Donatello seems to agree. He says nothing as we enter the spacious lobby, and he proceeds to purchase a suite on the upper floor, as the woman suggested. It’s extravagant with a view of the city and the surrounding bay—though I suspect the elegance is lost on the man stalking through the layout with a single-minded focus. He heads straight for the adjacent balcony, bracing his hands over the railing, his hair rustling in the wind.
Juxtaposed against the blackening horizon, he could be a fallen angel surveying the damned world he’s been cursed to.
Or a devil, gloating over the destruction sowed in his wake.
“The hospital is near here,” he remarks, nodding toward the complex just a few blocks over in the distance. “So is Felicità. A coincidence?” His eyes narrow as he mulls over the connection silently.
I hate myself for inching forward, curious as to what he’s thinking. Hours without experiencing his hostility have lulled me into a false sense of security. It strikes me now that today has been the longest we’ve been together uninterrupted. The longest stretch of time during which he’s spoken to me without a tinge of malice.
“Why the fuck would someone intentionally blow up a quarter of the city?” he asks, his irritation evident. “It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
I copy his surveying glance and disagree. The reckless destruction is unfathomable if you view the assembled buildings as a city alone.
As a chessboard, however, everything becomes clearer. Amused, I realize it’s the way he taught me to see the world. From the perspective of a game player, the various locations around Hell’s Gambit could serve as squares and territory.
Pieces up for grabs.
He frowns, stroking his chin as the fading sunlight plays off the panes of his face. Despite the city churning below, I realize that we’re secluded. Alone.
But I don’t feel the need to run.
I watch him instead, taking the chance to observe him in devastating detail. His eyes serve as a window into his mind like no one else’s. I hate that. I can see the gears in his brain turning, the various parts coiling and connecting like the world’s most complex musical instrument. Madness is his art form, one he plays expertly, unconcerned by how the result might be interpreted by the outside world.
Watching him, I almost forget… The hate I should feel, the pain he put me through. None of that matters from the mindset of a predator. Such a creature is too ruthless. Selfish. Chillingly analytical.
But there’s always a method to his madness, like a wild animal working off its own internal instinct. What could be seen as malicious by an outsider, is merely an act of survival.
“It’s clever,” he says finally, his voice melding with the roar of the wind. “Create a diversion that will redirect most of the city’s resources. The police and fire departments will be stretched thin. So, who benefits?”
He re-enters the suite rather than reveal an answer. A glass bar cart is his first destination, and he fingers a bottle of liquor from the small selection. Frowning, he eyes his hand as if he didn’t even realize what he’d been reaching for.
“Come here.” Turning to me, he inclines his head and the mask I’m used to returns.
I falter, and his eyes turn to glass. Coldly reflective, they glow orange as he starts toward me. Every step is slow and deliberate, resonating against the dark flooring, somehow louder than the city’s noise. Louder than my own heartbeat.
Once close enough, he captures my chin against his palm. His thumb sweeps along my jawline, up to my hair and back, lingering at the corner of my mouth. I know exactly what he’s doing.
Retracing the same motions of Mateo Saleri.
“I could have killed him.” His tone is so casual that it takes my brain a second to register the violence in those words. The answering shiver in my belly warns me he wasn’t boasting.
Kill a man just for touching me?
Not out of a misplaced sense of justice or protection, either. Just pure selfish greed.
Only he can have me.
Only he can touch me.
I don’t know if it’s the location, far from any other structures that might trigger past memories, but here nothing is tethering him to the old Donatello. He’s a stranger, eyeing me through fathomlessly dark eyes. A man who strips me down to a creature I’m not used to embodying.
Not Safiya.
Not Willow.
Just a woman in his possession.
“No one,” he says thickly. “No one looks at me the way you do. Like I’m a monster, a villain, and the sheep.” He draws away, turning back to the bar cart. “Like I’m worthy of your pity but nothing else.”
He rips the lid off the bottle and fills a shot glass. Raising the container to his eye level, he inspects the liquid within. Then slowly and deliberately, he sets it back down, bracing his hand beside it.
“We need to talk.” His voice taints that simple statement, turning it into something else. A darker form of a taunt. A dangerous request. A dare. “Not about the past,” he clarifies, approaching a leather couch positioned before the window.
He collapses onto it, leaning his head back against the cushions. I copy him, claiming a nearby chair. As his stare meets mine, it lands with physical intensity, more violating than his hand could ever be. I feel it like a grasping touch, reaching through my skin for whatever lurks beneath. Blood. Bone.
My soul.
“I want to talk about you. The new you. Willow Stepanova.” He toys with the syllables of my name, tasting them one by one on the tip of his tongue. “What made you choose music?”
It’s a seemingly harmless question with a dangerous answer. The short retort would be that I loved to play on my family’s piano—the one
