Chapter 14 Deeper Water
Wednesday morning arrived with the kind of nerves Aria hadn't felt since her first solo surgery.
She sat at her desk reviewing Dante's file for the fourth time, absorbing nothing. His test results were good. Medication levels are stable. Heart rhythm within acceptable parameters. There was no medical reason for her pulse to be racing, no clinical explanation for the way her stomach fluttered every time she glanced at the clock.
9:57 AM.
Three minutes.
The knock came precisely at ten.
"Come in."
Dante walked through the door looking like he'd stepped out of her thoughts and into reality. Dark suit, white shirt, that slight smile that suggested he knew exactly what effect he had on her.
"Dottoressa. I hope I'm not early."
"Right on time." She gestured to the chair across from her desk, grateful for the furniture between them. "How have you been feeling?"
"Better than I have in years." He settled into the chair with that easy confidence. "The medication is working well. No episodes, no symptoms."
"Don't get complacent." Aria pulled up his digital file, reviewing the test results from his blood work. "Your QT interval is stable because you're taking the medication consistently. That needs to continue."
She scanned the numbers on screen, making notes. "Your latest EKG shows significant improvement. The arrhythmia episodes have decreased by forty percent. At this rate, I can reduce your appointments to every two weeks instead of weekly."
Silence.
She glanced up. Dante was watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"I prefer weekly," he said finally.
"There's no medical necessity—"
"I know." His gaze held hers. "I still prefer weekly."
The unspoken hung between them. He wanted to see her. The medical appointments were just an excuse.
Aria cleared her throat, looked back at her screen. "I'll review again in a month. For now, we'll maintain the current schedule."
"Good." He smiled. "Coffee?"
She should say no. Should maintain boundaries.
"Let me grab my coat."
Signora Lucia's café was busier than usual, but their corner table sat empty.
"She saves it for you," the old woman said as she brought their espressos, giving Aria a look that held too much knowledge. "Every Wednesday morning, that table stays empty until you arrive."
After Lucia walked away, Aria studied Dante across the table. "You asked her to hold it."
"I asked her to hold it for us." He lifted his cup. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes. One implies I'm alone. The other acknowledges that this is becoming something neither of us planned."
Aria's pulse kicked up. "What is this?"
"I'm not sure yet." His honesty was disarming. "But I know Wednesday morning is the best part of my week."
She wrapped her hands around her cup, needing something to do with them. "What do you do? When you're not here, what is it you actually do?"
His expression shifted. Closed slightly. "I run businesses. Import, export, logistics."
"That's what you told me before. It's not an answer."
"That's the answer I can give."
"Why?"
"Because the details would bore you. Or horrify you. I'm not sure which would be worse."
Aria leaned forward. "You know everything about me. You ask questions, you remember answers, you see things I don't even realize I'm revealing. But you? You're very good at sharing emotions without sharing facts."
Dante set down his cup, considered her carefully. "If I tell you the truth, you'll look at me differently."
"Maybe I need to."
"I move money," he said finally. "Legitimately and otherwise. I facilitate transactions between people who can't or won't go through official channels. I solve problems that require discretion and resources. Sometimes that means operating in areas that make lawyers uncomfortable."
"You're a criminal."
"I'm a businessman who understands that laws are flexible." His voice was calm, matter-of-fact. "Does that horrify you?"
Aria thought about it. I really thought about it. "It should. But mostly I'm wondering why you trust me enough to tell me."
"Because you asked. Because I'm tired of lying to you." He reached across the table, his hand covering hers. "Is this okay?"
The contact sent electricity up her arm. She should pull away. Every professional instinct screamed at her to pull away.
She didn't.
"It's okay."
His fingers laced through hers, warm and solid. They sat like that while the café hummed with conversation around them.
"Tell me something true," Dante said quietly. "Something you don't tell anyone else."
"I'm terrified." The confession escaped before she could stop it. "Of this. Of you. Of the way I feel when I'm with you. I've spent my entire life being careful, being controlled, being safe. And you make me want to be reckless."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"I don't know yet."
His thumb stroked across her knuckles. "For what it's worth, you terrify me too."
"I doubt that."
