Chapter 2: A Gun and a Grudge
The black silk sheets clung to her legs as she slid off the bed. Dante didn't try to stop her. He didn't reach for her or ask where she was going. He just watched—that same unreadable expression carved into his face—as she walked naked across the cold obsidian floor, her heels clicking with each step.
The bedroom opened into a hallway lined with closed doors. She didn't ask which one led to his study. She followed the smell of old wood and older secrets, the faint trace of gunpowder that seemed to live in the walls of this place like a ghost that refused to leave.
The study door was already open.
Val stepped inside and stopped.
The room was a fortress. Mahogany panels climbed the walls from floor to ceiling, polished to a mirror shine that caught the amber light and threw it back in warm, honeyed fragments. A desk dominated the center—a massive slab of dark wood scarred with age and use, its surface cluttered with ledgers bound in cracked leather and an ashtray filled with the stubs of hand-rolled cigarettes.
And behind the desk, set into the wall like a wound, the safe yawned open.
She crossed the room without hesitation. Her bare feet made no sound on the Persian rug that covered the floor, its deep reds and blues bleeding together like a bruise. She could feel Dante behind her, standing in the doorway, watching. The weight of his gaze was a physical thing—a hand on the back of her neck, a breath against her ear.
The Beretta sat on the middle shelf of the safe, nestled between a stack of passports and a velvet box that probably held something worth more than her entire apartment. The gun was black and sleek, its grip worn smooth in places where fingers had gripped it too many times. Val reached past the ledgers that smelled of betrayal—their pages whispering in ink-stained silence—and wrapped her hand around the cold steel.
She heard Dante shift behind her.
The magazine dropped into her palm with a click. She checked it—full—then slapped it back into the grip and racked the slide in one fluid motion. The sound was crisp, mechanical, the sound of a door opening and closing all at once.
"Where did you learn that?"
Dante's voice was low, controlled. He hadn't moved from the doorway. She could see his reflection in the polished mahogany, a dark shape against the amber light.
"Iowa," she said. She turned the gun over in her hands, checking the safety, the sights, the trigger pull. All of it muscle memory. All of it buried so deep she'd almost forgotten she knew how. "My uncle taught me. The summer he came to the farm."
She set the Beretta on the desk. It landed with a thud that seemed to echo through the room.
"I was fifteen. He showed up in a black car with tinted windows and a suit that cost more than my dad made in a year. My father hated him. You could see it in the way he stood—shoulders tight, jaw clenched. But he let him stay. Family was family, even when it wasn't wanted."
Dante moved into the room. She heard his footsteps on the rug, felt the air shift as he came to stand beside her. He didn't touch her. He just waited.
"Sal was..." Val paused. The words were there, buried under years of dirt and silence. She just had to dig them up. "He was the first person who ever looked at me like I mattered. My dad—he had fists that talked louder than his mouth. My mom left when I was seven. I don't blame her. But that left me alone with him. And Sal..."
She picked up the gun again. It felt natural in her hand. That was the worst part.
"Sal taught me how to shoot. He said every woman should know how to protect herself. He said the world was full of men who would try to take what wasn't theirs, and the only language they understood was force." She laughed—a dry, humorless sound. "My dad found out. Caught us in the barn with a row of cans set up on the fence post. He beat me so bad I couldn't sit for a week. Then he beat Sal. Or tried to."
She turned to face Dante. He was close now—close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, the faint scar that traced his jaw like a signature.
"Sal didn't fight back. He just stood there and took it. Let my father hit him until his knuckles split and his breath ran out. Then he left. Got in his black car and drove away, and I never saw him again."
"What happened to him?"
"He was killed. Two years later. I got a phone call from a man who wouldn't give his name. He said Sal was dead, that there wouldn't be a funeral, and that I should forget I ever knew him." Val's grip tightened on the Beretta. "I didn't forget. I just learned to pretend."
Dante reached out. His hand covered hers on the gun, warm and steady.
"You've been carrying this for seven years."
"Longer." She looked up at him. "I learned how to load a magazine before I learned how to drive. I knew what a silencer sounded like before I knew what a kiss felt like. Sal gave me that. He gave me the only thing that ever made me feel safe."
She set the gun down again. This time, she didn't let go. Neither did he. They stood there, hands wrapped around the grip of a weapon that had probably killed more people than she'd ever meet, and something passed between them—an understanding that didn't need words.
"The weight of it," she said. "When I hold a gun, I feel... even. Balanced. Like nothing can hurt me because I can hurt it first."
"And the weight of a man?"
She met his eyes.
"That's different. That's not about safety. That's about surrender."
Dante's jaw tightened. His thumb traced a slow circle on the back of her hand.
"You don't surrender to anyone."
"I surrendered to you." The words came out before she could stop them. "Five minutes ago. In your bed. I gave you everything and you took it."
"I took what you offered."
"Same thing."
He didn't argue. Instead, he took the gun from her hand and set it back in the safe. The door swung shut with a heavy click. Then he turned her toward the desk and pressed her forward until her palms hit the cold wood.
The ledgers scattered. Pages fluttered. She could smell the ink, the leather, the history of crimes she couldn't name.
"What are you doing?" Her voice came out breathless.
"Giving you what you need."
He kicked her legs apart. His hand pressed between her shoulder blades, bending her over the desk until her cheek rested against a ledger that smelled of cigar smoke and betrayal. She heard his zipper, the rustle of fabric, the sharp intake of his breath.
