Chapter 260

For a moment, Selena could not breathe.

She had imagined his return in a hundred different ways without ever allowing herself to admit she was imagining it.

In the quietest, most shameful corners of her mind, she had wondered what she would say if she ever saw him again. Whether she would slap him, cry, or demand to know why he had left her alone.

She had thought she might hate him.

She had not prepared for this.

She had not prepared for a man who looked at their shared life as if it were an old document he had no intention of reading.

"What happened to you?" she whispered.

Dante’s gaze hardened. "Life happened."

Then he moved.

Selena barely registered his intention before he caught her by the upper arm and pushed past her.

She stumbled sideways, her shoulder striking the wall.

Pain flared down her arm.

For one disorienting second, she did not understand what had happened.

Then she felt it.

His hand.

His fingers digging into her skin. The pressure of his body as he forced his way past her.

He was solid, warm, and real.

Selena’s breath broke.

She grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself, staring at the place where he had touched her.

For years, Dante had existed in her life as an absence.

A photograph, a memory, and a name spoken carefully around Emilia.

Now the faint ache in her arm was proof that he was standing in her house, that his hand had closed around her, that he could hurt her.

He was not a ghost, or a hallucination. He was alive. And he had just pushed her aside in her own home.

"Dante!"

He did not turn.

He was already moving down the hallway, towards Emilia’s room.

The sight snapped something inside Selena.

"No!"

She pushed away from the table.

For all the fear choking her, for all the disbelief that had left her limbs trembling, one thought rose above everything else.

Emilia.

He was heading towards Emilia’s room.

Her daughter’s room.

The place where she had grown up, where she had kept her books and schoolbags, where Selena had sat on the edge of her bed through fevers and nightmares and the small heartbreaks of childhood.

The room that still held pieces of Emilia’s life.

Dante had no right to enter it. He had no right to touch anything that belonged to their daughter.

He had no right to return from the dead and start taking things.

"Get away from her room!"

Her voice cracked as she hurried after him.

Dante reached the doorway, and then he paused.

Selena almost collided with him, as she roughly blocked the path to Emilia’s room.

"Move," he said.

"No."

He turned his head.

The look he gave her should have silenced her. She was still terrified. She could barely keep her hands from shaking, but this was Emilia’s room.

Selena had spent too much of her life trying to protect her daughter from the consequences of other people’s choices to stand aside now.

"You don’t get to walk in here," she said. "You don’t get to come into this house after everything you’ve done and touch her things."

Dante stared at her. "You’re going to make this difficult."

"You have no idea how difficult I can make this."

The words surprised him, if the slight lift of his eyebrows meant anything.

For one foolish second, she thought she might have reached him.

He looked past Selena into the room. "I don’t have time for this."

He stepped forward.

Selena caught his sleeve. "Don’t you dare."

His gaze dropped to her hand. "Let go."

He stood fully before her.

Up close, the differences were worse.

The familiar face had grown harder. His eyes held a stillness she had never seen in him before, and a frightening lack of hesitation. There was no uncertainty in him. No sign that he had just returned to a house where his wife believed him dead.

He had come with a purpose, and he would not allow her to stand between him and it.

"Selena," he said quietly. "I’m giving you one last chance to behave sensibly."

She released his sleeve as though it had burned her.

"Behave sensibly?"

Her voice shook with disbelief.

"You come into my home, demand something from our daughter, shove me out of your way, and now you want me to behave sensibly?"

Dante’s expression remained blank. "Yes."

She looked at him, and understood, with a clarity that frightened her more than his return, that she was not going to find answers by appealing to the man he used to be.

That man was gone. Perhaps he had been gone long before the funeral.

Whatever the truth, she could not afford to waste another second trying to reach him.

She had to protect Emilia. Even if she did not understand what she was protecting her from.

"You will not go near her," Selena said.

Dante sighed. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his coat.

Selena went still.

She could not have explained what she expected him to pull out. A weapon, perhaps. Something that would make his intentions unmistakable.

Instead, he produced a folded white handkerchief.

The sight made no sense.

She stared at it, then at him.

"What are you—"

He moved before she finished.

One hand caught her wrist. The other came up over her mouth and nose, pressing the handkerchief against her face.

Selena tried to scream. The sound was swallowed beneath the cloth.

She jerked backwards, striking his chest, and immediately fought to wrench herself free.

Dante tightened his hold. "Stop struggling."

The command was so calm that terror tore through her.

She clawed at his hand.

He was stronger than she expected, and the shock of his touch left her struggling to understand that this was happening.

He was holding her down in the hallway of her own house, covering her face while she fought to breathe, and there was nothing in his eyes that suggested he felt anything at all.

She twisted violently, trying to tear the handkerchief away.

Her heel caught against the edge of the rug.

They staggered, and for a moment, his grip loosened.

Selena seized the opportunity and wrenched her face aside, dragging in a desperate breath.

"Help!"

The word came out ragged.

Dante’s expression darkened.

He pulled her back against him, clamping a hand over her mouth again.

"Quiet."

She drove her elbow backwards.

He grunted.

Her hand found his wrist, and she dug her nails into his skin hard enough to hurt. She felt him flinch.

She stamped down on his foot and twisted again, nearly breaking free.

The handkerchief slipped.

Selena gasped, sucking in air. "Help!" she screamed.

She threw herself towards the sitting room, reaching for the table where her phone lay on the kitchen counter beyond it.

Dante caught her around the waist and dragged her backwards.

Her fingers scraped against the wall. She kicked at him.

He hauled her away from the kitchen, his arm locked around her middle. "Stop making me do this."

The words struck her with such absurdity that she almost laughed.

She clawed at his arm, fighting with everything she had left.

Then the cloth was pressed against her face again.

Selena turned her head, but he held her in place.

She could not see the sitting room anymore. The hallway had become a blur of familiar walls and framed photographs, the floor tilting beneath her as she struggled.

She forced herself to move, to dig her heels into the floor, to pull at his wrist.

She could not pass out. Not here. Not while he was still standing in her house.

Not when Emilia was somewhere in the world, unaware that the man she believed dead had returned.

Selena’s vision blurred.

She blinked hard, trying to clear it.

The framed photograph on the wall wavered.

It was a picture of Emilia at sixteen, standing in the garden with a cake in her hands, laughing at something Selena had said.

Her knees buckled.

Dante caught her before she hit the floor.

For a moment, Selena felt his arm beneath her shoulders, the firm pressure of his hand at the back of her head.

The familiar sensation was so wrong that it frightened her more than the struggle had. Once, he had held her like this because she was exhausted.nOnce, he had carried Emilia through the house when she fell asleep on the sofa.

Once, his arms had meant safety.

Now she could not tell whether he was keeping her from falling or simply making sure she remained within his grasp.

She tried to lift her head. "Dante..."

His name emerged as a faint, broken sound.

He looked down at her. There was no apology in his face, only impatience.

"Where is the necklace, Selena?"

She tried to answer.

Her mouth moved, but her thoughts were slipping away from her.

The room had become strangely distant. The sounds around her seemed to be coming from the end of a long corridor.

Her hand caught his coat, and she clung to it.

Dante looked at her fingers, then at her face.

"Enough."

He lowered her to the floor.

For one bewildering second, Selena thought he was letting her go.

Then his hand closed around her shoulder, and he struck her hard enough to send a burst of white light across her vision.

Her head snapped sideways, and the world lurched. She barely felt herself fall.

The last thing she registered was the cold tile against her cheek and the sound of her own ragged breathing.

Then everything went dark.