"I'm afraid of how much I want this. Of what I'd be willing to do to keep it." His focus held hers. "I'm afraid that when you figure out who I really am, you'll run. And I'm afraid that if you run, I won't be able to let you go."
Aria's breath caught. "That sounds—"
His phone rang. He glanced at the screen, and his entire expression transformed. The warmth bled out, replaced by something cold and hard.
"I need to take this."
He released her hand, stepped outside. Through the window, Aria watched his body language change completely. Shoulders back, jaw tight, gestures sharp and controlled. He was speaking rapidly in Italian, his voice carrying through the glass just enough that she caught fragments.
"...handled...permanently...I don't care..."
He looked lethal. Capable of violence. Nothing like the man who'd been holding her hand thirty seconds ago.
When he returned two minutes later, he tried to smile, but it didn't reach his face.
"Everything okay?" Aria asked.
"Fine. Just business."
But it wasn't fine. She could see it in the tension around his mouth, the way his fingers drummed against the table, the distance in his focus even though he was looking directly at her.
"Dante, what's wrong?"
"Nothing you need to worry about." He stood abruptly. "I should walk you back to the hospital."
The shift was jarring. One moment they'd been connected, intimate, honest. Now there was a wall between them.
They walked the two blocks in relative silence. Dante kept scanning the street, his attention divided, and Aria noticed for the first time how many people seemed to watch him. A man across the street, keeping pace. Another at the corner, pretending to check his phone.
"Is someone following us?"
"My driver. Leone. He's protective."
"Of you?"
"Of things I care about." Dante looked at her, meaning clear, but his mind was obviously elsewhere.
At the hospital entrance, they stopped. The awkwardness was back, neither quite sure how to say goodbye.
Dante reached out, took her hand, brought it to his lips. The gesture was old-fashioned, courtly, and made her heart stutter.
"Until next week, dottoressa."
Then he was walking away, phone already back in his ear, switching into that cold, commanding version of himself that she was starting to realize was the real Dante Moretti. The one the world saw. The one she'd just glimpsed through the café window.
Aria turned to enter the hospital, then paused.
Across the street, partially hidden behind a parked car, stood a woman. Tall, elegant, dressed entirely in black. Too far away to see her face clearly, but something about her stance struck Aria as familiar. The way she held herself. The sharp angle of her shoulders.
The woman raised a phone, pointed it in Aria's direction. Or Dante's. Or both.
Aria blinked, and the woman was gone. Disappeared into the crowd like she'd never been there.
Her phone buzzed. Text from unknown number: Sunday. 1 PM. Don't forget. - Isabetta
Below it, another message from Dante: I'm sorry I had to leave like that. You make everything better, even terrible days. Thank you for coffee.
Aria looked back at the street where the woman had been standing. Nothing. Just normal pedestrian traffic, cars, the usual chaos of Roman streets.
But the feeling of being watched lingered. And something about that woman's silhouette nagged at her memory. Where had she seen that stance before? That particular way of standing, rigid and watchful?
She shook her head, pushed through the hospital doors. She was being paranoid. Seeing shadows where there were none.
Except when she reached her office and closed the door, when she pulled out the photo album she'd brought from home that morning for reasons she couldn't articulate, when she flipped to that picture of her mother's funeral and saw Isabetta standing there in black, watching the camera with ice-blue calculation—
The stance was the same.
Aria's phone buzzed again. This time, a photo from an unknown number. The image showed Aria and Dante at Signora Lucia's, hands joined across the table, faces close together, lost in their own world.
Below it, a message: We need to talk about him. Sunday. Don't be late.
Aria stared at the photo. Someone had been watching them. Taking pictures. Collecting evidence of... what? Their relationship? Their connection?
She looked at Dante's text again. Sweet. Sincerely, Or was it? How much of what he showed her was real, and how much was the performance of a man who moved money for criminals and solved problems through means that made lawyers uncomfortable?
I'm afraid that if you run, I won't be able to let you go.
The words that had seemed romantic twenty minutes ago now felt like a warning.
Aria sat at her desk, phone in one hand, photo album in the other, caught between two versions of reality. The one where she was falling for a m
an who made her feel alive. And the one where she was walking blindly into something that would destroy her.
Sunday. Isabetta would have answers.
Aria wasn't sure she wanted to hear them.