Chapter 106 Who She Needs
Dante POV
I sat alone in my office overlooking the Lake as my gaze drifted toward the distant mountains where winter was slowly losing its grip.
Winter had always been my season. It was quiet, ruthless, and honest. Maybe that was why I felt at home in it because I had always been cold. The glass of scotch on my desk sat untouched for a while before I finally reached for it, swirling the amber liquid as my eyes settled on the painting across the room.
Isabella even in paint, she had a presence that refused to be ignored.
She was captured sitting back on the bed, her posture soft, her expression open in a way that made her look almost fragile. There was something raw in her eyes, something honest and unguarded.
The artist had caught her beauty perfectly, but it was more than that. It was the emotion behind it, the vulnerability she tried so hard to hide in real life.
The moment I first saw her, she had drawn me in without effort. It had not been gradual or uncertain and once I had her, I held on tightly.
I kept her close, controlled every moment I could, made sure she stayed exactly where I wanted her, until she slipped away.
The memory of that loss still burned in my chest, sharp and unforgiving.
I was not a man who lost control everything in my life was calculated and deliberate but Isabella had rewritten everything with her, control was never truly mine and I hated that yet, in some twisted way, I respected it.
Love was not something I had ever known, not in any real sense. I understood loyalty, desire, possession, even obsession but love? That was something else entirely. Standing on that snowy bank the last time I saw her, I realized I was no longer the same man I had been before she entered my life that version of me was gone, buried somewhere I could never reach again and there was no going back.
Once I understood what I felt for her, I did not run from it. That was not who I was because I had always faced things head on, no matter how inconvenient or unwelcome they were. If loving her meant exposing a part of myself I had never shown anyone, then so be it.
Fear had never controlled me not even now.
What made it worse was that she was the last woman I should have ever fallen for.
Her family represented everything I despised. They had caused me pain I would never forget, scars that had shaped the man I became. That hatred was not something that disappeared overnight and if I was being honest, a part of me resented her too.
She had grown up surrounded by things I never had. A complete family, security and wealth that ensured she would never know what it meant to struggle for survival.
While I had fought for every breath on the streets, that kind of difference did not just fade away. It stayed and poisoned everything but what I felt for her was stronger than all of it.
Stronger than the bitterness and greater than the anger. Stronger than the promises I had made to myself about revenge and retribution.
For her, I had let it go and that was not something I did lightly. I knew her family would never accept me. I would never accept them either. There was too much history, too much blood between us but if I could make that sacrifice, then she should have been able to do the same.
Instead, she walked away.
The anger I felt toward her was constant, simmering just beneath the surface but it was nothing compared to the ache that followed it. The emptiness and the silence.
My bed felt wrong without her and the solitude I once valued now pressed in on me, heavy and suffocating.
My eyes returned to the painting, and for a moment, it felt like she was still here like there was some invisible thread connecting us despite the distance. I clenched my jaw.
I despised her and I hated her. I could not stand the way she had turned my world upside down but none of that changed the truth.
I loved her that was the one thing I could not escape.
I had tried to make her see reason and tried to show her that what we had was inevitable, that fighting it was pointless but Isabella was stubborn in a way that tested even my patience.
A week had passed since I walked out of her apartment with that painting in my hands.
A week of silence and I had been certain she would break and she would give in to the pull between us, to the fire that neither of us could fully control. I thought she would come to me, or at the very least, allow me back into her life the moment I returned.
All it would take was one night.
One moment ayonce I had her again, everything would fall back into place. Our twisted, complicated connection would restart like it always did but she had not come back.
She had chosen distance instead.
Chosen a different path, she wanted something I could never be.
A good man and someone respectable that her family could welcome without hesitation. A man who followed rules, who lived an honest life, who smiled and played the part expected of him.
Everything I was not and she could try to convince herself all she wanted, but I knew the truth.
She did not want a good man because she wanted me.
She judged the life I lived, the choices I made, the power I held but beneath that judgment, there was something else.
Respect and attraction because her eyes always gave her away.
My tattoos intimidated her, but she looked at them like they fascinated her too. My world scared her, but she never fully turned away from it and when it came down to it, I was the only one who had ever made her feel truly safe.
That was something she could not deny, no matter how hard she tried. Isabella was not weak. She was strong, determined, and far more powerful than she realized and a woman like her would never settle for anything less than a man who could match that strength.
She would search all she wanted, she would try to replace me but she would never find another man like me, someone who could command a room with a single glance and someone who could make people step back without saying a word.
Deep down, she knew it even if she refused to admit it out loud. I leaned back in my chair, my grip tightening slightly around the glass in my hand as my eyes remained locked on her painted image.
Whether she liked it or not, whether she fought it or not, there was one truth she could never escape. I was exactly what she needed.