Chapter 7 - The Safe House
They didn't return to Blackwood Estate.
By three in the morning, a battered black SUV pulled into the alleyway of an unmarked, red-brick brownstone in Brooklyn—less than two miles from the small apartment where Evelyn had lived her entire adult life.
It was a Bellamy Syndicate safe house: hidden behind a fake facade of an antique clock shop, reinforced with steel doors, bulletproof glass, and an underground medical bay.
Leo helped Dante down the stairs into the basement clinic. Dante was pale from blood loss, his jacket discarded, his linen shirt soaked in crimson.
A private surgeon, Dr. Chen, was already waiting with surgical trays and antiseptic.
"Out," Dante ordered Leo as he sat heavily on the stainless-steel examination table. He turned his eyes toward Evelyn, who was standing near the door, her hands still smudged with his dried blood. "You stay."
Dr. Chen began cutting away the remnants of Dante’s shirt. "This needs eight stitches, Mr. Bellamy. No anesthesia if you want to stay sharp for the briefing."
"Do it without," Dante said coldly, never taking his eyes off Evelyn.
Evelyn walked slowly toward the table. As Dr. Chen began digging into the wound to clean out the debris, Dante’s knuckles turned white where he gripped the edge of the steel table. His jaw locked, but he didn't utter a sound.
Impulsively, Evelyn reached out and placed her clean hand over his white-knuckled fingers.
Dante froze. He looked down at her small hand resting over his, then up into her eyes. His grip shifted, his fingers weaving through hers, squeezing tightly as the needle pierced his skin.
Neither of them spoke for the twenty minutes the surgery took. The connection between them was silent, heavy, and undeniably dangerous.
When Dr. Chen finished bandaging the shoulder and walked out to prepare antibiotics, the room fell into a heavy quiet.
Evelyn tried to pull her hand back, but Dante didn't let go immediately.
"Why didn't you run?" Dante asked softly. "In the warehouse, when the crane fell. You could have slipped out the side doors while my men were distracted."
Evelyn looked down at their joined hands. "And go where? To the uncle who used me as a bomb? To the police who work for him? I don't have a life anymore, Dante. The moment you paid fifty million dollars for me, my old life died."
She looked up, her blue eyes blazing with a quiet, fierce determination.
"If Marcus Hart treated my mother like a pawn and used me as bait to kill you, then I want him brought down just as much as you do," she said.
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Dante stared at her, a slow, genuine smile finally spreading across his sculpted features—the first real smile she had ever seen on his face. It transformed him from a cold, terrifying monster into something impossibly handsome and overwhelmingly magnetic.
"Careful, Miss Hart," Dante murmured, pulling her an inch closer to the table. "You're starting to sound like a Bellamy."
