POV: Dante
The drive back to the mansion was filled with Dante's contained fury. He sat as far from her in the backseat as the Rolls allowed, staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. The scent of that damn floral perfume and the faint, comforting smell of ginger and old books from the old woman's apartment warred in the air, a maddening reminder of the two worlds she was torn between.
He'd been in a meeting with the heads of the Five Families when Marco's text had come through.
Movement. Side door. Bergen Street.
The cold fear that had shot through him was more paralyzing than any assassin's bullet. It wasn't anger first. It was pure, undiluted terror. A vision of her alone on the street, vulnerable, exposed. A vision of Viktor Volkov's men, who watched his house day and night, spotting that flash of dark hair, that slender figure. They wouldn't bring her to him. They'd take her to a warehouse by the docks, and they'd use her to carve out his heart piece by piece while he listened to her screams over the phone.
He'd excused himself from the table mid-sentence, leaving a room full of dangerous men staring in shock. He didn't care. Let them think him weak. Let them see the crack. All that mattered was the coordinates on his phone.
Now, she was here. Safe. Physically unharmed. Sitting beside him, trembling with adrenaline and defeat. The terror was receding, leaving the scorched earth of his rage in its wake. She had no idea. She had no conception of the viper's nest into which she had almost stumbled.
The car passed through the gates. He didn't touch her as they ascended the stairs. He followed her into their bedroom, the door clicking shut behind them.
She turned to face him, her chin lifted in that defiant angle he simultaneously admired and wanted to break. She was waiting for the blow. She was anticipating the violence that the hole in the wall had promised.
He wouldn't give it to her. Physical punishment was for soldiers who disobeyed orders. The present situation was different. The situation required a strategic recalibration.
"From this moment," he said, his voice dangerously calm, "there will be a guard stationed outside this door at all times. You will not leave this room without my express permission or an escort I have personally approved. The library and the garden—they are now privileges, not rights. You have forfeited them."
Her eyes widened, not with fear, but with incredulous fury. "You're locking me in my own room? I'm not a child!"
"You acted like one!" The roar tore from him, finally shattering his icy control. He took a step forward, watching her flinch. "A reckless, thoughtless child who saw an open door and ran into traffic without looking! Do you have any idea what lives in that traffic, Isabella? Do you?"
"I was going to a friend!"
"You were walking into a warzone while wearing a target on your back!" He was shouting now, the images he'd suppressed on the drive flooding back. "Viktor Volkov has men on every block between here and Brooklyn! They have orders to take any opportunity, any weakness! You, alone, on the street? You were a gift-wrapped opportunity! They would have had you in the back of a van before you could scream my name!"
Her defiance faltered. He saw the first flicker of doubt, of understanding dawning behind the anger. "You're just saying that to—"
"Am I?" He closed the distance between them, stopping just short of touching her. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and feel her heartbeat, confirming she was whole. "You think my security is for my amusement? The gates, the guards, the protocols—they are a fortress. And you just walked out of it because the drawbridge was down. You didn't outsmart me, Isabella. You endangered yourself in a way I cannot forgive."
The fight seemed to drain from her shoulders. She stared at him, searching his face. He didn't bother to hide the raw emotion there—the remnants of terror, the fury, and the sheer, exhausting relief.
"You were scared," she whispered, the realization hitting her like a physical blow.
The admission disarmed him. He turned away, running a hand over his face. He couldn't look at her when she saw him so clearly.
"Terrified," he admitted to the window, the word leaving a bitter taste on his tongue. It was a confession of weakness. "I have spent a decade building walls to keep the things I care about safe. My sister. My family. And now you. You are behind the strongest wall. And you tried to jump off it."
He heard her soft intake of breath. The room was silent save for the distant hum of the city. The dynamic had shifted. The voice was no longer a captor berating a prisoner. It was a man explaining to a reckless, precious thing why the world outside was made of teeth.
"I just wanted…" Her voice was small and broken. "I wanted to feel like I had a choice. For five minutes."
He turned back to her. The anger was gone, replaced by a weary, profound frustration. "You have a choice. You can choose to accept the protection I offer. You can choose to find a way to live within these walls. Or you can choose to fight them, to weaken them, and get us both killed." He took a step closer, his voice dropping. "The choice to run? That was an illusion. It always was. The only real choice is how you survive inside the reality you are in."
She hugged herself, looking young and lost. The fierce gallery curator, the defiant bride, was gone. In her place was a woman beginning to comprehend the true weight of the chains and the terrifying fact that some of them were there to anchor her against a storm.
"The guard outside the door… Is that to keep me in or to keep them out?" she asked, her green eyes lifting to his.
The question was a knife to his heart. It meant she was starting to see. She was starting to understand the duality of his world—the prison that also served as a bunker.
"Both," he answered honestly. "Until I am certain you understand the danger, and until I have eliminated the threat that saw you as a target at the gala, it is both."
A long moment passed. The tension bled from the room, leaving something more complex, more intimate in its wake. The air still hummed, but with a different frequency. Not with the charge of conflict, but with the heavy thrum of a shared, terrible truth.
She had run. He had been afraid for her. He wasn't just afraid of losing an asset. Not just of looking weak.
He had been afraid for her.
"I'm not your enemy, Isabella," he said, the words feeling foreign and true on his lips. He gestured to the window, to the city beyond his gated walls. "They are. The men who would use you to hurt me. The men who would hurt you just to watch me bleed. I am the only thing standing between you and that."
He took one final step, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to hold his gaze. He didn't reach for her. He let the truth hang between them, a lifeline and a chain.
"But I am your keeper. Your protector. Your warden. However, you need to name it to sleep at night." He held her eyes, ensuring she absorbed every syllable. "Learn the difference."
He turned and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. He nodded to Leo, who took up his new post beside the door, a silent, stoic sentinel.
Dante walked down the hall, his footsteps echoing in the vast, quiet house. The punishment was enacted. The boundaries were redrawn. But as he descended the stairs, the cold stone of relief in his gut was mixed with a strange, aching hollowness.
She had seen his fear. She had heard him admit it.
And for the first time, she hadn't looked at him like he was a monster.
She had looked at him like he was a man.
And that was the most dangerous revelation of all.