Page 86 of Of Lies and Shadows

“Oh yeah?” I challenge, pacing toward her. “Then what? What’s your great solution?”

She lifts her chin. “I become their day nanny.”

I stare at her. “You what?”

“I come in the morning. I get them dressed, fed, and ready for school. I take them. I pick them up. I help with homework, make dinner, and put them to bed. Then I leave.”

She says it so easily, as if it’s the most logical thing in the world. But every word feels like a blade to the chest.

“They’re better now,” she adds softly. “Lucia sleeps through the night. No more nightmares. Alessio isn’t biting people anymore. They’re settled. Stable.”

“Because of you,” I bark. “Because they feel safe withyou. And now you want to show up like a fucking ghost and then disappear at bedtime?”

“It can work,” she insists, a touch of desperation breaking through her mask. “It’s the cleanest way. They won’t feel the tension. They’ll still have me. Just… not like this.”

“No,” I say, low and dangerous now. “And you know what?”

I stalk across the room to the fireplace. Her eyes widen, not in fear but in fury.

“Dante, don’t?—”

I toss the papers into the flames without hesitation. The fire catches immediately, curling the edges of the divorce papers into black ash.

“You don’t get to decide this alone,” I say, turning back to her. “You don’t get to rip yourself out of our lives like a clean cut and call it love.”

She stares at the flames, her jaw clenched. But she doesn’t move to stop it. Doesn’t speak.

"You think this is about control? About punishment?" I growl, my voice rising as the flames eat away at the only future she was willing to claim. "It’s not. It’s about not letting go of the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me!"

She freezes, and I see it. Her hand lifts, almost like muscle memory, and her fingers brush the corner of her cheek.

That spot, the one I spit on. And just like that, all the air leaves my lungs.

Because I know exactly what she’s seeing in her head.Not this version of me. Not the man begging her to stay. But the one who made her kneel. The one who shamed her.

“Francesca—” My voice breaks on her name.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t even look at me.

I cross the space between us in two strides, not thinking, only feeling. My hand wraps gently around her wrist, no force, just a plea, and I lift her fingers away from her face.

Then I lower my mouth to that spot, that cruel, violated corner of her cheek, and I press my lips there. Soft, reverent, and apologetic as if I could kiss the memory away.

Her breath stutters.

I don’t speak. I don’t beg. I just stay there, holding her hand to my chest, my lips trembling against the place I once defiled.

"I'm sorry," I whisper again. "For everything."

I can’t tell if she’s about to pull away or fall apart.

She takes a shaky breath as I keep brushing my lips over the spot—that spot—hoping, somehow, to erase the memory of that day. Of the spit, of the monster I became.

I press one more kiss there, then another, working my way up to her mouth like reverence could undo violence.

“I’m not that man,” I say, my lips just a breath from hers. “I showed you the ugliest part of me because—” I kiss her softly, carefully.

She doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t push me away, either.

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