Sloane turned to look at him, and for a moment, there was nothing in her eyes but fear. Then recognition flickered across her face, and her shoulders sagged with relief.
"Dante," she whispered.
"I'm here."
She looked around the room, at the thin curtains and the flickering light and the second bed where Dante sat. "Where are we?"
"The motel. Remember? We drove here last night."
Sloane nodded slowly, her hands still shaking. "I remember. I just... I forgot for a second."
"Bad dream?"
She nodded again, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "The same one. The alley. His face. The blood." She paused, her voice dropping to barely a whisper. "I can still feel it on my hands. When I close my eyes, I feel it."
Dante did not know what to say. He had never been good at comforting people. He had spent so many years pushing everyone away that he had forgotten how to let anyone in.
But she's not asking you to fix her, he reminded himself. She's just asking you to listen.
"I know," he said finally. "I know what it's like to feel blood on your hands. To close your eyes and see faces. To wonder if you'll ever feel clean again."
Sloane looked at him, her hazel eyes glistening with tears she was trying not to shed. "Does it ever go away?"
"No," Dante admitted. "But it gets quieter. With time, it gets quieter."
"How much time?"
"I don't know. Different for everyone." He paused, choosing his next words carefully. "For me, it took years. But I was alone. You're not."
Sloane wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "You barely know me."
"I know enough."
"What do you know?"
Dante thought about it. What did he know about this girl? He knew her name was Sloane. He knew her stepfather hit her. He knew her mother did not protect her. He knew she had killed a man to stay alive. He knew she cried in her sleep. He knew she looked at him like he was not a monster.
"I know you're stronger than you think," he said. "I know you've been surviving for years without anyone's help. I know you don't trust easily, but you trusted me. And I know that means something."
Sloane stared at him for a long moment, her tears falling silently down her cheeks. Then she did something that surprised him.
She smiled.
It was small and fragile and barely there, but it was a smile. The first one he had seen on her face since the night they met.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"For what?"
"For seeing me. Not the broken parts. Not the bruises. Just... me."
Dante felt something shift in his chest. Something warm and dangerous and terrifying.
I'm falling for her, he thought. I'm actually falling for her.
And he did not know if he had the strength to stop.
---
The morning came slowly, gray light seeping through the thin curtains like water through cracks in a dam.
Dante had finally slept, though only for a few hours. He woke to the sound of Sloane moving around the room, her footsteps soft on the worn carpet. She was standing by the window, looking out at the parking lot, her back to him.
"How long was I out?" he asked, his voice rough with sleep.
"Couple hours," Sloane replied without turning around. "You needed it."
Dante sat up and rubbed his face. His body still ached, but his mind felt clearer than it had in days. "Did you sleep?"
"A little."
"Any more bad dreams?"
Sloane turned to look at him, and he saw something new in her eyes. Not emptiness. Not fear. Something steadier. "I dreamed about you."
Dante's heart skipped a beat. "Me?"
"You were standing in front of me. Like you were blocking something. Protecting me from something I couldn't see." She paused, her voice softening. "I felt safe. For the first time in years, I felt safe."
Dante did not know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He just stood up and walked to the window, standing beside her. Outside, the parking lot was empty except for his car and a few others. The sky was gray and overcast, the kind of sky that threatened rain but never delivered.
"We need to keep moving," he said. "Don Vitale's men are looking for us. They won't stop."
"Where will we go?"
"I have a place. Upstate. A cabin my father used to own. No one knows about it. Not even Don Vitale."
Sloane nodded, her eyes still fixed on the gray sky. "How long can we stay there?"
"As long as we need to." Dante turned to look at her. "Until we figure out what comes next."
"And what comes next?"
Dante did not have an answer. He did not know what came next. He did not know if Don Vitale would find them. He did not know if Commander Bennett would discover that his daughter was traveling with a killer. He did not know if Sloane would ever be able to go back to her old life.
But he knew one thing.
He was not going to let anyone hurt her.
"Come on," he said, turning away from the window. "Pack your things. We're leaving in ten minutes."
They drove for four hours.
The city gave way to suburbs, and the suburbs gave way to countryside. The buildings grew shorter and farther apart, replaced by trees and fields and the occasional farmhouse. The sky stayed gray, and the road stayed empty, and Dante drove in silence with his eyes fixed on the horizon.
Sloane sat in the passenger seat with her knees pulled up to her chest, watching the world pass by outside her window. She had not spoken much since they left the motel, and Dante did not push her. Some silences did not need to be filled.
She's thinking, he thought. About Marcus. About her mother. About the life she left behind.
He wanted to tell her that everything would be okay. He wanted to promise her that she would never have to go back. But he was not sure if he could keep that promise. Don Vitale had resources. Connections. Men in every city, every town, every corner of this state.
He will find us, Dante thought. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when.
But when he looked at Sloane's face, at the small hint of peace that had settled there, he pushed the thought away.
Not today, he decided. Today, we rest.
The cabin was deep in the woods, at the end of a long dirt road that no one used anymore.
Dante parked the car in front of the small wooden building and turned off the engine. The silence that followed was different from the silence of the city. It was not heavy or threatening. It was soft. Peaceful. The kind of silence that let you breathe.
"This is it," he said.
Sloane got out of the car and looked around, her eyes wide. The cabin was small and old, with a porch that sagged in the middle and windows that needed cleaning. But it was solid. Sturdy. The kind of place that had stood for decades and would stand for decades more.
"It's beautiful," she whispered.
Dante felt something loosen in his chest. "My father built it. Before he died. He used to bring me here when I was a kid. Fishing. Hiking. Just the two of us."
"It must have been nice. Having a father like that."
It was, Dante thought. Until he was gone.
He did not say that out loud. Instead, he walked to the front door and unlocked it, pushing it open to reveal a small living room with a fireplace and wooden furniture covered in dust.
"It's not much," he said. "But it's safe."
Sloane walked inside, her footsteps echoing on the wooden floor. She ran her fingers over the dusty furniture, looking at the old photographs on the walls. Pictures of a younger Dante with his father. Pictures of a woman who might have been his mother.
"Is this your family?" she asked, pointing at one of the photographs.
Dante walked over and looked at the picture. His mother. His father. Himself as a boy, smiling in a way he had long forgotten how to smile.
"Yes," he said quietly. "That's them."
"What happened to them?"
Dante was quiet for a long moment. He had never told anyone this story. Not Marco. Not any of the women he had spent the night with. Not a single soul.
"My mother was a cop," he finally said. "She was killed in the line of duty when I was seventeen. A man she was trying to arrest shot her in the head."
Sloane's face went pale. "I'm so sorry."
"My father couldn't handle it. He started drinking. Lost his job. Lost the house. Lost everything." Dante's voice was flat, emotionless, like he was reading from a report. "He died two years later. Liver failure. I found him on the kitchen floor."
Sloane reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were warm and small in his.
"You've been alone for a long time," she said softly.
"Yes."
"Not anymore."
Dante looked at her, at her hazel eyes and her tired face and the small smile that was starting to appear more often. And for the first time in fifteen years, he believed that maybe, just maybe, he did not have to be alone.
"Not anymore," he repeated.
And in that dusty cabin in the middle of nowhere, with the gray sky outside and the silence all around them, Dante Marchetti let himself hope.