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Dante
It was a very brisk winter for San Diego, hardly fifty degrees outside. Less, if you counted windchill. That didn’t matter to me. I was very, very warm with Charlie at my side. We held hands as we walked through the park, our hips brushing together with every step. Her round stomach led the way, a testament to the healthy baby she carried, a baby we’d almost lost. My healthy baby. A son, if the ultrasound was to bse trusted.
I sighed and looked up at the dark sky through the tree branches, scattered with helicopters and planes instead of stars.
“What are you thinking about?” Charlie whispered.
“Nothing and everything,” I murmured, shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.”
“I can’t help but worry. I’m so happy, it seems like a dream, like it can’t be real,” she said.
“It’s real, sweetheart. It’s real,” I said, squeezing her hand.
I hadn’t realized how much fun it would be to be with someone with the same fire as me. Every day, I lived the joy of it. I only wished it hadn’t been so hard to get here. Then again, perhaps I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it as much.
Stefan had hacked Charlie’s laptop, and bugged my office and my car to keep tabs on me. That was how he evaded capture. The month spent making brief appearances was to keep me distracted, prevent me from somehow figuring out that he was training another man to act as his body double. He intended to take over Grimaldi Tech, to use the company we’d built for his own purposes.
He hadn’t counted on Charlie being such a fighter, nor had he counted on me shooting him in the head. The bullet only grazed his skull, but it had been enough to knock him out.
The nightmare of it all seemed like a distant memory compared to where we were now, almost six months later.
Even though I could give her anything she wanted, Charlie was determined to make her own way. And I wanted that more than anything in the world for her. But more than that, I wanted to protect her from the world too. I was uniquely qualified to know just how cruel it could be. So while I supported her dreams, knowing that I’d always be there to protect her was the only thing that kept me sane.
***
“A NOBLE SENTIMENT, but life doesn’t work that way, darling,” she said one day when I tried to explain to her why I needed to protect her. “One day, our child is going to have to learn that, so you might as well start practicing it now. You can’t protect everybody you love, Dante.”
I knew she was referencing my brother.
“I only wish I had known what he was going through. I can’t believe I didn’t know. That he didn’t tell me.”