He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 16
Elena couldn’t sleep.
Fragments of memory kept surfacing, sharp as glass.
She remembered calling Dante, only to be told by Bianca, time and again, that he was in a meeting.
She would ask Bianca to tell him the weather had turned cold, that she’d had his coat sent to the command center.
When Dante came home and she asked if he’d gotten it, he would just give a distracted nod, his eyes never leaving his papers.
Later, she learned the coat had sat in the reception area for two days. Bianca had never told him who sent it.
She remembered finishing dinner, waiting until the food went cold, then heating it up again, and again.
Dante would come home late, his only explanation a terse, “I ate at the club.”
She remembered how she always said, “Go, do what you need to do,” keeping her voice carefully neutral, terrified he would think she didn’t understand the pressures he was under.
From the beginning of their marriage, Dante had been emotionally distant.
She had told herself that was just his nature.
Steady, quiet, unaccustomed to intimacy.
She hadn’t realized Bianca had already crossed a line that should never have been crossed.
She wasn’t just an allied liaison.
She was Dante’s gatekeeper, controlling his calls, arranging his priorities, deciding whose crisis was worthy of his attention.
Elena had always seen Bianca as a protected girl, raised under the umbrella of two powerful Families.
She couldn’t pinpoint when, exactly, Dante started coming home later and later.
He spoke less and less.
Eventually, even looking at her seemed to be a burden.
Once, Elena was running a high fever and called the command center.
Bianca’s voice was breezy. “He’s dealing with district business. He’ll get back to you.”
Elena waited all afternoon.
In the end, she wrapped herself in a coat and went to the clinic alone.
That night, when Dante came home, she told him she’d been to the doctor.
He’d only asked, “Was it serious?” before disappearing into his study and shutting the door.