CHAPTER 10

When the front door opens and Dante moves his first step into the living room, I look at him squarely and I know that something is really wrong. Because he looks really, really upset. Dante didn’t look so upset when he first appeared at our doorstep, two days ago.

He looked tired, exhausted and prostrated, but perfectly in control. He seemed to be hanging in there despite Cassandra’s kidnapping, despite the explosion, despite he knew there was a bomb in our house. Probably, he had taken his time to process everything.

I don’t know how his mind reasons, I can’t tell what’s going on behind his usually smooth surface, because the truth is that I don’t know him very well. Dante is just the man who helped me to get out that fine mess I was in. Dante was the man who talked to me softly while I had a gun pointed to John Sanders’ head. Dante was the man who told me that he was there to help me. He was the man catching Carmen’s fainted body in mid-air, that night. Then, when everything seemed over, he disappeared. Back to his town, back to his family, back to his life.

Dante is someone I only know in times of trouble, and suddenly this realization is hurting me. Because I can see from the look on his face that he needs help, and I don’t know what to do.

“Were you a soldier?”, I asked unexpectedly, brusquely looking up at him.
“Sort of…”, Dante answered nonchalantly.
“And then?”, I said.
He blinked his eyelids, his face turning deadly serious.
“…And then I got injured and I left”.
“What’s happened?”.
Dante stared at me and my eyes were glacial, attentive.
“Not a big deal, actually. A rocket-propelled grenade blew one of our hostage’s tent up, and I had fragments all over the left side of my body. The explosion was so powerful that even my balaclava flew off”.
“I’m sorry…” Carmen cut in.
He smiled.
“Oh, don’t be, Carmen. The bright side of the matter is that, finally, I came back home and had the chance to marry my beautiful – and pissed off – fiancée”.
His smile widened as he watched Cassandra.
“Have you ever killed somebody?”, I asked him then, in a low voice.
Dante’s chewing slowed down as he narrowed his eyes.
“Yes”, he answered, simply.
“Why?”.
“Because I had no other choice”.
Our eyes were locked.
“What do you mean?”, I murmured.
“I had to shoot them because, if I didn’t, they would shoot me. There are no other reasons, for me, to hurt or kill somebody”.
“It was your life or theirs”.
“Nothing more, nothing less”.
I sipped my wine without breaking eye-contact with him.
“And how did you feel about it?”.
Dante pursed his lips and carefully placed the fork back in the plate.
“I felt like shit”.
I didn’t reply. I just slumped back in my chair.
“If only I could turn back time, I would find another way…”, he added smoothly, “…because what I know now, is that killing them surely wasn’t. I feel lucky because I have the only woman I love beside me and because we can build our future together. Everything else just doesn’t matter”.