Dante didn’t move for a long minute. Then he turned to me—face blank, eyes full of some ancient, coiled rage I’d only ever seen once. The look scared the shit out of me then, but now I wanted to steal it. I wanted to let the anger in, let it fill up all the cracks that had started forming since I left the lab.
“We’re not doing it,” he said, like he could will it into truth. “We don’t need to. We’ll disappear.”
“You heard him,” I said. “He’s not letting us go. Even if we run, he’ll just chase us to the next city. Or the next. They want the results, Dante. It’s all they ever wanted.”
He paced, hands knotted behind his head. “He’s exaggerating. He’s got to be. You said yourself it’s not ready—no one’s ever made it work in vivo, right?”
“It’s not ready for human trials, no. But if they have the protocols…” I shivered. “They could test it on animals. Or people who don’t have the power to say no.” My voice was shaking, but I forced myself to keep talking. “That’s what this is about. Theywant it weaponized. Either for themselves, or for whoever pays the most.”
Marco stared at the ceiling, eyes wide and glassy. “Maybe you can sabotage it,” he said. “Pretend to give them what they want, but build in a failsafe. Like in the movies.”
I almost laughed. “You think they’d let me anywhere near the data without strip-searching it first?”
“Maybe not,” Marco mused. “But you’re smarter than them. Smarter than me, anyway.”
Dante stared at me. “You’re not doing it. That’s final.”
I shook my head. “Dante, if I’m not doing then, what the fuck do I do?”
He shook his head, which he put in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I know I can’t let you go near him.”
I nodded, as if I understood. But he didn’t get it yet. It was clear that, with Victor, we had no other choice.
Chapter 14: Dante
We went back to the hotel.
I flopped on the bed, jacket still zipped and boots tracking slush onto the gaudy duvet. Marco rifled the minibar for ginger ale, then collapsed in the armchair, groaning like an old man. Dante hung back by the window, arms folded, eyes narrowed on the skyline as if expecting Victor to parachute in through the glass.
I let my limbs go slack and stared at the light fixture overhead. I hadn’t wanted to show it, but the meeting had rattled me. Not just Victor’s oily confidence, or the way he’d known everything about the project—about me—but the way he’d looked at us. Like he was already mapping out every possible move, every escape hatch, every lie I would try to tell.
Dante’s voice cut through my thoughts. “You’re not doing it. I know what you’re thinking, Jade. You’re not.”
I sat up, fist balled in the comforter. “What am I supposed to do, Dante? Victor’s not bluffing. If I don’t finish, they’ll just keep coming. Or worse, they’ll grab some random postdoc and fuck it up with twice the ruthlessness.”
“We’re already on the run. Caruso wants to kill us, the FBI wants to indict me for RICO charges…”
Dante trailed off with a frustrated exhale, as if the words themselves could be burned out of the air.
I looked at him—really looked at him, in profile against the window. Even in this ugly lighting, he was beautiful, but it hurt to see him that way. Like we were both frozen in a photograph, stuck in the split second before the world went off its axis.
“So what?” I said. “We just drive to the next city, and the next, until your car runs out of gas or Marco runs out of blood? That’s not a plan. That’s fucking denial.”
He wasn’t used to me snapping back. He blinked, like he’d just realized I could bite. “We don’t negotiate with—” He caught himself. “We don’t negotiate.”
I stood. I didn’t want to, but my body was done being passive. “Then you don’t get to tell me what I do with my life. Or my work. My research is mine, Dante.” I jammed my thumb into my sternum with each word, to stop my hands from shaking. “You think Victor’s the first person who’s ever tried to own me? That’s the whole reason I became a scientist. Because data doesn’t fucking lie, and I could lose myself in the brute force of truth. But you—” I caught my breath. “You want to keep me safe, and I love you for it, but safe is dead. Safe is Chicago, or New York, or wherever you spent your childhood pretending you’d inheritedsomething more than a genetic need for violence. You tried to buy my research, but if this is about what it can do and not about mafia or bloodlines or whatever, then it’s my responsibility to stop running. For us. For our child.”
I let the words hang, waiting for the ceiling to crack open and swallow me whole. But nothing happened, so I just stood there, fists balled, heart knocking against my ribs. Marco was silent. Dante watched me, the muscles in his jaw tight enough to cut glass.
For a second, I thought he’d launch into one of those speeches—about family, about loyalty, about how this wasn’t my burden. But he just let out a slow, shuddering breath, and when he spoke, the fight was gone.
“I didn’t try to own you,” he said. “I just wanted you safe.”
“You stole my research it. You kidnapped me. You literally bought my company to own it,” I said.
“I mean…I would do it again if it meant protecting you.”
He said it so quietly that, for a second, I didn’t know what to do with the words. I ought to have felt furious—maybe I did—but it was the exhaustion that won. The truth was, if our positions were reversed, I’d have done the same. Maybe that’s what made us work in the first place: neither of us knew how to let go.
