I sat back down, letting my head fall into my hands. “You can’t keep fighting every battle for me,” I said. “Even if you win, the war doesn’t stop.”
He stared at the ceiling for a while, then paced the room in a tight orbit, like if he moved fast enough, the air would turn solid and keep us safe. “Maybe not. But it’s the only thing I know how to do.”
Marco finally piped up from the chair.
“If you two start making out, I’m leaving. I’ll crawl to the next hotel. I mean it.”
I didn’t laugh, but the line cut the tension just enough to let me breathe. “Not likely,” I said.
“Good. I don’t want to die in a room full of hormones.”
I rolled my eyes and tried to focus. Victor wanted us to think, to decide. But there was no choice. We’d either give him what he wanted and hope he kept his word, or we’d run until we bled out on the highway. Maybe I’d been deluding myself about control, about the integrity of science, or the sovereignty of my own life, but this was the new normal.
The only way to make it out was to be the best version of myself—except armed, and a little bit meaner. I closed my eyes. “I have to see the lab. Tomorrow. I want to see what they’re actually offering.”
Dante nodded, slow. “I’ll come with you.” Marco coughed.
“What about me?”
“You’re staying here,” Dante said, quick as a gunshot. “If anything goes sideways, you call the number on the back of the burner. You leave. No hero shit.”
Marco grinned, eyes glinting with the same nervous bravado that had gotten him into every mess he’d ever survived.
“You got it, boss.” I went to the window, watched the city dissolve into sleet and neon.
“If I walk into that lab and there’s even a hint that they’re just going to rip out my brain and leave the rest, I’ll blow the whole thing up. Got it?”
Dante joined me, close but not touching. “If it comes to that,” he said, “we burn the place to the ground.” I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe anything.
“Okay. Thank you.”
“I know there’s no way to talk you out of this, but let me do my own research first,” he said. “Okay?”
He boxed me in, grabbed my face, kissed the top of my forehead. “Thank you,” he said. “I know you want to jump in on this, but I need you to hold tight for a little while longer. Okay?”
I sighed. “Okay,” I said.
Not because I agreed, but because I was too tired to keep fighting the same battle with different words. There was something about the way he held me—like he knew I was already slipping through his fingers—that made it impossible to argue without unraveling.
Marco mumbled something and tipped his head back, already half-asleep with the ginger ale pressed to his chest like a makeshift IV. Dante didn’t move. His arms stayed bracedaround me, forehead against mine. He smelled like cold air and gunmetal and that soap he never remembered packing. My body, stubborn thing that it was, leaned into him anyway.
“I’m scared,” I whispered. It slipped out like a breath I didn’t mean to take. “Not just of them. Of me. Of what I might do.”
Dante didn’t answer right away. He just stayed there, holding me like he could shoulder it all if I’d just let him. But that wasn’t what I needed.
“I know,” he said eventually, his voice low and rough. “You’re not the only one.”
That surprised me. He didn’t usually admit fear—not even in private, not even to me.
I pulled back just enough to look at him. “So what do we do?”
He kissed my forehead again, slower this time. “You rest,” he said. “I think better when I know you’re okay.”
“You’re deflecting.”
He half-smiled. “Yeah. But I’m not wrong.”
I let him lead me to the bed, even though I wasn’t ready to sleep. He helped me out of my jacket, unlaced my boots, moved like I might break. It made something ache behind my ribs.
