Chapter 99 My Choice
Dante POV
My shoes crunched softly against the snow as I walked down the bank toward the water even the cold was too brutal, biting in a way that felt almost personal, the same sharp cold from that night. The sky was dimming, painted in fading streaks of pink and blue with a faint burn of orange clinging stubbornly to the horizon. The last breath of daylight. In a few minutes, it would be gone completely, swallowed by the dark.
I stopped at the exact spot even the same place I had seen in the painting.
My gaze locked onto the water, unmoving and the dock rocked gently with the slow movement of the lake, rising and falling in a lazy rhythm. Around me, the trees stood tall and silent, their branches skeletal against the fading sky. Every detail matched what she had painted even the spacing of the trees. The open clearing and also the sparse leaves clinging to the branches, It was all exactly the same but It felt wrong like I had stepped inside her head.
Every inhale burned as the cold cut through my lungs, sharp and unforgiving, and when I exhaled, a cloud of white vapor drifted in front of my face before dissolving into the frozen air. The silence was deafening, broken only by the faint creak of wood from the dock and the whisper of wind brushing past the trees.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, letting the cold sink deeper instead of fighting it. I welcomed it and let it seep through my clothes, into my skin, into the warmth of my muscles. The sting grounded me, kept me here, kept me from slipping too far into the chaos in my head.
Slowly, the sun disappeared completely and the colors drained from the sky until nothing remained but dull gray fading into black. The world dimmed, and with it came the memories, the light leaving felt like a door closing, pulling me back into that night.
That night and the alley, ghe moment everything changed that was when I met Isabella.
I had gone there to kill her and that had been the plan from the start clean, simple and inevitable but then I saw her face, really saw it. Recognition hit me like a blow to the chest and I should have finished it anyway. I should have pulled the trigger and walked awa but I didn’t.
Part of me told myself it was because my enemy deserved more than a quick death in a filthy alley and If I was going to destroy her, it had to mean something. She had to know who I was first. She had to understand exactly why.
That was the lie I told myself because standing here now, I knew the truth and the last thing I wanted was to kill her now. What I wanted was something far more dangerous.
I wanted to be in bed with her again. In that tiny apartment that barely felt like a home, the kitchen was always empty, the cupboards holding more dust than food. The mattress was too small, too thin, the springs unforgiving beneath us. She kept the place warmer than I liked, the heat always turned up a few degrees too high, making the air thick and heavy but I was never there for comfort.
I was there for her and that was the problem because now I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. I didn’t understand what she had become to me. Somewhere along the way, the lines had blurred, and I could not tell where the mission ended and something else began.
I couldn’t kill her now not just because she saved my life, that alone should not have mattered yet It should have changed nothing but it did and deeper than that, more dangerous than that, was the truth I could not escape.
I did not want to hurt her, she had asked me not to tie her up once, her voice quiet but steady, and I had listened and I had actually listened. That alone should have told me something was wrong with me and with this.
When I saw her walking alone down that crowded road, fear hit me so fast it made me furious. I followed without thinking, anger already building in my chest. When those bastards got too close, I didn’t hesitate and I chased them off without a second thought.
Not because of the mission but because of her and because all I wanted in that moment was to make sure she was safe.
That was the truth I could not outrun, no matter how far I walked into the cold.
All I wanted was to protect her nut protection came with a cost because protecting her meant destroying everything tied to her name. Her blood and her family. The very people my life had been built around hating. The vendetta that had shaped me, hardened me, turned me into the man standing here in the snow.
How was I supposed to protect her while tearing her world apart?
The two could not exist together and I knew that now.
I had reached the edge of something I could not avoid, no matter how much I tried to delay it there was no more pretending there was a way around it and lying to myself about control or patience or timing.
There was only a choice and it was a brutal one. Isabella or my revenge, one of them had to die inside me because I could not have both.