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Chapter 20 - An Enemy at the Gates

The atmosphere was so thick in the drawing-room it could be choked upon. Dante's suspicion was a physical presence, executing its predation between us, a coiled predator; my existence depended on how much I could make myself smaller and weaker, to fold myself back into the broken form of the victim he expected me to be.

 

"I'm so sorry," I said in a whisper, summoning a sob, hot tears began to flow down my face, the heat from genuine stress. "I don't know why. One moment, my father is a villain, the next, I learn he was to marry into your family. I don't know what is real anymore. All I want is to understand."

 

I burdened my shoulders to shake, convincing myself of how tragic a woman was at her breaking point. I saw the twitch of his jaw muscle as the tension showed across his solid shoulders; he was having an internal quarrel between pity and contempt. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the pressure on the air dispersed, replaced by the kind of rigid authority that was somewhere between damning and dismissive. He seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that I was merely a hysterical, fragile thing and no longer a threat.

 

"There is nothing to understand. Your part is not to question. It is to obey. Never forget that again." He turned, leaving me trembling in his wake; the immediate danger had passed, but the chill of that moment would haunt me for the rest of the day.

 

Darkness fell over the villa, just as kindness vanished from that day into oblivion. The storm rolled upon us down from the sea: far below, rain pelted the windows like shrapnel, and the wind howled like a sorrowing wolf. I was standing up in my room, gazing out at the gloomy, grey waves when suddenly the whole house slipped into instant, total darkness. Blackout. All lights, even the dim glow of the generator, ceased to exist in an instant.

 

A gasp escaped my lips. Before I could even think the power had gone out, the gunshot rang out, out of place and ominous, sliced through the roaring of the storm from far below. Another.

 

And then the door to my suite was thrown open. Dante stood there, a ghost for a split second beneath a flash of lightning. He had vanished, along with the man who had twisted my mind; henceforth would appear the Don, all focused killer aura blasting away.

 

"Stay behind me. Not a word," he ordered with a low menacing growl. He took my arm, a firm grip; dragging me from the room into a black abyss of a hallway. The house that had felt like a lonely shrine now felt like a death trap. Shouts and heavy running footsteps were audible from the ground floor. We are under siege.

 

Dante maneuvered silently, with an air of awful skill, producing my kind of observation as we slipped along unknown back corridors that surely should never see daylight. Regaining his spirit, he was keeling down towards some reinforced cellar, holding somewhere in his working hand a weapon that I could not see yet certainly would have been able to recognize—that I was apprehended; the architect of my will and endless agony. But at this time, my total existence in this flesh-and-blood man was all that mattered.

 

In the middle of a narrowing function alley, a massive creature sprang out from the shadows to block our path. An attacker. The long knife glimmered with another flash of lightning.

 

"Going somewhere, Moretti?" the man sneered. "Valenti sends his regards. He wants the girl."

 

Dante shoved me behind him, a human shield between me and the threat. "You won't live to deliver a message," Dante said, in a voice deadly calm.

 

The battle was short and brutal, a flurry of action among the suffocating shadows. Dante being faster, more skilled but the man was strong and desperate. In the midst of the combat, another figure blocked our escape at the end of the hall. We were cornered.

 

Sickeningly cracking the bones of the first man, Dante, but just the short interruption gave the second attacker a chance to dash past Dante, mad-eyed, reaching for me. "For the boss, you fetch a pretty penny, ghost!" he cackled.

 

Time hung strangely low. Dante had been narrowly too slow to turn. The dirty hand was almost upon my throat. Pure, white-hot adrenaline coursed through my veins. My brain wasn't thinking about plans or performances. This was pure instinct. I grabbed the hefty iron fire extinguisher from the wall mounting and swung with all my strength. It landed with a sickening sound, thudding against the side of the man's head. He fell to the floor in a heap, unconscious.

 

Silence. The only sound that could be heard was my own labored breathing and the distant sound of the storm.

 

Dante turned, breathing heavily into the distance while his eyes found mine in the strange darkness. He looked back to the man on the floor and then back at me, the shock now showing clearly on his features.

 

"You...," he began to say.

 

"He was going to kill you!" I gasped, adrenaline pumping through my body and spilling the words from my mouth before I could stop them. My carefully constructed persona was shattered by violence. "We have to get out of here! The letters—!" I clapped my hand over my mouth, the word hanging between us like a death sentence.

 

The letters.

 

The storm was raging outside, but inside the narrow hall a new, and much more frightening storm had just broken loose. Dante was now staring at me. The shock on his face melted away, replaced by a sensation I had never before seen: utter stillness, horrible realization coming into being. The hunter, the protector, the captor—all of it slipped away, leaving only a man who had just comprehended the very depth of his prisoner's treachery. The enemy had no longer been at the gates. She stood right beside him.

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