The clock glowed red.

2:17.

Harsh.

Raven lay flat on her back. The wide bed swallowed the center of the room. Sheets twisted around her calves. Restraints she hadn’t asked for. The mattress held the musk of him. Dark wood. Gun oil. Salt from hours earlier. Moonlight bled through the floor-to-ceiling glass. Silver rectangles cut across black marble.

Her lungs pulled air in short, useless drags. Sleep wouldn’t come.

She sat up.

Silk slip clung to the damp small of her back. Air brushed bare thighs when she swung her legs left. Feet met cold stone. The chill shot up bone. Settled low in her gut. She let it bite. Anything sharp enough to slice through the hollow behind her chest.

Bare feet crossed the open space. Bed to window. The vanity drawer slid open without sound. Fingers found the shattered phone. Black screen. Web of cracks. One corner missing entirely. Plastic edges bit her palm. She closed her fist around it. Didn’t press power. Marco’s voice didn’t need to fill the dark again. Not tonight. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Maybe never.

She lowered herself to the floor. The narrow gap between the foot of the bed and the glass. Back pressed to the mattress side. Knees drew tight to her chest. The phone piece balanced on her right thigh. Heavier than it should be. Moonlight cut through the window and laid a thin silver stripe directly across the fractured screen.

The opposite wall stood ten feet away. Plain cream. Unbroken except for one faint scuff near the baseboard. Her heel had caught there weeks ago.

She stared at that mark until her vision tunneled.

The rest of the bedroom stretched behind her. Closed door to the hallway. Tall wardrobe in the corner.

Faint outline of the ensuite entrance. The mansion stayed quiet. No footsteps in the long corridor. No low voices from the Blades rotating shift below. Just the distant hum of the city far down the hill and the slow, stubborn beat of blood in her own ears.

Minutes dragged.

Cold from the marble climbed her spine. Numbed her ass where it pressed to the floor. Her thighs. The backs of her calves. She didn’t shift. The phone piece warmed against her skin from body heat alone.

Marco’s face flickered behind her eyes. Sharp cheekbones. That crooked half-smile he saved only for her after a perfect knife throw. His boot tapping her ankle to correct stance in the old training hall. Never raising his voice. Never looking at her like disposable meat.

The memory brought the smell. Rubber mats. Old sweat. Blood from split knuckles.

His callused hand on her shoulder once. Hard enough to sting. Saying nothing because nothing needed saying.

Her throat tightened.

Not enough to choke. Just enough to remind the muscle still worked.

Eyes burned dry and hot. The tears stayed locked somewhere deep behind her ribs.

Three taps at the door. Low. Familiar.

Not Vincent’s sharp, commanding rap. Not a guard checking perimeter.

She didn’t answer.

The knob turned anyway.

Dante slipped inside. Closed the heavy door with his shoulder. Moonlight caught the edge of black leather. The thin white scar along his jaw. He didn’t flip any lights. Didn’t speak. Just crossed the open floor in six quiet strides and lowered himself to the marble right beside her. Back against the same side of the bed. Legs stretched long toward the windows. Boots scuffed once before he settled.

His left shoulder now inches from hers.

His presence filled the narrow space between bed and glass. Night air clung to him. The faint metallic tang every Blade carried. Gunpowder residue. Cold steel. Something sharper underneath.

He didn’t look at her.

Didn’t ask what the hell she was doing on the floor at two in the morning with a dead phone in her lap.

Just sat. Solid. Unmoving.

Sharing the same cold patch of marble.

The silence came back thicker now. Two bodies in the tight gap. Raven kept her eyes fixed on the scuff mark across the room. The phone piece balanced on her thigh. Dante’s breathing stayed even and deep.

The kind that came from years of waiting in rooms where people bled out or made choices that ended lives.

Heat from his body seeped along her left side. Arms nearly touching. Not pressing.

Just there.

Time slipped again. The marble under her grew warmer where her body pressed. Her spine ached from the awkward angle against the bed frame. She didn’t move.

Marco’s last words lived in the broken plastic. Quiet instructions. The final steady hand on her shoulder before everything went to hell. The way he’d looked at her like she was still worth saving.

Something knotted behind her stomach, sharp and sudden.

Not nausea.

Just the echo of something that used to live there and now had nowhere left to go.

Leather creaked beside her.

"I lost someone once."

The words dropped into the narrow space between them. A blade laid flat on marble. Edge turned away.

