Chapter 17: Too Late for Sorry

Elena Vitiello POV

For three years, I had imagined Dante Moretti standing in front of me and finally admitting he needed me.

In those foolish fantasies, I always cried.

Sometimes I forgave him immediately.

Sometimes I made him suffer for a few minutes first, because even my imagination had pride.

But every version ended the same way.

With me going back.

With him choosing me.

With love arriving late, but still arriving.

Reality was colder.

Reality was fluorescent lobby lights, a paper grocery bag cutting into my fingers, and my husband standing across from me looking like a man who had reached for something and found only ash.

"I don't know how to live in a world where you're gone," he had said.

The words should have broken me.

They didn't.

Maybe because I had already broken myself into pieces small enough to escape him.

"You should have thought of that before signing the papers," I said.

His eyes flinched.

Good.

A small, ugly part of me was glad.

I wanted him to feel something.

Not enough to destroy him.

Not yet.

Just enough to understand I had not left because I was bored.

I had left because staying had become a slower way to die.

"I didn't know what they were," he said.

"That is not my problem."

"Elena."

"No."

My voice was quiet, but it cut through the lobby.

"You don't get to say my name like that anymore."

"Like what?"

"Like it belongs to you."

The receptionist behind the desk suddenly found her computer fascinating.

Dante noticed the audience.

Of course he did.

He was still Dante.

Still trained to read rooms.

Still too proud to bleed in public.

"Can we talk somewhere private?" he asked.

"No."

"People are listening."

"Then speak carefully."

His jaw tightened.

Once, that would have been the warning sign before he ended a conversation with command.

Now he swallowed it.

The effort was visible.

That almost hurt worse.

Because it meant he was capable of restraint.

He had simply never thought I was worth the effort before.

"I came alone," he said.

"Am I supposed to thank you for not bringing armed men to my apartment?"

"No."

"Good."

The grocery bag tore.

An orange rolled across the marble floor between us.

Neither of us moved.

It was such a stupid thing.

A bright little orange sitting between the Reaper and the wife who had run away from him.

Then Dante bent down.

Slowly.

Carefully.

As if sudden movement might make me disappear.

He picked it up.

For a second, the absurdity of it nearly made me laugh.

Dante Moretti, executioner of New York, holding my groceries like an apology.

He offered it to me.

I didn't take it.

His hand lowered.

"I read your notebook," he said.

The humiliation hit like cold water.

My spine went rigid.

"You had no right."

"I know."

"No, you don't."

"I know," he repeated, softer. "And I am sorry."

There it was.

The apology.

The thing I had begged heaven for a thousand nights.

It came too late.

It came standing in a lobby with strangers listening and my hands empty of everything except exhaustion.

"Sorry doesn't give me back three years."

"No."

"Sorry doesn't erase Sofia."

"No."

"Sorry doesn't make the nights I spent waiting for you mean anything."

He looked down.

Dante Moretti looked down.

"No," he said again.

I hated how small that word sounded in his mouth.

I hated that I noticed.

"Then what do you want from me?"

He looked up.

His eyes were bloodshot.

That startled me.

Dante never looked tired.

He looked dangerous.

Angry.

Untouchable.

Never tired.

"Nothing you don't want to give," he said.

I laughed then.

I couldn't help it.

"You really expect me to believe that?"

"No."

"At least you're learning."

"I'm trying."

"Try somewhere else."

I reached for the ruined grocery bag.

He stepped forward instinctively, then stopped himself.

That pause mattered.

I wish it didn't.

"Elena, please."

The second please.

I was beginning to hate that word from him.

It made him sound almost human.

"Go back to New York, Dante."

"No."

"Then go back to your hotel."

"I need to know you're safe."

"I was safe before you found me."

"Were you?"

The question snapped something in me.

"Do not do that."

"Do what?"

"Pretend this is about safety."

I stepped closer.

This time, he didn't move.

"I know your language. Protection means control. Concern means surveillance. Love means ownership. I learned fluent Moretti, Dante. Don't insult me by speaking it badly."

His face went pale beneath the lobby lights.

"That's what you think my love is?"

"I don't think you know what love is."

The words landed between us like a gunshot.

He absorbed them silently.

Then, finally, he nodded once.

"Maybe I don't."

That should have satisfied me.

It didn't.

Nothing did.

A bell chimed.

The elevator opened behind me.

Two residents stepped out, took one look at Dante, and immediately decided to walk faster.

I used the distraction to gather what was left of my groceries.

"This conversation is over."

"Will you answer if I call?"

"No."

"If I write?"

"No."

"If I wait?"

I stopped.

"Don't."

"Elena—"

"Don't wait for me."

My throat tightened, but I forced the words out.

"I did that for you. It ruins a person."

For a moment, he looked as if I had struck him.

Then he stepped aside.

Not because he wanted to.

Because I had asked.

And maybe because, for the first time, he understood that forcing me would only prove every terrible thing I believed about him.

I walked to the elevator.

I did not look back.

Not when the doors opened.

Not when I stepped inside.

Not when I felt his eyes on me like hands.

Only when the doors began to close did he speak.

"I loved the wrong woman because she needed me."

The doors slowed.

His voice was low.

Ragged.

"You loved me even when I gave you nothing. I thought that meant you would always be there."

My fingers tightened around the ruined bag.

"You were wrong," I said.

The doors closed.

I made it to my apartment before my knees failed.

Mia found me on the floor ten minutes later, groceries spilled around me, one orange rolling slowly beneath the couch.

"Oh, Elena," she whispered.

I shook my head.

"Don't."

She knelt beside me anyway.

"Did he hurt you?"

"No."

That was the worst part.

He hadn't touched me.

Hadn't threatened me.

Hadn't raised his voice.

He had simply arrived too late and looked sorry.

And somehow that had hurt more than all his cruelty.

"He apologized," I said.

Mia went still.

"And?"

"And I wanted it to mean nothing."

"But it didn't."

I closed my eyes.

"No."

She pulled me into her arms.

This time, I let myself shake.

Not cry.

Not fully.

Just tremble with the aftermath of facing the man I had once built my entire world around.

Across the city, Dante Moretti did not return to his hotel.

He sat in the back of his car outside my building until sunrise.

Marco called twice.

He didn't answer.

Sofia called once.

He blocked the number.

At dawn, he finally opened the orange still sitting on the seat beside him.

He had forgotten to give it back.

It was ridiculous.

Pathetic.

A piece of fruit from a torn grocery bag.

He held it like a relic.

Like proof that I had been close enough to touch and still completely beyond his reach.

When Marco arrived, he found his boss staring at the apartment building with hollow eyes.

"What now?" Marco asked quietly.

Dante didn't look away from the window he believed was mine.

"Now I learn how to wait."

Marco said nothing.

"Not to take her," Dante added.

"Not to force her."

His fingers closed around the orange.

"To become someone she might one day choose to speak to again."

It was the first honest plan he had made in years.

And the cruelest punishment was that it might never be enough.