Page 23 of Marked for Life

CHAPTER 16

Hannah

Ifind Dante slumped in the shadows of his study, a rare sight—a man undone. His head is low, shoulders hunched, something in his posture so completely unfamiliar that for a second, I wonder if I’ve stepped into the wrong room. His bare chest, marred by the white-hot gleam of fresh bandages, tells a different story—a gruesome reminder of yesterday’s hellish “test” in the basement. I’ve seen him in every form—cold, ruthless, controlling, even twistedly affectionate in his own warped way—but this…this is something new. Something I never thought I’d see. Vulnerable. Broken. Human. It shatters everything I thought I knew about him.

I take a careful step forward, my growing belly leading the way, one hand pressed against it to soothe our son, who stirs as though he can sense the weirdness in the air. Something’s off, and I don’t know whether to be afraid or to reach out, to walk into the room and confront this fragile version of Dante or to turn around and flee from whatever the hell he’s playing at now.

“Dante?” I say his name as softly as I can, uncertainty clawing at my throat. I’ve learned to tread carefully with him, and I wonder if this…this rawness is just another trap, another mind game he’s spinning in his twisted need for control.

He doesn’t answer right away. His eyes remain fixed on the ground, as though he’s not even aware I’ve entered. No sharp gaze that sees through me like he always does, no command to bend to his will, no simmering heat to remind me of the chains he’s so carefully woven around me. Instead, he’s a mess of tangled emotions, too far gone to acknowledge my presence.

I stop a few feet from him, close enough to feel the tremble in his hands, the weight of his despair pressing down like the thick silence between us. His sharp jaw is clenched so tightly that I can see the muscle working under his skin. I know this man, but right now…this is a stranger.

“What’s wrong?” The question comes from a place I wasn’t expecting—a genuine concern that catches me off guard. I’ve been so focused on surviving, on keeping my distance emotionally, that it feels wrong to care. But there it is. A crack in my defense.

His gaze slowly lifts, and when his eyes meet mine, it’s like staring into a raw wound. Red-rimmed, haunted. They hold no trace of the cold calculation I’ve learned to read like a book. The tears on his face? I can’t even process it. He’s not supposed to be like this.

“Hannah,” he breathes my name like a prayer, ragged and full of something I can’t name. His voice, always so sure, so dominant, is stripped down now, raw and exposed. “You shouldn’t be here. Not now. Not like this.”

The words hit me harder than I want them to. Not like this. He’s never wanted me to see him like this. But it’s not a command this time. It’s almost…an invitation to turn away, tokeep my distance. But I don’t. I can’t. It’s like this vulnerability pulls me in, like gravity itself.

“Are you in pain?” I ask. My hand rests on my belly, my son still kicking as if he senses the tension. “The wounds…”

He cuts me off, voice tinged with something deep, something desperate. “Physical pain is nothing.” There’s a sharpness to it, but it fades quickly, leaving behind something softer, something broken. “Nothing compared to what burns inside me every moment since I first saw you.”

I stop in my tracks. I don’t know what to say, what to do. This isn’t the Dante I know—the man who controlled every inch of my life, who bent me to his will, who owned me in ways that twisted my mind. This man? This man is a shattered shell of that monster.

“I don’t understand,” I admit, my voice quieter now, uncertain. And somehow, that admission feels heavier than anything I’ve ever said to him.

Dante laughs—if you can call it that—a jagged, broken sound that’s void of humor or joy. It’s just…pain. “Of course you don’t. How could you?” He presses his hand against his chest, against the bandages, against the mark of my name—our names carved into him like some sick contract neither of us ever agreed to. “How could anyone understand this?”

I inch closer, careful not to cross too many lines, but my heart is hammering, my breath shallow. “Understand what?” I ask, the words heavy with confusion, with fear.

“This,” he says, gesturing vaguely between us. The hunger. The obsession. “This…need. This hunger that doesn’t stop. Doesn’t fade. It only burns brighter the more I claim you, the more I have you. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.”

His voice shakes, a tremor that shouldn’t be there. Dante never trembles. Never.

He stands up suddenly, his movements sharp and jerky, but instead of coming toward me, he turns, pacing to the window like a man trying to escape the very thing that consumes him. The Dante I know would never show his back. Never put himself in a position of vulnerability. But this Dante…this man? He’s breaking.

“I thought it would be enough,” he mutters, his back still to me. “The taking. The claiming. The possession. I thought that would satisfy it. That it would calm me down, make it stop. But it just gets worse. Every single day.”

I can’t breathe. His words…They claw at my chest, my insides twisting with something I don’t know how to name.

“I thought…that once I had you—completely—that the hunger would go away.” His voice cracks, and the weight of his vulnerability crushes me. “But it only grows. And I can’t stop it, Hannah. I can’t control it. It’s like I’m drowning in it, and I’m dying because you’re all I can think about. All I need.”

He turns, his eyes wild, raw. And I can’t look away.

“Every day, I cut myself,” he says, and the words fall like a confession from a man who’s lost all his power, all his control. “To feel something different. To feel anything but this…this emptiness inside me, the gnawing hunger for you that never ends.”

I don’t know what to do with this. With him. With the man standing before me, broken and desperate, craving the one thing I’m not sure I can give him anymore.

He steps toward me, then stops, the motion stuttering, halted by the sheer effort of restraint, as if the very act of closing the distance between us takes all the control he’s fought so hard to maintain. For the first time, I feel the weight of a boundary—his acknowledgment of it, of my space, a tremor of self-control so rare, it practically burns.

"It didn’t work," he says, his voice lowering to a near whisper, demanding my attention, pulling me in so tightly with just sound that I forget how to breathe for a second. I have to focus on his words—force myself to. I’m used to detaching, zoning out to survive. But now? It’s like his confession slices through my armor, leaving me exposed. "The pain…it’s nothing. It’s the fear that eats at me. The fear that no matter what I do, no matter how tight I hold onto you, one day…you’ll slip through my fingers. That I might lose you."

His words strike me hard—fear. I’ve only ever seen certainty in him. Certainty in his control, in his obsession, in the way he claimed me. I press my hand over my belly, feeling the restless stir of our child, the unbreakable chain binding me to this man—this man who owns me, body and soul.

"You can’t lose me," I say before I can stop myself, the words spilling out before I can even think. It’s honest. Too honest. But it feels real. "You’ve made sure of it, haven’t you? The chip, the security, the tattoos, the baby—all designed to make me yours. To make it impossible for me to ever leave."

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