Two weeks go by slowly and painfully as I try to move past everything. My physical wounds heal but my mourning of Coleman is moving a lot slower. I miss him even more now that I'm home. Whenever I go into my office, I expect him to be sitting at my desk with that half smile on his face. Whenever I get stumped on a tech problem, I almost get up to go down to his computer room for help. I know that he's gone but there's a part of me that keeps forgetting. Every time I remember, it's like I'm losing him all over again.

My mind is restless with Coleman, and with Dante too. I think about how he's doing across the city, if he's thinking about me, if he's reliving every second we spent together, dissecting our entire relationship to figure out what was real and what was fake.

I try to focus on the work, to just fall back into my routine. There's a backlog of things I need to get done from my time away, enough to keep my mind busy. But I still use the privacy of my office to search for the truth about my mother. Giovanni hasn't sent me the suspects I asked for and I don't know if he ever will, but I'll move forward without his help.

I'm analyzing the file I have on everything I know about my mother. I usually have it hidden under the bottom of my desk, but this is one of the rare moments if quiet I get to myself. So it pisses me off when my phone rings, interrupting the tiny bit of time I get to focus on this.

"What?" I snap into the phone.

"Dante Berardi is here to see you, ma'am," One of the guards tells me over the phone and my throat immediately starts closing up. I didn't think that I'd ever hear his voice again, let alone ever see him over here at Pantera. I wonder if he is here to make peace or if he decided that beating me up only once wasn't enough revenge for him and he's here for more. "Should we kill him or send him away?"

"Let him through," I order as I'm closing the file and I put it to the side of my desk.

"Ma'am?"

"You heard me, let him through," I snap at him impatiently before I end the phone call, getting the last word with the guard. I wait impatiently, feeling my heart leaping around my chest as I try to figure out for myself why he's here. I have a thousand questions running through my mind but I stay calm and strong, prepared for when there is a knock at my office door and I have to answer it. I am prepared. Stone faced, ready and strong.

When I open it, Dante is standing between two of our guards looking very frustrated, probably at the guards who are looking at him like he's prey.

For the longest time, I just stare. I look stupid, I know that, but seeing him in the flesh strikes me like lightening. That jaw, those eyes and round lips, the veins in his wrist, his brown hair that's always so soft. God, I fucking miss him.

"Come in," I say, eventually, moving to the side so that he can walk through. He does as I say and the guards try to follow, but I block their way. "I'll take it from here, you can get back to work."

"Our job is to protect you, Vera," One of them objects, looking at Dante behind me with suspicion.

"Your job is to do whatever the fuck I say," I snap at him. "So get out of here before we have a problem."

They leave.

I shut the door to leave Dante and I in the room in privacy and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

"So," I start the conversation as he's looking around my office, analyzing the bits and pieces of it. "What can I do for you?"

"You're really the boss over here," He observes, turning away from the wall to look at me. I walk back across the office and sit down at my desk. I try to gage his features, if he's angry or placated.

"What do you want, Dante?" I ask, because I can't handle small talk when I don't know what to expect from this visit.

He sits in the chair across from my desk looking nothing but neutral. Completely unreadable. "Why'd you send your goons away? Want to kill me yourself?"

I lean my elbows on the desk. "If I wanted you dead, I would have done it months ago. I had every opportunity. You had the gun in your hand and you couldn't do it either, so let's accept that we're not killing each other and you can just tell me why you're here."

He pinches his lips together before sliding something out of his pocket and dropping it onto the desk. "I came to give you this." It's the bug that I planted on his computer at the beginning of all of this. "'I see you'? It's pretty obvious that you went through my shit. Is that how you knew so much about me?"

"I knew so much about you?" I ask, confused. I never really did get that much information off of that bug.

"The whole thing about disagreeing with your salesman father? Feeling alone and all of that?"

I blink at him a couple of times. "What, like you think I created Elisa specifically so you could fall for her? For me? No, like I told you before, you were never part of the plan."

"Then what was the plan?" he asks me.

