Page 2 of Ivory Crown

“Jade, you need to understand,” Dante started, the weight of his gaze pressing down on me. “If it wasn’t for Caruso, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Who the fuck is Caruso?” The words tumbled out of my mouth, a mix of confusion and anger. My heart was picking up its pace, panic lacing through the defiance.

Dante let out a sigh, the sound heavy as if burdened with more than just air. He moved closer, sitting down on the bed next to me, the mattress dipping under his weight. His white shirt stretched across his broad shoulders, hinting at the power beneath.

“The man who is trying to kill you,” he said, his voice low and steady, sending chills down my arms despite the warmth of the room.

The tray of food suddenly felt like an insult—a mockery of normalcy in a situation that was anything but. With a swift movement, I pushed it aside, the clinking of the fine china loud in the silence that followed.

“Why would anyone try to kill me?”

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s complicated. I never meant to get you into this mess.”

Fuck him. And fuck this.

My earlier fear was turning into anger.

“I demand to leave this place,” I declared, feeling the strength of my own resolve. It was foolish, perhaps, to challenge him, but fear had a way of sharpening one’s courage. “Right now, it seems like the only man who wants to kill me is you.”

I held his stare, refusing to back down. But Dante didn’t flinch, didn’t show any sign that my words had found their mark. Instead, there was a coolness in his expression, a detachment that made me question what I really knew about the man before me.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he asked, his tone almost gentle. “You’re not just some pawn in their game, Jade. You’re my girlfriend. You’re pregnant with my child. You’re an incredibly good target. You’re the queen, Jade, and I’m the only one who can keep you safe.”

I thought his words were meant to reassure, but they did the opposite. They painted a picture of a board set for a game of life and death—a game where the rules were written in blood and betrayal.

“Safe?” I scoffed, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice. “Being caged by you isn’t safety, Dante. It’s just a prettier prison.”

He stood then, towering over me, a storm dressed in black boxers and a white shirt. He boxed me in with his arms as he looked down at me.

“Jade, listen to me,” Dante’s voice rumbled, a low sound that vibrated through the silence of the room. “I know you’re scared, and I know this isn’t the freedom you want. But this world—it’s ruthless, unforgiving. Arturo Caruso is out for blood, and he won’t stop until he’s destroyed everything I care about. That includes our child.”

My breath hitched at the mention of the baby, a reality that was still settling in my bones. It was one thing to stand up for myself, but the life growing inside of me complicated matters in ways I hadn’t fully considered.

“Is this how you protect what’s yours? By kidnapping them?” My voice was steady, but I could feel the tremor of my hands betraying me.

“Sometimes the hardest choices are the ones made to keep the people we care about alive.” There was a hardness to Dante’s words, a resolve that hinted at battles fought and scars earned.

“Are you really that different from Caruso, then?” I dared to challenge him. “You both claim to act in the name of protection…but I assume I can’t just leave whenever I want.”

Dante’s jaw clenched, and for a moment, I saw the flicker of something behind his eyes—pain, maybe, or regret. “I’m trying to be different, Jade. For you, for our child... I have to be.”

“If you want to be different, you know what to do,” I said.

He stared at me.

“Let me out.”

The demand left my lips like a bullet, sharp and loaded with a desperate kind of courage. Dante’s dark eyes locked on mine, as if he could somehow silence the worry in my chest with just a look.

“Jade,” he began, his voice threading through the charged air between us, “the world outside doesn’t know mercy, especially not to those who bear the Moretti name—even by association.”

His words were a noose, tightening with every syllable. The plush penthouse, a gilded cage, seemed to shrink, the walls inching closer as our standoff stretched into eternity.

“Please, Dante,” I pleaded, feeling the weight of the empire he shoulders pressing into my own skin. “Don’t do this to me—to us.” My voice cracked like thin ice on a winter lake.

He stood there, a statue clad in black boxers and a white shirt that did nothing to mask the power of the man beneath. And though the morning sun streaked through the windows, casting golden bars across the floor, it couldn’t touch the chill wrapping around my heart.

“Jade,” he said again, softer this time, as if just saying my name would change my mind. But it was the unspoken sentiment that laced through them, the tension that spoke louder than any argument, that made my resolve waver. He was Dante Moretti, and he was danger personified—but in that instant, he was also unmistakably human.

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