Chapter 39 Echoes
The sun went down, dragging the warmth away with it.
The fortress changed at night. During the day, it was a rugged, beautiful relic.
At night, with the wind howling through the stone arches and the ocean roaring below, it felt like a prison again.
We had dinner in the suite,pasta with a simple tomato sauce that Donatello had brought up. It was quiet.
Jasmine was exhausted from her day in the garden, her eyes drooping before she had even finished her plate.
Dante put her to bed.
I stayed in the main sitting area, nursing a glass of wine, listening to the low rumble of his voice through the bedroom door.
He was reading to her. Not a storybook, but something from memory. An old Italian fable about a fox and a grape vine.
He came out twenty minutes later, closing the door softly.
He looked drained. The pain in his arm was clearly catching up to him; he held his left shoulder stiffly, and his face was pale.
"Is she asleep?" I asked.
"Out cold," he said. He walked to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of water, bypassing the whiskey. A disciplined choice.
"You should sleep too," I said. "Your body needs to knit itself back together."
"I have emails to check," he said, moving toward the small desk in the corner.
"Dante—"
A scream pierced through the air, cutting me off instantly.
It wasn't a normal cry. It was a high, shrill shriek of pure terror that cut through the stone walls like a knife.
Dante moved faster than I thought a human could move.
He was at the bedroom door in a heartbeat, gun drawn from the holster at the small of his back before I even registered he was wearing it.
I ran after him.
Jasmine was sitting bolt upright in the center of the massive bed.
Her eyes were wide and unseeing, staring at the corner of the room. She was hyperventilating, her small chest heaving.
"The smoke!" she screamed, clawing at her throat. "Papa, the smoke! It burns!"
Dante holstered the gun instantly, realizing there was no intruder. The enemy was in her head.
He rushed to the bed. "Jasmine. Jasmine, look at me. There is no smoke."
He reached for her, but she flailed, her hands hitting his injured arm. He hissed in pain but didn't pull back.
"No! No! I can't breathe!" She was hysterical, trapped in the memory of the gas attack.
Dante looked helpless. He was a man who could command armies, but he didn't know how to fight a nightmare.
He looked at me, panic in his grey eyes.
I stepped forward.
"Jasmine," I said, my voice sharp and clear. Not soft. Grounding.
I climbed onto the bed. "Jasmine, look at my hand."
I held my hand up in front of her face, snapping my fingers. "Look at my hand."
She blinked, her gaze wavering.
"Breathe with me," I ordered. "In for four. One, two, three, four. Hold it."
I took a deep exaggerated breath. She mimicked me, a jagged, sobbing inhale.
"Out for four," I said. "Blow out the candles."
We did it three times. Slowly, the panic receded. Her eyes cleared.
She saw the stone walls of the fortress, not the smoke-filled hallway of the manor.
She slumped forward, exhausting herself.
"Lilith?" she whimpered.
"I'm here," I said, smoothing her sweaty hair back.
“We're here. The air is clean. Smell it? It smells like the ocean."
She took a sniff. "It's salty."
"Exactly. No smoke. Just salt."
She crawled toward me, not Dante. She curled up against my side, burying her face in my sweater.
"Don't leave," she whispered.
I looked up at Dante.
He was standing by the edge of the bed, his arm hanging uselessly at his side. He looked devastatingly sad.
He realized that in this moment, his strength couldn't save her, but my softness could.
"I won't leave," I promised her.
I stayed there for an hour, stroking her hair until her breathing leveled out into a deep sleep.
When I finally slid out of the bed, my legs were cramped. I walked out into the sitting room.
Dante was on the balcony. The glass doors were open, letting the cold wind blow the curtains inward.
I walked out.
He was leaning against the stone railing, looking down at the black water.
He wasn't smoking, though he looked like he wanted to.
"She chose you," he said without turning around. His voice was hollow.
"She didn't choose me, Dante. She just needed a woman. It’s instinct."
"I felt..." He paused, searching for the word. "Useless."
"You're not useless. You're the one who got her out of the house. You saved her life."
I moved to stand beside him. The wind whipped my hair across my face.
"I brought this on her," he said quietly.
"The attack. The nightmares. It is the price of my name. She is five years old, and she is dreaming of gas chambers."
He turned to look at me. In the moonlight, the sharp angles of his face looked like marble.
"You should leave, Lilith."
I froze. "What?"
"When the repairs are done. When we go back to the city. I will give you money. I will give you a new identity. You can go to France. Or America."
My heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. Freedom.
The thing I had wanted when I pointed a gun at my father's head.
But now, things are different. They have been since he dragged me onto that plane.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because if you stay, you will end up like her," he nodded toward the bedroom.
"Or like Isabella. Dead or traumatized. I cannot protect you from my world."
"I thought I was a prisoner," I said. "I thought I owed you a debt."
"The debt is paid," he said roughly. "You saved her sanity tonight. You saved mine. We are even."
He meant it. He was offering me the exit door.
I looked at him. I looked at the man who had trapped me, threatened me, and now... protected me.
I thought about the plan. I thought about the Key.
I thought about the ring on the finger of the man who killed my mother.
If I left now, I would survive. But I would never know the truth.
And I would leave that little girl alone in a house full of men with guns.
"No," I said.
Dante frowned. "No?"
"I'm not leaving."
"Lilith, do not be stupid—"
"I have nowhere to go, Dante!" I lied. Or maybe it wasn't a lie.
"My father is gone. My apartment is gone. My life in the city is gone. And... I'm not leaving Jasmine."
He stared at me, searching my face for deceit.
"You are making a mistake," he whispered.
"Probably," I said. I shivered in the cold wind.
Dante unbuttoned his suit jacket. He took it off and draped it over my shoulders. It was heavy, warm, and smelled like him.
"Very well," he said. His voice was low, intimate. "Then you stay."