Chapter 94 What I saw
Isabella POV
I stopped just before the hallway, my steps slowing until they completely died. I didn’t turn around. “You said you wanted to see the painting,” I said quietly. “It’s right there.”
His voice came sharp and commanding behind me. “Get your ass back here.”
Every instinct screamed at me to keep walking and disappear into the hallway then pretend this moment never existed but I froze instead.
“Don’t make me ask again.”
I swallowed hard. “What happened to my free will?”
“It doesn’t apply here.” His tone dropped lower, steadier. “Whatever fear you’ve got tied to that painting, you need to face it, you should never be ashamed of something you created.”
My eyes fluttered shut, he didn’t understand. “You don’t get it…”
“I understand more than you think,” he replied firmly. “Now get over here.”
I finally turned around each step back toward the couch felt heavier than the last, like I was walking straight into judgment. Dante gave a small nod toward the seat beside him and I obeyed.
The moment I sat down, heat radiated off his bare torso, wrapping around me and making it harder to breathe he couldn’t read my thoughts, but looking at that painting felt like opening the deepest, most fragile parts of myself and laying them bare in front of him.
I should’ve sold it, burned it, Dante studied me for a moment longer before reaching forward. He picked up the large, carefully wrapped canvas and laid it across his lap.
Slowly, deliberately, he began peeling away the brown paper, he worked with surprising care, removing each layer gently, making sure the frame didn’t get scratched. His attention was entirely on preserving it, not revealing it and he hadn’t even looked yet.
My pulse thundered in my ears as he lifted the painting, holding it firmly in both hands, and tilted it upward and then he saw it. I could have sworn my heart stopped, he went completely still.
His eyes widened slightly, unblinking, locked onto the canvas like he’d forgotten the rest of the world existed. The fire crackled behind us, flames shifting and glowing, filling the room with flickering light, he didn’t look away.
He absorbed it slowly, the same way he always did with my work. Dante wasn’t some art expert, but he understood what was in front of him. His gaze traced every stroke, every shadow, following the lines I’d carved into the canvas.
He was staring at himself, there was no mistaking it. The man in the painting stood at the edge of Lake Riva, staring across the frozen water and yet he didn’t look surprised.
Not by his likeness or not by the moment I’d chosen to immortalize. His expression was unreadable, focused so intensely it was like I had disappeared entirely, his eyes drifted over the details, the snow laced trees, the layered textures of winter, the glassy surface of the lake.
Then his gaze found the dock stretching out into the water twenty five feet into the cold stillness. That was where he had dropped a body but none of that darkness existed in the painting. No van, no blood, no violence and I wasn’t there either. It was just him.
The image showed a side of him no one ever saw and a version stripped of brutality. A man instead of a monster, he stood there like any ordinary person, shoulders broad but heavy, as though weighed down by a grief no one else could see.
I saw him differently than everyone else did.
Women flocked to him constantly, drawn in by his sharp jaw, sculpted body, and the ink that wrapped around him like temptation itself. But they only saw the surface.
They didn’t know the past that shaped him, the blood that followed him and the war he carried in his veins but I knew all of it and still, I painted him like that like he was simply a man.
I saw everything the boy who lost his mother, the man who lived for vengeance and the light buried beneath the darkness.
I saw the good and the broken pieces alike. I accepted him entirely even the parts drenched in blood and his endless war but could he see that now?
Could he feel what I’d poured into the canvas?
My affection, my longing and everything I’d tried so desperately to hide?
Time stretched painfully, minutes blurred together until nearly half an hour had passed, and still he said nothing. He examined every inch like he was afraid of missing something hidden beneath the surface, his face remained unreadable, revealing nothing of what he felt.
Eventually, he lowered the painting and he set it carefully on the floor and leaned it against the coffee table. My heart slammed violently against my ribs, each beat echoing in my ears. I felt weak, exposed, terrified of what he might say.
It had clearly meant something to him no one stared that long at something that didn’t matter.
Dante leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. His gaze unfocused, fixed somewhere distant, his jaw tightened not with anger, but with something heavier. His hands came together, rubbing slowly, like he was grounding himself.
I waited and waited but silence used to feel safe between us and comfortable but now it suffocated me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking whether he wanted to walk away or stay.
I didn’t know where we stood anymore usually, I could feel him sense whatever emotion moved through him like it was my own but not this time?
Finally, his deep voice broke through the quiet.
“That’s how you see me?”
He turned his head and looked at me, those striking blue eyes locking onto mine his gaze wasn’t cold. It burned, intense and consuming, but there was no anger in it.
Just something raw like It was a question, but I didn’t know if he truly wanted an answer.
“It’s just a painting” I murmured weakly.
“It’s not just a painting, baby,” he said softly.
His voice dropped to something almost reverent. “That must’ve taken you forever, ehen I looked at it I felt everything. The cold air and my breath turning to smoke.” His hand drifted to his shoulder. “I could feel the bullet tearing through me.”
His fingers pressed there lightly, like the wound still existed beneath his skin.
“I could feel the burn of your lips the first time I kissed you,” he continued quietly. “The loneliness that settles in my chest whenever I’m at Lake Riva and the way you fought me, the way you shocked me when you crawled across the ground even after the taser hit you.”
His voice thickened. “I lived that night all over again but clearer than when it actually happened.”
My gaze dropped, emotion tightening in my chest at every word.
“Look at me.”
I obeyed instantly, lifting my eyes back to his.
“That’s how talented you are,” he whispered. “That’s how powerful you are.”
“Powerful?” I breathed.
A faint, almost broken smile touched his lips.
“You made me feel something,” he said quietly. “You always make me feel something.”