Chapter 4: The One-Way Flight

I was in the middle of shoving a silk blouse into a small duffel bag when I heard the front door slam downstairs.

It was 3:00 AM.

Panic flared, hot and bright. I kicked the bag under the bed and snatched a book from the nightstand, arranging myself against the headboard with practiced ease, as if I had been reading all along.

A heartbeat later, Dante kicked the bedroom door open.

He was covered in blood. Most of it didn't belong to him. His knuckles were split, the skin raw and weeping, and his white dress shirt hung in ruined tatters.

He looked less like my husband and more like a demon who had just clawed his way out of the pit.

He stopped at the foot of the bed, his chest heaving. He stared at me, his eyes wild, pupils blown wide from adrenaline.

"You're awake," he rasped.

"It is hard to sleep when the house feels like a bunker," I said, my voice unnervingly calm.

He walked to the dresser and threw his gun down. It landed with a heavy, final thud against the mahogany. He began to strip off his ruined shirt, peeling the fabric from his sticky skin.

"It was a trap," he said. "Rival gang. They used her as bait."

The air in the room grew thin.

"Is she safe?"

"She's at the hospital. Minor injuries. Shock."

He turned around. There was a long, ugly slash across his back. It was shallow, but bleeding sluggishly, a red grin across his olive skin.

I sighed, closing the book on a chapter I hadn't read. I got up, walked to the bathroom, and retrieved the first aid kit.

This was the ritual. This was the vow I had made in that foolish letter years ago. To wash the blood from his hands.

"Sit," I ordered.

He obeyed, sinking onto the edge of the bed. I cleaned the wound with antiseptic. The smell of alcohol mixed with the metallic tang of fresh copper. He didn't flinch. He was made of stone.

As I began to stitch the skin, the silence was shattered by light. His phone, sitting on the nightstand, illuminated the dark room.

An email notification.

Flight Confirmation: SFO. One Way.

My breath hitched. I had been careless. I hadn't cleared the notification.

Dante's hand shot out, fast as a viper, grabbing the phone before I could react. He stared at the screen.

The oxygen left the room.

He turned slowly, ignoring the needle still threaded through the skin of his back.

"San Francisco? One way?"

I didn't blink. I forced my heart to beat a slow, steady rhythm.

"Shopping," I said. "Your mother authorized it. She wants me to scout some art for the new gallery opening in the Bay Area. The return flight is booked separately because I don't know how long the acquisition will take."

It was a flimsy lie. A terrible lie.

But Dante nodded. He put the phone down.

"Okay."

He believed it.

Not because I was a good liar, but because in his world, the concept of me leaving was an impossibility.

I didn't have agency.

I was the furniture.

And furniture doesn't buy one-way tickets to freedom.

I finished the stitch and cut the thread with a sharp snip.

"Done."

He stood up and turned to face me.

The adrenaline was fading, leaving him with a different kind of energy-darker, heavier.

He looked at me with a strange intensity.

"The letter," he said, his voice rough like gravel. "At the club."

"It was a long time ago, Dante."

"You loved me," he said.

It wasn't a question.

It was a discovery, a trophy he had just polished.

"Before the marriage. You loved me."

"I was a child," I said, snapping the first aid kit shut. "Children have foolish dreams."

He stepped closer.

He smelled of copper, sweat, and violence.

He reached out, his rough thumb brushing my lower lip.

"And now?" he asked, his voice dropping an octave. "Do you still dream?"

"I don't dream anymore," I said, meeting his gaze. "I just sleep."

He leaned in.

He wanted to kiss me.

He wanted to claim me, to validate the ego boost he had gotten from that resurrected letter.

I turned my head sharply.

His lips brushed my ear instead.

"No," I said.

He froze.

He pulled back, a frown marring his handsome, blood-splattered face.

"No?"

"I'm tired, Dante. And you smell like her perfume."

It was a low blow.

But it was the only weapon I had left.

He stiffened.

He looked at me-really looked at me-searching for the submissive girl he thought he owned.

He didn't find her.

"I'm bleeding," he said, gesturing vaguely to his back, his tone bordering on petulant. "I need comfort."

"I stitched you up," I said, walking to the other side of the bed. "That is maintenance. Not comfort."

I climbed under the covers and turned my back to him, pulling the duvet up to my chin.

"One day, Dante, you're going to come home bleeding, and there won't be anyone here to patch you up. You should learn to do it yourself."

"You aren't going anywhere," he muttered, turning off the light. The room plunged into darkness.

He got into bed beside me.

The heat radiating off him was immense, like sleeping next to a furnace.

He draped his heavy arm over my waist.

He pulled me against him, trapping me.

I lay there, stiff as a corpse.

It was the last time he would ever hold me.

And the tragedy was, he didn't even know he was holding a ghost.