Page 80 of The Wrong Man

It buzzes again. And again.

Dylan’s smile falters. “You should probably check that.”

He’s right. I know he’s right. But I don’t want to. I want to stay here, suspended in this warmth, pretending the outside world doesn’t exist.

I pull out my phone and look at the screen.

Three messages from Nicolo. Short, businesslike, the kind of messages that only mean one thing.

Delivery in 30 minutes. Russian. Priority extraction.

My stomach drops.

I look up and find Dylan watching me. His face has changed. The softness is gone, replaced by something guarded and tense. He knows. Of course he knows.

“You have to work,” he says. Not a question.

“Yes.”

The word hangs between us, heavy with everything it implies. I have to go. I have to go to my studio and do the things I do, the things that made me into the monster I am. I have to leave this warm, soft moment and become someone else entirely.

Dylan’s eyes fill with something I’ve seen before. Terror. Horror. The remembered trauma of what he witnessed, what he heard, what he knows I’m capable of.

He’s looking at me like I’m a monster again.

And I deserve it. I am a monster. I’ve just been pretending otherwise, playing house, acting like I could be something different. But the truth is always there, waiting. The truth is that I hurt people for a living. That I’m good at it. That in thirty minutes, I’ll be making someone scream.

“Dylan.” I don’t know what I’m going to say. Don’t know what words could possibly bridge the gap between who I was five minutes ago and who I have to become.

“It’s fine.” His voice is flat. Distant. He’s retreating behind his own walls, protecting himself from the reality of what I am. “You should go. Don’t want to keep them waiting.”

The coldness in his tone cuts deeper than any knife.

I stand up, and every movement feels wrong. My body doesn’t want to do this. For the first time in my entire career, I don’t want to go to work. I want to stay here on this awful sofa with this beautiful man and pretend I’m someone worthy of the way he smiled at me moments ago.

But I can’t. The family calls, and I answer. That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it has to be.

“I’ll try not to be long,” I say, and the words taste like ash.

Dylan doesn’t respond. He’s staring at the coffee table, at the spot where our takeaway containers sat, at anything that isn’t me. His shoulders are hunched, arms wrapped around himself as if he’s trying to hold himself together.

I did this. I shattered the fragile peace we were building. Not through any action, but simply by being who I am. What I am.

I want to touch him. Want to tip his chin up and make him look at me, want to promise him that this doesn’t change anything, that I’m still the man who bought him cookbooks and watched him bake and felt his heart start beating for the first time when Dylan cried over perfect macarons.

But that would be a lie. Because I’m also the man who’s about to go through a newly soundproofed door and do unspeakable things. Both versions of me exist simultaneously, and I can’t ask Dylan to accept that. Can’t ask him to reconcile the person who ordered him Thai food with the person who makes people beg for death.

“Goodnight, Dylan,” I say quietly.

I’m almost to the door when his voice stops me.

“Dante.”

I turn. He’s looking at me now, those hazel eyes swimming with emotions I can’t fully read. Fear, yes. Horror, yes. But something else too. Something that looks almost like grief.

“Stay safe,” he says.

Two words. Such simple words. But they crack something open inside me, something I didn’t know was still capable of feeling.