"If you wanted to know that, you should have asked when I was chained up in your basement," I tell him. "All I'm saying is, you weren't a part of it."

"Why are you still lying?" He looks frustrated, his patience wearing thin very quickly now that he knows who I really am.

I purse my lips as I try to think for a moment and then lean into my desk drawer to pull out Dante's file. Inside, there's a description of him that I start to read, "Dante Berardi is important to the Berardi operation only for the fact that he is blood. The son of Giovanni but he has no real say in the organization. He is a violent puppet for his father but other than his cruelty and blind faith, he has no real talents and is not a threat."

Of course this pisses him off. It's not nice to hear, but I just want him to see that his intel is not important enough for this entire sting operation. That I didn't have so many ulterior motives to being with him.

His eyes narrow as he leans further into the desk. "Vera Markov is Anton's only child, used as a black widow to lure men to their death by offering sex. She's skilled at hand to hand combat, manipulation, computer engineering, and blending into a crowd without going noticed. Not to be used as leverage against Anton, he will not take risks to save her."

I quirk my eyebrow at him. "Have that memorized, do you?"

He doesn't answer.

"My point was that we don't consider you important enough to their intelligence, so you were never a direct target. I don't think you'll ever believe me, but I am sorry that you got caught in the middle of this."

"Then why?" he asks me.

It's my turn not to answer, because the only reason I have is the truth and it doesn't feel worth saying out loud. Instead, I just say, "I never gathered that much intel on you and the only thing I learned from that bug was that you were going on a date."

"At Allegro?" He connects the dots with raised eyebrows. "Of course you followed me there."

I should tell him that I was lying the whole time. I think that it'd make it easier for him. If he believed that I truly was completely heartless, that I did this all in malice and really didn't give a shit about him, he would be angry and hurt but the anger would fuel him and he'd get over it. But if he knows the truth, if he knows how I really feel or what's really going through my mind, it won't be that easy on him. He might feel guilty about what happened in the basement, he will want to reason with things and go over every word that I've ever said to him to mine out the truths. I don't want to hurt him anymore than I already have.

"I was jealous," I admit. Because he's a big boy, he can handle the pain and he killed my best friend.

"Bullshit," he spits out. "You know how we figured out who you were? Denise noticed you acting panicked on Monday. You blew your cover for that computer guy."

"Well. Nobody's perfect," I mumbled bitterly, my eyes flicking down to the picture of Coleman on my desk.

"So why are you still trying to spin this shit, saying that you were actually into me when you were clearly in love with that guy?"

"In love with him?" I repeat in confusion. "No, he was like a brother to me. We took care of each other, that's why he made you kill him."

"He made me?"

"You're easily manipulated if you haven't noticed," I say in a cruel snip just because talking about Coleman makes me angry and it reminds me that Dante is the one that pulled the trigger. "He knew that I'd do anything to save him. That you'd do anything to save Eliza. He threatened me so that you'd kill him before I could blow everything up."

Before he can respond, my phone starts to ring. "What?" I answer it.

"What the hell is Dante Berardi doing here?" My father answers the phone.

"We're talking."

"What the fuck about?" He demands in an irritated tone.

"Nothing that you need to know about," I assure him. "Everything is fine."

"Vera,-"

"Fuck off," I snap at my father and then I hang up. I still do everything that he asks of me but I still resent him for not caring just a little bit that Coleman is dead, and also for putting me in Berardi at all in the first place. He had a hunch that Giovanni would not kill me because of who my mother is but it was just a hunch, and he risked my life on it.

Dante's jaw was squared off, his eyes scanning the wall behind my shoulder. "I didn't want to kill him," he said, his face strained as if he was saying this against his will. When his eyes meet mine, they're softer than I expect. "I don't enjoy that shit. I'm not the guy you described from your folder."

"I know that," I assure him, taken aback by this turn of conversation.

He swallows hard. "I wasn't going to. But when he threatened you... or Eliza... or whatever. I thought I was protecting you... her."

