𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐌𝐞

22|| Fight or Flight

Celeste / February 11
•••

"What are you smiling about?"

Dante frowns at me as his eyes trail up and down my body, until they settle on the box in my hands. 

"Piero gave me strawberries," I tell him as he opens the car door for me. I walk towards him and show him the box with fruit. "Do you want one?"

He gives me a look and I'm pretty sure he's trying to display confusion. He hesitates but then shakes his head, thinking better of asking me for details. "Get in the car."

I sit down into the passenger seat and he closes the door. A few seconds later he sits down beside me and starts the car, driving out of the gates. The space in his car feels nothing short of too small.

His presence is too much in all the wrong ways and it makes me inch further to the door so I won't touch the energy around him.

"We're driving to Lester's house," he breaks the silence. "You'll wear a microphone and you've got twenty minutes to gather your things."

I bite into the last strawberry. "Why do I need to wear a microphone?"

"Because I don't trust you, I don't trust Lester-" he turns the steering wheel in a way that makes me have to look away- "and I especially don't trust you two together."

"Sounds like you don't have a whole lot of trust, Mr. Alessi."

He snorts lightly. If it were anyone else I would've thought he'd accidently put too much force into his exhale, but this was Dante and he didn't do things by accident. "No one with this lifestyle can afford to trust people."

"I do trust people." I look out of the window, Chicago's citizens and buildings passing by. "A little too much sometimes."

I turn back just in time to see his jaw unclench. "You know you were allowed to leave your room, right? You didn't have to stay there for two weeks."

I did have to stay there for two weeks. But I can't tell him that. I can't tell him that it felt like I couldn't move.

"It's a nice room," I say instead.

Lester's mansion comes into view and my organs squeeze together at the sight.

"Does Lester know that the poison thing is out of my arm?"

"No," Dante says, stopping the car in front of the closed gates before he gets something out of his pocket, giving it to me without looking my way. "But you can tell him if you want."

I look at the small plastic bag, more specifically the metal device that was put into it. From the corner of my eye I notice two guards walking towards the car and I turn to the man beside me, suddenly recalling his request on communication.

"Is it relevant for you to know that I'm planning on killing about ten to fifteen men inside his house?"

He blinks at me three times. "That's relevant information, yes."

"Okay. I'm planning on-"

"I know," he cuts me off, eying the guards that were nearing. "Can you make it look like an accident?"

My eyebrows go up in offense and Dante's mouth corner ticks up at the sight. "What?" he asks. "You're not particularly known for subtle assassinations, Celeste."

"That's because the ones that were supposed to look like accidents, look like accidents."

His smile drops instantly in realization. In most cases one could easily recognize an assassination that was covered up as an accident. But not with me. Never with me.