Dante Declared Before His Enemies That I Was His, but After My Answer, the Smile Disappeared from His Face

Dante Castellano declared that I was his precisely when armed enemies entered his house and Titan was losing blood at my feet.

His trousers were already soaked to the knees, but he paid no attention to it. He knelt beside the large, burned-and-slashed dog and slowly extended his hand.

“Titan, my boy, it’s me.”

The dog pressed his head more tightly against my thigh.

For a moment I saw such pain in Dante’s eyes, as though it was not an animal but a human who had rejected him.

“He doesn’t want you to touch him,” I said.

Dante turned his head toward me.

“He wants you to touch him.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m yours.”

“Everyone who is in this house is my responsibility.”

“Responsibility is one thing. Ownership is another.”

The two guards standing behind him looked at each other. At that moment I realized that answering their master like that was not something ordinary here. The dim light flickered in the copper lamps hanging on the walls, while the sharp smell of washing powder mixed with the metallic smell of blood.

Titan whimpered quietly.

I placed my hand on his shoulder.

“If you want him to survive, he needs a veterinarian. Now.”

Dante made a decision in an instant.

“The doctor will come here.”

“No. We have to take him to a clinic. The wound is very deep.”

“I can’t trust every veterinarian at a clinic.”

“I trust them.”

He looked at me. His gaze passed over me as if he was seeing not a laundry worker for the first time, but a person who had her own opinion.

“Are you a veterinarian?”

“I was.”

“Why aren’t you anymore?”

The question left an old bitterness in my throat. Six weeks earlier I had refused a rich client’s demand to falsify the medical records of his neglected dog. The next day my boss accused me. A week later I lost my job, my apartment, and almost all my savings. My sixteen-year-old brother Eli had a fever then, and I still smiled as if everything were under control.

“I told the truth,” I answered.

Dante’s face did not change, but his voice became heavier.

“The truth is expensive here.”

“A lie sometimes costs more.”

At that moment footsteps sounded from the corridor. Slow, confident footsteps, as though the person coming already owned this room. One of the guards put his hand on his weapon.

Dante stood up and positioned himself between Titan and the door.

“Who has come?” I asked.

“A person who does not want to see you,” he replied.

The corridor door opened. A blond man in a black jacket entered; first he looked at Titan, then at me, and finally at Dante.

“Is this the woman?” he asked.

Dante’s voice became like ice.

“Choose your words carefully, Marco.”

Marco snickered.

“Strange. One simple maid, and you’re already defending her like this.”

I felt my fingers grow cold. Titan’s bloody fur stuck to my palm, while Dante stood in front of me as though the greatest danger in the room was not him, but me.

Marco took a small wooden box from his pocket and placed it on top of the washing machine.

“Your dog won’t survive tonight if you don’t give me this.”

Dante looked at the box.

“Not here.”

“Here. In front of his helper.”

He said the word “helper” as though I were an object.

Dante raised his hand. The guards tensed.

“Rosie, take Titan through the back exit.”

“And you?”

“I’ll escort this guest out.”

“Titan can’t move alone.”

Dante leaned toward me. For the first time I smelled him—smoke, rain, and bitter coffee.

“Then you’ll stay beside me.”

Marco laughed again.

“Now say it in front of everyone, Dante. If she is yours, protect her.”

Dante looked into my eyes. There was no command in his gaze. It looked more like a request he would never admit to.

Then he took my wrist and turned toward his enemies.

“Rosalind Whitaker is my woman,” he said.

Marco’s smile disappeared.

At that same moment, a gunshot sounded somewhere on the upper floor, while a dark shadow stopped beneath the laundry-room door. Dante reached for his weapon, and I looked at the leather bag lying on the floor, from which someone’s hand was slowly emerging, as though it intended to give me something…

The hand burst out of the bag just as the second shot shattered the wall’s ceramic.

Dante pushed Titan and me behind the old dryer.

“Keep your head down!”

“The dog is wounded!”

“Now I want to save both of you.”

Titan showed his teeth, but did not growl. He listened near my ear, as always, as if he were protecting my hearing.

Shouts and footsteps mixed in the corridor. Marco disappeared. A few seconds later Dante picked up the bag and took a folded paper from inside.

“This was left in your name,” he told me.