I don't want to talk about Coleman anymore. I don't want Dante to need my forgiveness, because I don't know if I can give it. Even if I would have done the exact same thing if the roles were reversed. "We're just doing what we needs done."

He doesn't leave it alone. "He didn't suffer, if that helps. I may be an easily manipulated back of rocks, but I've got good aim."

"Dante. Why did you really come here?" I ask him, my voice hardened as I try not to get too upset about Coleman, imagining him back in that basement. As alone and afraid as I felt when I was tied up down there.

He sighs and then leans back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling as he thinks. "I came here to tell you to go fuck yourself."

That makes me laugh. "I got that message when you were bruising my ribs."

"It's really fucked up what you did."

I shrug at him because obviously it was fucked up. We are in the mob... everything that we do is fucked up, do I really have to spell that out for him? "But then you killed my best friend and I let you beat the shit out of me, so let's call it even."

"You let me?" he scoffs.

I laugh at him again. "I'm tougher than I look, bunny."

I don't say it on purpose, it's just a reflex now to call him 'bunny' and then after that, there's an awkward silence that neither of us know what to do with.

"Look," I finally say, clearing my throat. "If you're here because you want me to tell you that this was all real for me like it was for you, I can do that. And it'll be the truth, I just don't think you'll believe it, so what's the point? I can tell you that I loved you, that I tried to be as honest with you as I could. Does that help ease your mind? Does it make any of this better?"

"I was actually hoping for the opposite," he admits. "Thought maybe you'd laugh in my face for believing all of it. Have your guys beat the shit out of me or something."

"If I wanted the shit beat out of you, I'd do it myself," I tell him evenly. "But I'm sorry to say that I don't. Sorry I couldn't give you what you came here for."

It feels good to say sorry. Feels good to give him some of the truth, even though I have no idea what the point of it is. After this, we'll go back to our sides of the city. We'll never see each other again. We don't get a happy ending here.

"What's this?" he asks, grabbing the file off my desk with all of my mother's information on it. I try to pull it away from him, but he's too fast.

"None of your business."

"This is the lake house?" he wonders. "What does it mean?"

"I'm not telling you that."

"This is what you were talking to my father about," Dante realizes.

He's not going to let this go. "I became Elisa because my father ordered me to but I stayed for so long because I found this. It's about my mom. Your father didn't order her death and he thinks that my father did."

"But why-"

"They were in love. My mom and your dad. She was pregnant. That's all I know."

"You think that your father could be behind it?" He wonders curiously.

"I don't know," I admit. "That's what I was trying to figure out."

Dante narrows his eyes, as if thinking about something very deeply, and then says, "I remember him building a crib. I wasn't supposed to be in that part of the house, so I never asked him about it. Wait, if our parents were hooking up, does that mean...?"

"No," I answer before he can ask the question. "We're not related. According to your dad, this all started after I was born."

Another call interrupts me but this time, I don't answer it. Dad must really be freaking out right now, ready to break down the door.

"Look, you need to go. You shouldn't have come here in the first place," I tell him with a lump in my throat. I don't want him to go. I don't want this to be how we end, but I don't see any other options. His life is with Berardi, mine is here with Pantera. A typical Romeo and Juliet story, and they both died at the end. "What's done is done, so I suggest you leave and heal and move on because there's nothing I can say that will make this better."

"You still have this?" he ignores me, digging back into the file to find a piece of paper ripped out of my sketchpad, the sketch I drew of him shirtless on his bed. I keep it in the folder to help me smile whenever I'm dealing with this stuff.

I don't tell him any of this, just lean over the desk and swiftly snatch the folder out of his hand. "Okay, we're done with that. You should go, Dante."

He pauses, maybe realizing that this has to be the last time we see each other. I try not to think about it, try to keep a calm exterior because if I don't, I'll fucking lose it.

As much as we've hurt each other, goodbye isn't easy.

"I have one more question," He says. "You got to choose your name, and you chose boner?"

"It's Bonheur," I remind him. "It means happiness... Alright, fine. I guess it's pretty much boner."

He laughs.