He Satisfies His Enemies—I Bury Them Chapter 11

He Satisfies His Enemies—I Bury Them Chapter 11

We talked every week after that.

Never about reconciliation. Never directly about the past. We talked about the present-his legitimate business challenges, my expansion into Lisbon, architecture, strategy. The careful, neutra! territory of wa people rebuilding a bridge they weren’t sure they wanted to cross.

I kept waiting for the mask to slip. For the old Dante-the one who took without asking, who commanded instead of conversed, who treated love like a transaction.

It didn’t come.

Three months into our calls, he asked to visit Barcelona again.

“Not the café routine,” he said. “A proper visit. Dinner. Then I leave.”

“Why?”

“Because your voice is different on the phone. Guarded. In person, you forget to be careful.”

He was right. I hated that.

“One dinner.”

“One dinner.”

He arrived Friday. I chose the restaurant-a hole-in-the-wall in El Born. No performance. Just food.

He wore a simple sweater. No armor.

We ordered. We ate. Somewhere between the first course and the second, I realized I was enjoying myself.22

Not the cautious analysis I’d maintained during his café siege. Genuine enjoyment He was funny d forgotten. Sharp and self-deprecating in ways the old Dante would never have permitted

“I fired everyone,” he said, twisting pasta. “Every senior member of the organization.”

“Why?”

“Because they were yes-men. Not one of them told me I was destroying my marriage, losing my best

mind, or running my family into the ground.” He looked at me. “You were the only person who told me the truth. And I punished you for it by pretending you didn’t exist.”

“You didn’t punish me. You just didn’t care.”

“That’s worse.”

“Yes. It is.”

He set down his fork.

“I need to say something, and I need you to hear it without assuming it’s a play.”

“I’m listening.”

“I loved you. During our marriage. I loved you, and I didn’t recognize it because I didn’t know what love looked like when it wasn’t chaos. Bianca was fire and drama-I thought that was passion. You were steady and brilliant and constant, and I mistook that for indifference.”

“You thought I didn’t love you?”

“I thought you tolerated me. That the marriage was purely strategic for you.”

“And if I told you I’d been desperately, completely, stupidly in love with you?”

His face changed. “Had you?”

I looked at my wine. “Yes. In the beginning. I used to lie awake planning how to make you see me. How to make you choose me.”

“When did you stop?”

“The night I found the Manhattan apartment. The one you rented for her. With my financial system Using the structures I’d built.” I met his eyes. “You used my own work to fund your affair, Dante. That’s

when I stopped.”

He closed his eyes. “The apartment.”

“You remember.”

“I remember everything now. Every single thing I did wrong. It plays on a loop I can’t turn off.”

“Good.”

His eyes opened. Not wounded-accepting.

“I deserve that.”

“Yes.”

We finished dinner. He walked me home through quiet streets.

At my door, he stopped.

“Thank you. For being honest. For letting me see you.”

“Dante.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t come back for a while. I need time.”

“How long?”

“However long it takes for me to figure out if the woman I’ve become can coexist with the man you’re becoming. Without losing herself again.”

He nodded. “Take all the time you need.”

“That’s what scares me.”

“I know.”

He left without trying to kiss me. Without touching me. Without any gesture that assumed he had the right.

I closed the door and pressed my forehead against the wood.

I was falling. Not back in love-that would be too simple. Into something messier, unnamed, caught between forgiveness and desire, between memory and possibility.

I had no idea if it would save me or destroy me.