He Died for His Lover, Then Returned to Win His Trust novel · Chapter 1 of 40
Chapter 1: The Seventh Day
Dante Rossi dies on his knees in a church while the man who took a bullet for him lies in a coma, and the Lord of Desire offers him one more life on three hard terms; he wakes in the car on the morning they met, with an ambush due in twenty-eight minutes.
On the seventh day, Dante Rossi died on his knees in the church of San Marco, with sixty of his men standing silent at the back.
He had not eaten in six days.
He had not slept more than an hour at a time.
He had come straight from the hospital the night the doctors said the word coma, and he had not stood up since.
The priest had stopped asking him to go home on the third day.
Dante did not pray.
He had never learned how.
He knelt in front of the candles and said one name, over and over, until his voice was gone.
"Javier."
A year ago Javier had found him bleeding in an alley behind the medical college and held a flap of his shoulder closed with both hands until the ambulance came.
Dante had carried him home to the estate that same week, and told himself it was to keep him safe.
For a year he had kept Javier close.
He gave him a room, a driver, a guard on every door.
Javier had said, more than once, that he wanted to go back to his own bed in the dorm.
Dante had never let him.
Then the gunmen came over the estate wall on a Sunday, and Javier stepped in front of him in the hall.
The bullet went in under the collarbone.
Dante had caught him on the way down, and Javier had looked up at him, annoyed, with blood on his lip.
"You're so loud," Javier had whispered. "Stop shouting. I can't hear my own pulse."
That was the last thing he said.
Now the candles were burning low, and the old stone floor was warm under Dante's knees, and he could no longer feel his hands.
He thought, I kept him in a house, and he died in it.
His chest folded around the thought.
One of his men started forward from the back of the church.
Dante did not hear the footsteps stop.
He did not hear anything after that.
When he opened his eyes, he was standing in a hall so large he could not see the ceiling.
The floor was gray stone. The air was neither warm nor cold.
There were two great doors on his left, one gold and one black, and neither was open.
A tall figure in a plain gray robe sat behind a desk the length of a train carriage.
"Dante Rossi," said the Judge. "Don of the Rossi family, aged twenty-seven."
"Twenty-six."
"You died on the day after your birthday."
The Judge opened a ledger and began to read.
It took a long time.
Fourteen men who had owed him money and could not pay.
A harbor master who had refused a signature.
Three warehouse fires.
A woman who had begged him to let her son out of the family, and the son who came home in a bag.
Dante said nothing to any of it.
It was all true, and he did not want it to be anything else.
"The record is clear," the Judge said at last. "The gold door is not for you."
Dante nodded.
It was only fair.
"Wait," said a small voice.
A boy had come running down the hall in a white coat two sizes too big.
He looked about seventeen. His hair was the color of a candle flame, and there was a thin gold band of light on the back of his neck where a halo should be.
He stopped in front of the desk, out of breath.
"This one isn't finished," he said.
"Child," the Judge said. "You do not speak at a judgement."
"I know. I'll be quiet after." The boy turned and looked straight at Dante. "You don't know me. Last winter I fell. I hurt my wing and I hid under a bridge, and everyone walked past me."
"I don't understand," Dante said.
"One person stopped. A student, soaked through, with a bag of books. He didn't ask what I was. He picked me up and carried me to a clinic and gave them his last money."
The boy's voice shook.
"His name is Javier. I was there when he lay in that bed. I heard what you said to him."
Dante's legs went weak, and he had to lock them to stay standing.
"Please," the boy said to the Judge. "He saved me. Give the man who loves him a chance. Just one."
The Judge looked at the boy for a long moment.
Then a third voice spoke from the shadows between the doors.
"I will take that bet."
The man who stepped out had dark, amused eyes and a coat the color of wine. Where he walked, the stone floor went faintly warm.
"Asmodeus," the Judge said, in a tone of deep dislike. "This is not your hall."
"It is exactly my hall, in the middle." The Lord of Desire smiled at Dante. "I like a man who kneels for a week. I do not like what he did with his year."
"Tell me what to do," Dante said. "Anything."
"Anything is cheap. Hear the terms."
Asmodeus held up one finger.
"You will go back to the morning you met him. You will give up your pride, your jealousy and the habit of owning what you love."
A second finger.
"You will never again put him in your house and call it keeping him safe. Not your estate. Not any room that locks."
A third.
"In his bed, you will not always lead. The nights will be shared, and on your own nights you will still be in his hands. Say it."
"In his hands," Dante said.
"And if he loves someone's company, you smile at them. You do not threaten them. Not once."
"I can do that."
"No," Asmodeus said gently. "You cannot, yet. Learn."
The young angel stepped forward and touched Dante's sleeve.
"They say love is blind," the boy said. "I hope this time it gives you light, so that you can see where you're going."
The Judge closed the ledger with a flat sound.
"Go," he said.
The floor opened under Dante's feet, and the hall fell away upward in a long rush of gold.
He woke in the back seat of a black car with the window cold against his cheek.
His mouth tasted of nothing. His hands were warm.
On the dashboard, the clock said 8:12.
His driver glanced at him in the mirror. "Boss? We're on the harbor road, like always."
Dante stared at the calendar app on his phone.
It was the morning he had met Javier.
In twenty-eight minutes, a car would pull across the road ahead of them and the shooting would begin.
And across the city, in a dormitory on the hill, Javier was alive, and eating breakfast, and had no idea.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend