Elena POV
The Blue Velvet Lounge sat like a bruise on the edge of the territory.
Dante parked on the sidewalk.
He snatched a gun from the glove compartment.
"Stay here," he ordered.
He was already moving before the engine had even died.
I didn't stay.
I followed him.
I needed to witness this.
I needed to see the choice he made when the stakes were life and death.
The lounge was empty, save for an overturned table and three people near the bar.
Sofia was cowering in the corner, her makeup smeared into dark streaks, clutching her chest.
A man I recognized as Joe, a low-level drug pusher Dante had fired last month, was waving a serrated hunting knife.
"Back off!" Joe yelled, his eyes wild. "I'll cut her! I swear to God, I'll cut her!"
Dante stood ten feet away, his gun leveled at Joe's head.
"Let her go, Joe." Dante’s voice was calm, terrifyingly steady. "Walk away, and I’ll make it quick."
"You ruined me!" Joe screamed, spittle flying. "You took my turf! Now I take your girl!"
"She's not part of this," Dante said.
"She's everything to you!" Joe laughed, a manic, broken sound. "Everyone knows it. The great Dante Vitiello and his precious Sofia."
I stood in the shadows of the entrance.
Neither of them saw me.
"Please, Dante!" Sofia wailed. "He touched me! He said he was going to..."
"Quiet," Dante snapped, though his eyes flickered with worry.
"Drop the gun," Joe demanded. "Or I carve a smile into her pretty face."
He pressed the knife against Sofia's cheek. A bead of blood welled up against the steel.
Dante didn't hesitate.
He placed his gun on the floor and kicked it away.
"Let her go," Dante said, raising his hands. "Take me instead."
My heart stopped.
He was trading his life for hers.
Joe grinned. "Deal."
He shoved Sofia aside.
She scrambled away, crawling under a table like a frightened child.
Joe lunged at Dante.
Dante was faster, stronger, but he was unarmed.
He caught Joe's wrist, but the momentum carried them both crashing into the bar.
Glass shattered.
They struggled, a tangle of limbs and grunts.
I saw the flash of silver.
Then I heard the wet thud of steel entering flesh.
Dante grunted.
He headbutted Joe, sending the man sprawling unconscious to the floor.
But Dante didn't stand up straight.
He stumbled back, clutching his side.
Blood, dark and thick, began to seep through his fingers, staining his white shirt crimson.
"Dante!" Sofia screamed.
She crawled out from under the table and rushed to him.
He slid down the front of the bar, collapsing onto the dirty floor.
"I'm okay," he wheezed. "Are you hurt?"
"No, no, I'm fine," she cried, hovering over him but not touching the blood. "Oh my god, you're bleeding so much."
Dante looked at her.
His face was pale, slick with sweat.
He reached up and touched her cheek with a bloody hand.
"I couldn't let him hurt you," he whispered.
"Why?" she sobbed. "Why did you do that?"
"Because I love you," Dante said.
The words hung in the stale air of the bar.
I stood frozen in the doorway.
It wasn't a hallucination.
It wasn't a misunderstanding.
He said it.
"I never should have married her," Dante continued, his voice getting weaker. "I let my grandfather push me into a cage. But you... you are my freedom, Sofia."
Tears streamed down Sofia's face. "Don't talk like that. You're going to be fine."
"Promise me," Dante rasped. "When this is over... we end it. I end it with Elena. I want you."
A strange sensation washed over me.
It wasn't pain.
It was weightlessness.
The final tether that held my soul to his snapped.
It didn't snap with a bang. It snapped with a whisper.
I looked at the man bleeding on the floor.
The man I had loved for twelve years.
The man I had saved from freezing water.
The man I had taken a bullet for in my dreams a thousand times.
He was a stranger.
He was just a man who loved another woman.
And I was just a ghost watching a tragedy that didn't belong to me anymore.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
The ambulance was coming.
Dante's eyes started to close.
Sofia was too busy crying to notice me.
I took a step back.
Then another.
I turned around and walked out of the bar.
I walked past the arriving police cars.
I walked past the paramedics rushing in with a stretcher.
I walked until I found a taxi.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking, but they were clean.
No blood.
Not this time.
"The hospital," I said. "I have some paperwork to finish."
