Chapter 2: The Man Who Doesn't Rush
Part 2 ⬇️
Mara looked up.
And the world stopped making sense.
He was older than she remembered.
Harder.
The kind of face that had stopped apologizing for itself a long time ago.
But those eyes — dark, still, the kind that saw everything and gave nothing back — those were exactly the same as the night in the bar when he'd sat down beside her without asking and said, *"You look like someone who needs one more drink and one less problem."*
His name was Dante Reyes.
And he was staring at her like he'd seen a ghost wearing her face.
"Step away from her." He said it to Bianca without looking at Bianca.
His eyes hadn't left Mara.
"Now."
Bianca found her voice somewhere under the shock.
"Do you have any idea who my father is?
You don't walk into—"
"I know exactly who your father is." He said it quietly.
"He owes me something.
So do you.
Step away."
Bianca stepped away.
Dante crouched down in the mud without a word — a man in a coat that cost more than Mara's entire year of wages — and picked up the little silver bracelet.
He held it for a moment.
Then his eyes dropped to the arm Mara still had curled across her stomach.
He went very still.
When he looked back up at her face, something had shifted behind his eyes.
Something that wasn't anger anymore.
"How long?" he said.
Just that.
Two words.
Barely above a whisper.
Mara's throat closed.
Because he already knew.
She could see it.
He was just waiting for her to confirm the thing that had just rewritten everything he thought he understood about the last eight months.
"Dante—"
"How.
Long.
Mara."
Behind them, Bianca made a sound — half breath, half something that didn't have a name — and Mara heard her phone come out of her pocket.
Someone was about to make a call that would change everything.
---
What Bianca did next — and who she called — set off a chain of events no one in that cemetery could have stopped.
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What happens to Mara will stay with you.
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