“For me?”

“And only you should read it.”

My brother’s address was written on the paper. Below it was one sentence: “If you want the boy to remain alive, do not trust Castellano.”

My breath caught.

“Where is Eli?”

Dante took out his phone and dialed the number. It rang, but nobody answered.

“Tell me that he is protected.”

“He was protected.”

Those two words pulled the ground out from under me.

Dante handed the mobile phone to one of the guards.

“Lock down the whole house. Find the boy.”

Then he turned toward me.

“This letter proves that someone reached you before we did. But the main question is why he knows about Titan’s old wounds.”

Titan suddenly began sniffing the bag and placed his paw on a small metal whistle inside it.

I recognized a sound I had never heard before, but Titan’s reaction told me everything: this object was familiar to him.

The footsteps behind the door stopped.

Dante picked up the whistle.

“This dog obeyed only one person before you appeared.”

“Who?”

Dante did not answer me. His phone rang again.

This time the call was from the clinic.

The doctor said only one sentence, after which Dante’s face turned pale for the first time.

“Eli is alive, but he did not come alone…”

When I arrived at the clinic, I first heard Eli’s voice, and then my own heartbeat.

“Rosie!” my brother called to me.

He stood at the end of the corridor, with a scratch on his face, but he was on his feet. Beside him stood an old veterinarian holding Titan’s medical bag.

I hugged Eli.

“Who brought you here?”

“This man. He said you knew him.”

The old man looked at Dante.

“We have no time left. The dog must be taken into surgery.”

Titan was already lying on a stretcher. His paws were stretched toward me.

“I’ll go in with him,” I said.

“You can’t,” the doctor told me.

“He needs my voice.”

Dante nodded.

“Let her in.”

In the operating room, the blue light cut into my eyes. Titan’s breathing was heavy and wheezing. I stroked his head and quietly repeated the words I had said to him in the laundry room.

“You were not dangerous from birth. Many people simply hurt you.”

The doctor opened the wound and suddenly stopped.

“There’s something here.”

He removed a flat, black memory card hidden deep inside the wound, between the tissues. Dante recognized it immediately.

“This is impossible.”

“What is it?” I asked.

He did not answer me. The old doctor placed the card on a clean tray and carried it into another room.

Twenty minutes later we were sitting in a small observation room. Eli was beside me, while Dante stood by the wall. An old recording began playing on the screen.

A warehouse appeared. Titan was a small, thin puppy there. Three men stood in front of him. One of them was Marco. The other was Dante’s older brother, Luka.

Marco waved a stick at the dog.

“If he doesn’t bite, Dante will die.”

Luka answered with a laugh:

“Then teach him to replace loyalty with fear.”

On the screen Titan attacked the man standing in the corner. The man was Dante’s enemy, but the recording showed that he was already in serious condition and Marco had forced him to provoke the dog. Then the camera switched to another shot: Luka was telling Dante that the dog had killed a man and that hiding the animal was the only solution.

Dante’s face became like stone.

“Because of this video Luka knew everything,” he said.

“And you didn’t?”

“I thought Titan was trying to protect me. I thought that man had attacked him.”

“In reality, your brother turned the dog into a weapon.”

Dante lowered his eyes.

“That is exactly why I told you that you were mine. Marco knew that you had saved Titan. If I did not protect you publicly, he would use your brother.”

Eli froze.

“You have to protect my sister because you put her life in danger?”

Dante looked toward him.

“I did not threaten your family.”

“But we came to your house,” I said. “And your war came to our door.”

At that moment a new file appeared on the screen. My former boss’s voice could be heard. He said that he had falsified the animal’s record on Marco’s order so that I would lose my job and then be brought to Castellano’s house.

My knees gave way.

I had not ended up in this house by accident.

Dante also learned only then that I was a target selected by his enemies.

But the recording did not end there. At the end Luka looked toward the camera and whispered:

“If you ever see this, Dante, know that there is a second copy in the foundation of your house. There are documents signed in your name there.”

Dante immediately picked up his phone.

“Open the foundation.”

An unknown number lit up on the phone. The call rang only once.

When I answered, I heard a woman’s voice on the other side.

“Rosalind, if you want to see Dante alive, tell him that Luka is still alive…”