Aria's POV
I have lived in this apartment for four years.
Four years of building something small and mine and safe and he wants me to pack it into a bag in ten minutes.
I stand in my bedroom doorway and look at my life and feel something crack quietly in my chest.
"Aria."
His voice comes from behind me. Low and close and I feel it in my spine before I process the word.
I turn around.
He is right there.
Too close. The way he is always too close lately like personal space is a concept that simply does not apply to him. His dark eyes move over my face and I watch him read everything I am feeling before I can decide whether to show it.
"I know," he says quietly.
"You do not know."
"I know it is hard to leave."
"This is my home, Dante. This is everything I built. I cannot just pack a bag and walk out because some man I found bleeding in an alley tells me to."
Something moves in his jaw.
"Some man," he says.
"You know what I mean."
"I know exactly what you mean." He takes one slow step toward me and I should step back and I do not step back. "And I am telling you that staying here is not something I will allow."
"You will not allow." I look up at him. "You do not get to allow or not allow anything that happens in my life."
"I do when your life is in danger because of me."
The words land between us and sit there and I cannot argue with them because they are true and we both know they are true and that makes me angrier than anything else he could have said.
I turn around and pull my duffel bag from the top of the wardrobe and drop it on the bed.
He watches me from the doorway.
I can feel his eyes on my back while I move around the room. On my shoulders. On the curve of my waist when I reach up for the top shelf. He is not subtle about it and he is not trying to be and something about knowing he is watching makes my hands clumsy in a way they never are.
"Stop looking at me like that," I say without turning around.
"Like what."
"You know what."
Silence.
Then I hear him push off the doorframe and cross the room and my whole body tightens before he even reaches me.
He stops directly behind me.
Close enough that I can feel the warmth of him against my back. Close enough that when he speaks the words come from just above my ear and I feel his breath against the side of my neck.
"Pack what matters," he says quietly. "Everything else can be replaced."
I turn around.
Which is a mistake because now I am facing him and he has not moved and the space between us is nothing.
His eyes drop to my mouth for exactly one second.
They come back up.
I feel that one second everywhere.
"The things that matter to me cannot be replaced," I say.
My voice comes out lower than I planned.
He looks at me for a long moment.
Then he raises his hand slowly and his knuckles brush my jaw the way they did this morning and I go completely still and let him because apparently that is something I do now.
"Then we will come back for them," he says. "When it is safe."
"Promise me."
Something shifts in his eyes.
"I promise you," he says.
I believe him.
That might be the most dangerous thing about this entire situation.
I pack in silence.
He goes back to the living room and I hear him on his phone speaking to Marco in a low controlled voice and I fold my clothes and try not to think about the fact that the most feared man in Rome just touched my face in my bedroom and made me a promise and I believed it without question.
I pick up a small photo from my nightstand.
Me and Nico and our mother on a Sunday afternoon in Trastevere. She is laughing at something off camera. Her dark curly hair is everywhere. I have her hair. I have always had her hair and she always said it was a gift and I always complained about it and now I would give anything to complain to her about it one more time.
I put the photo in the bag.
I zip it closed.
I stand in the middle of my bedroom and look around at everything that is staying and breathe.
Then I pick up the bag and walk out.
Dante is at the window when I come out.
He turns when he hears me and his eyes go straight to the bag on my shoulder and then to my face and something in his expression does the thing it does sometimes. That small unguarded shift that happens before he catches it and puts everything back where it belongs.
"Ready?" he says.
"No," I say honestly. "Let us go."
Something almost happens at the corner of his mouth.
He reaches for the bag.
I hold on.
"I have it," I say.
"Aria."
"I said I have it."
He looks at my hand gripping the strap and then at my face and there is a moment where I can see him deciding whether to push it.
He lets go.
"The car is a block away," he says. "We walk fast. We do not stop. If I tell you to run you run without asking why. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I understand."
He looks at me for one more second like he is checking something. Then he moves to the door.
The street outside is cold and bright.
My Trastevere. My Rome.
The flower seller on the corner is putting out buckets of late roses. Someone above us is frying something that smells like garlic and Sunday. Two kids are kicking a ball against the wall at the end of the block and the sound of it bouncing echoes off the stone and I have heard that sound my entire life and never once thought about what it would feel like to leave it behind.
I keep my eyes forward.
Dante walks beside me. Not behind me. Beside me. His shoulder half in front of mine and his eyes moving over the street in a way that looks casual and is not casual at all.
"Do not look at the grey car on the left," he says quietly.
I do not look at the grey car on the left.
"How many?" I ask.
"Two. They are watching, not moving. We are fine."
"You sound very calm about two men watching us."
"I am always calm."
"Is that a mafia thing or a you thing?"
He glances at me sideways.
"Both," he says.
We turn the corner and the black car appears at the end of the block and a man I do not know gets out and opens the back door and Dante puts his hand on the small of my back to guide me forward.
Just his hand.
Flat and warm through the fabric of my jacket.
And I walk straight toward that car without hesitating because apparently the warmth of his hand on my back is enough to make me follow a man I met four days ago into a world I know absolutely nothing about.
I need to have a very serious conversation with myself at some point.
The drive is quiet.
I sit in the back beside Dante with the city scrolling past the window and my bag between my feet and his shoulder two inches from mine and the silence between us doing something it does not do with other people.
It settles.
Like neither of us needs to fill it.
Marco is in the front. He half turns and looks at me over the seat.
I stare at him.
He is looking out the window but the corner of his mouth has done that thing again. That almost thing that makes me want to push until it becomes real.
I look back out my own window.
We are leaving Trastevere behind. The narrow warm streets open up into wider roads. The old buildings give way to space and stone walls and gates that get taller and heavier the further we go.
Old money. Old power. Old everything.
I watch it pass and think about Sofia. About Nico walking past my building last night and seeing the broken glass and worrying. About the Sunday calls I will not be making from my kitchen.
My throat tightens.
"Hey." Dante's voice. Quiet. Just for me.
I turn.
He is watching me. Not the window. Me. With those dark eyes that are doing the thing they do when he is not bothering to hide whatever is actually happening behind them.
His hand moves across the seat between us.
He does not take my hand. He just covers it. His palm over the back of my hand. Warm and certain and still.
He does not say anything.
He does not need to.
I turn back to the window and I leave my hand where it is and I breathe and watch Rome change around us and feel his hand on mine the entire way there.
The car slows.
Iron gates appear. Tall and black and opening before we even stop.
And Palazzo Moretti rises up ahead of us in the morning light and I look at it through the window and think about the girl who packed her whole life into one bag this morning.
She is not going back to being that girl.
Something in my chest knows it.
Whether I am ready or not.
The car stops.
Dante squeezes my hand once.
Just once.
Then he lets go and gets out and holds the door open and looks down at me and waits.
I pick up my bag.
I get out.
And I walk through those gates with my chin up and my heart slamming and my whole life rearranged behind me.
A woman appears in the doorway of the palazzo.
Tall. Elegant. Dark hair swept back perfectly.
Her eyes find mine across the courtyard.
And they go cold so fast it feels like something just died in the air between us.