She swallowed. The sound loud in the quiet.

"Caruso killed him."

Raven’s fingers curled tighter around the phone piece. Plastic bit deeper into her palm.

"Did you get revenge?"

Her voice scraped out. Rough at the edges.

"Yes."

One word. Flat. No shine of pride.

"Did it help?"

"No."

The pause after that stretched longer than any before it. Moonlight crept another inch across the floor. Sliding closer to Dante’s outstretched boot. His toe tapped once. Stilled.

"Then why are you telling me this?"

He exhaled through his nose. Slow. Controlled.

"Because you’re not supposed to do it alone."

Raven’s ribs pressed inward. The air in the tight space between bed and windows went thin. Harder to pull.

She set the phone piece on the marble between them. It clinked once. Soft.

The cracked screen caught moonlight and threw it back fractured. Broken.

Pressure built hot behind her eyes. Pushing hard. Nothing broke free.

She wanted to.

The want itself felt new. Raw. Unfamiliar. Like a nerve gone numb years ago now waking with pins and needles shooting through it. Some fractured piece that used to belong only to Caruso now sat empty.

Waiting.

She hated the waiting.

Hated how quiet the waiting had become.

Dante didn’t reach for the phone. Didn’t offer his hand. No soft words. He just stayed right there beside her. Shoulder brushing hers now that he’d shifted slightly. Heat seeped through the thin silk of her slip where their arms touched.

She let her head fall back against the mattress edge. The high ceiling blurred above them.

Marco’s voice lived in the dead plastic. Last proof someone in that rotten family had seen her as more than a blade with a pulse.

She remembered the exact weight of his hand that final time. Callused thumb brushing her knuckle. Cheap coffee on his breath. The way he never once called her whore or pawn.

Her chest hollowed further.

Not grief exactly. Something colder. Emptier.

The kind of empty that made her question if she’d ever been full to begin with.

Dante’s breathing synced with hers after a while.

In.

Out.

Steady.

The mansion creaked once somewhere far off in the long hallways. Old wood settling. A Blade shifting weight on the roof. She didn’t flinch.

Cold from the floor climbed all the way to her hips. Fingers stiff around nothing. Thighs ached from holding the tight position. She didn’t uncurl. The ache grounded her. Reminded her the body still answered when the mind refused.

Vincent sat three doors down the corridor in the main suite.

Probably still awake.

Probably waiting for her to crawl back into the bed they shared like it meant something normal.

The thought sent warmth through her chest. Not the hollow kind. The one she’d stopped pretending she didn’t feel. She let it sit. Then set it aside.

Not tonight.

Tonight the narrow strip of floor between bed and windows was all she could handle. The silence. The broken phone.

Dante moved first.

He pushed to his feet in one fluid motion. Leather jacket whispering against the bed frame. He stood tall in the moonlight. Looking down at her once.

Not pity.

Not judgment.

Just the flat, even stare of a man who had sat on too many floors with too many ghosts of his own.

"Door stays unlocked."

Quiet. Not an order. Not quite concern.

Just fact.

He crossed the open space in six strides. Opened the door without hurry. Slipped out into the dark corridor.

The heavy latch clicked behind him.

A period at the end of a sentence neither of them had finished.

Raven stayed exactly where she was on the floor. Knees still drawn up tight. Arms wrapped around them now. The phone piece lay untouched on the marble between her feet.

Her eyes grew heavy.

Not peace. Not forgiveness. Not the clean relief of tears.

Just the kind of exhaustion that finally won the argument with her body.

Her head tipped sideways. Temple resting against the cool wood of the bed frame. The marble under her had gone warm from her heat. Thighs burned from the angle.

She let every ache settle deep into her bones.

Outside the tall windows the city lights flickered far below. Somewhere beyond the iron gates Caruso still hunted her name. Vincent still waited three doors down. The Blades still rotated their silent watch through the long hallways.

None of it reached the quiet hour trapped in this narrow strip of marble between bed and glass.

Her breathing evened out.

Slow. Shallow.

The want to cry still sat behind her ribs. Smaller now. Not gone.

Just waiting its turn.

The scuff mark on the far wall blurred as her eyes drifted shut.

One last clear image before the dark took her completely.

The cracked screen of the phone catching moonlight.

A wound that refused to close.

She slept.

The mansion held its breath around her.

And three doors down, Vincent’s lamp still burned.