Chapter 11: My Soul to Keep

Chapter 11: My Soul to Keep

The silence in the penthouse was a living entity, vast and absolute. It pressed in on Jessica, filled the space between Dante’s impossible offer and the shattered woman sitting on the floor in the ruins of a sapphire gown. Two paths. Two lives. Two deaths. The death of her safety, or the death of her heart.

She looked down at her hands, half-expecting to see them tremble, but they were perfectly still. The city lights below twinkled with an indifferent beauty, a galaxy of lives she could join, becoming an anonymous, protected ghost. She imagined it for a moment: a quiet apartment in Paris, mornings spent in a sun-drenched café, no fear of shadows at her window, no taste of violence in a lover’s kiss. An existence of perfect, hollow peace. An endless, silent scream of loneliness.

Then she looked at Dante. He stood like a statue carved from shadow and regret, waiting for her verdict. The monster who had confessed to murder was the same man who had admitted to watching her for months, drawn to her quiet passion like a moth to a flame. He had seen her, the real her, hiding in an art gallery, and had wanted her not as a decoration, but as a sanctuary. He was a storm, yes, but he was also the only rain that had ever made her feel like she could grow.

The words of Alessandro Rossi echoed in her mind—tarnished, broken. He had threatened to destroy her to get to Dante. But leaving now, accepting that safe, empty life, would be letting Rossi win. It would be letting him break her spirit, letting him sever the one connection that made her feel truly, terrifyingly alive. To run would be to die a slower, quieter death.

Slowly, deliberately, she gathered the torn silk of her dress and got to her feet. The movement was an answer in itself. She was no longer the collapsed victim on the floor. She was a woman making a stand. She walked across the cold marble, her bare feet silent, stopping just before him. She lifted her head, her gaze meeting the tempest in his eyes.

“My old life,” she said, her voice quiet but ringing with a strange, new strength, “the quiet girl in the museum… you said she died tonight.” She took a breath, the finality of her own words settling in her soul. “Let her. I choose you.”

The name she whispered was his, and his alone. “I stay, Dante.”

For a moment, he didn't react. He simply stared at her, his face a mask of disbelief. He had been so certain she would choose the escape he offered, the gilded cage of safety far away from his darkness. He had braced himself for the loss. Her acceptance was a blow he hadn't anticipated.

Then, the change was like watching a fissure crack across a mountain of granite. The rigid control in his shoulders dissolved. The storm in his eyes didn't vanish but calmed into a deep, fathomless ocean of emotion—awe, reverence, and a devotion so fierce it was terrifying. He reached out, his hand trembling slightly, and cupped her jaw as if she were made of spun glass.

“You don’t know what you are choosing,” he whispered, his voice thick with a raw, desperate tenderness.

“I’m choosing all of you,” she affirmed, her voice unwavering. “The darkness included.”

A sound escaped his throat, a guttural groan that was part agony, part absolution. He pulled her into him, burying his face in her hair. His embrace wasn't the savage claiming from before; it was the desperate, clinging hold of a drowning man who had just found shore. He held her for a long, silent moment, simply breathing her in, cementing the reality of her choice.

When he finally pulled back, his eyes burned with a new fire, a solemn, ancient light. He took her hand and led her from the foyer into the stark, cavernous bedroom. He didn’t lead her to the bed. He went to a heavy, antique wardrobe of dark, polished wood that stood in stark contrast to the room’s modern sterility. He pressed his thumb into a hidden panel, and a secret drawer slid open with a soft click.

From a bed of black velvet, he lifted an object. It wasn't a sparkling engagement diamond. It was a ring, thick and wrought from old, burnished gold. The face of it was a flat, black onyx, intricately carved with the crest she had seen etched on his cufflinks and letterhead—a hawk, wings outstretched, its talons clutching a bolt of lightning. It was a signet of power, of legacy, of blood.

He turned to her, holding the ring in his palm as if it were a sacrament.

“This was my grandmother’s,” he said, his voice low and formal, imbued with the weight of generations. “In my family, this is not a symbol of courtship. It is a vow. A mark of belonging.”

He took her left hand, his thumb stroking the back of it gently. “The world will see this and know who you are. What you are. To touch you is to declare war on the House of Moretti. My enemies will know that your blood is my blood. My name is your fortress.”

He looked directly into her eyes, and she felt as though he were looking past her flesh and into the very core of her soul.

“I cannot promise you peace, Jessica,” he vowed, his voice a sacred oath in the quiet room. “I cannot promise you an easy life. But I promise you this. No one will ever harm you again. I will stand between you and any threat. I will burn the world to the ground to keep you safe within it. I swear this on my father’s name, and on my own soul.”

With a breathtaking reverence, he slid the heavy gold ring onto her fourth finger. It was a perfect fit. The cool, solid weight of it felt less like a piece of jewelry and more like a part of her own bone, a permanent, binding seal.

He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the hawk crest, sealing the vow. Then he looked at her, and the raw, possessive predator was back, but tempered with this new, profound devotion.

“Sei mia,” he murmured, the Italian words a silken chain around her heart. You are mine. “My soul to keep.”

He drew her into a kiss, and this one was different from all the ones that had come before. It wasn’t a conquest or an erasure. It was a sealing. It was the taste of his promise, of her choice, of their shared, dangerous future. It was a kiss that acknowledged the monster and cherished the man, a kiss that accepted the price of truth and found it worth paying.

She clung to him, the torn silk of her gown forgotten, the cold weight of the ring a comforting anchor on her hand. She had made her choice. She had walked willingly into the heart of the storm. And as he held her, she knew, with a terrifying and exhilarating certainty, that she was finally, truly, home.