"I don't need—"
"You need to feel safe." His voice was a growl against her ear. "You need the weight of a weapon and the weight of a man who isn't afraid of you. So here I am."
He pushed inside her with one brutal thrust.
Val screamed. The sound bounced off the mahogany walls, filled the room, drowned out the hum of the city beyond the windows. She was still wet from before—from the bed, from his fingers, from the orgasms that had left her boneless—but he stretched her anyway, filled her until she couldn't remember where she ended and he began.
"Fuck," she gasped. "Dante—"
"Shut up."
He pulled out and slammed back in. The desk scraped against the floor. A ledger slid off the edge and hit the rug with a dull thud. Val's fingers scrambled for purchase on the polished wood, nails scratching, finding nothing.
Dante's hand fisted in her hair. He pulled her head back, arching her spine, and the angle changed—deeper, harder, hitting something that made her vision white out at the edges.
"You want to hold a gun while I fuck you?" His breath was hot against her neck. "Is that what you need?"
"Yes—"
He reached past her. His hand closed around the Beretta, still warm from her grip, and he pressed it into her palm.
"Then hold it."
Val's fingers wrapped around the grip. The metal was cold now, shocking against her overheated skin. She felt the weight of it—that familiar, grounding weight—and something inside her cracked open.
Dante's other hand found her hip. He fucked her harder, each thrust pushing her into the desk, the edge biting into her stomach. The gun shook in her hand. She could feel the trigger beneath her finger, the empty chamber, the knowledge that if she squeezed, nothing would happen.
But the weight was real.
The weight was always real.
"Say his name," Dante commanded.
"Marcus."
"Louder."
"Marcus." She gasped as he hit a spot that made her legs tremble. "Marcus. Marcus. Fucking Marcus."
"Again."
"Marcus!"
The name was a curse, a prayer, a funeral dirge. She screamed it into the ledger beneath her face, into the ink and leather and old sins, and she felt something inside her break loose—a wall she'd built seven years ago, when a man in a black car had driven away and never come back.
Dante's hand covered hers on the gun. His fingers threaded through hers, holding the weapon together, holding her together. She could feel his heartbeat against her back, the sweat on his skin, the tension in his body as he drove into her again and again.
"You're mine," he said. "Not his. Not anyone's. Mine."
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I'm yours."
"Say it again."
"I'm yours, Dante. I'm yours. I'm—"
She came with a scream that ripped through her throat like shrapnel. Her body clenched around him, convulsing, and her finger squeezed the trigger on the empty chamber.
The click was deafening.
Dante followed her over the edge. His hips stuttered, his grip tightened, and he emptied himself inside her with a groan that sounded like it had been dragged from the bottom of his soul.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The gun was still in her hand. His hand was still on hers. The city hummed beyond the windows, indifferent to the small apocalypse that had just occurred in this room.
Then Dante pulled out. She felt the loss of him like a physical blow—the sudden emptiness, the cold air on her sweaty skin. He didn't go far. He just stood there, breathing hard, his hand still covering hers on the Beretta.
"You're going to keep this," he said.
"What?"
"The gun." He released her hand and stepped back. "You're going to keep it. Not in the safe. With you. Wherever you go."
Val pushed herself up from the desk. Her legs were shaking. Her hair was a mess. She could feel his come dripping down her thigh, and she didn't care.
"Why?"
"Because you're in this now." He walked to the window and stood with his back to her, looking out at the neon skyline. "Marcus isn't just a cheating fiancé. He's a traitor. And traitors don't go quietly. They lash out. They try to take people with them."
He turned his head. The scar on his jaw caught the light.
"If he comes for you—and he will—I want you to be ready."
Val looked down at the gun in her hand. The weight of it. The familiar, grounding weight.
"I've been ready my whole life," she said.
Dante smiled. It was a dark thing, sharp and dangerous, but there was something else underneath it. Something that looked almost like pride.
"Good," he said. "Because we start tomorrow."
He crossed the room and opened a drawer in the desk. Inside was a holster—black leather, worn soft, the kind that clipped to a waistband and disappeared under a jacket. He handed it to her.
"Get dressed. I'll call you a car."
"I'm not leaving."
He raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not leaving," she repeated. "Not tonight. Not after—" She gestured at the desk, at the scattered ledgers, at the faint smell of sex and gunpowder that hung in the air. "You don't get to fuck me like that and then send me home in a car."
Dante studied her for a long moment. Then he closed the drawer and walked toward her.
"Fine," he said. "But you're sleeping in my bed."
"I wasn't planning on sleeping anywhere else."
He stopped in front of her. His hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb brushing across her lower lip.
"You're going to be a problem," he said.
"Probably."
"I don't like problems."
"You like this one."
He kissed her. Soft this time, almost gentle, a contradiction to everything that had come before. When he pulled back, his eyes were dark and unreadable.
"Come on," he said. "You need to eat something. And then we need to talk about tomorrow."
"What's tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," he said, "we start tearing Marcus apart. Piece by piece. And you're going to help me."
Val followed him out of the study, the Beretta still in her hand. She didn't put it down. She didn't put it away. She carried it with her like a promise—like a future she was finally ready to claim.
The city glittered beyond the windows, indifferent and eternal.
But somewhere out there, Marcus was sleeping in a bed that wasn't hers, dreaming dreams that had nothing to do with her.
And tomorrow, she was going to wake him up.