Maybe I had spent so long telling myself Dante controlled everything that I had forgotten control and possession were not the same thing.
“That’s it?”
“You resigned.”
“You spent an entire afternoon interrogating my reasons three days ago.”
“Three days ago, I didn’t know whether your resignation was connected to a threat against you.
Now I know it isn’t.”
He stepped closer, stopping far enough away that the distance felt intentional.
“So now it’s your choice.”
My throat tightened.
“You never asked me the real reason again.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
For once, Dante looked uncertain.
“Because if the answer is what I think it is, I’m still your employer for the next few minutes.”
My heart began pounding with an entirely different kind of fear.
He had known.
Maybe not everything.
But enough.
“You noticed the tea,” I said.
“I notice most things about you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the safest one I have while you’re standing in my office as my employee.”
I looked at the resignation letter.
Then I placed it on his desk.
“Accept it.”
His eyes held mine.
He picked up a pen and signed the acknowledgment without hesitation.
Just like that, the most powerful man I had ever known gave up the only power over me that mattered in that moment.
He handed the paper back.
“Accepted.”
I breathed in slowly.
“Dante.”
His entire expression changed.
Three years.
That was how long he had been asking me to call him by his first name.
I had finally done it when he could no longer order me to.
“I wasn’t leaving for normal hours,” I said.
“I know.”
“I was leaving because I was falling in love with you.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them, none of the cold control remained.
“Cara, I’ve spent three years knowing which tea you drink, when you’re pretending not to be tired, when you’re angry before you say a word, and exactly how many times you’ve almost called me Dante and stopped yourself.”
I could barely breathe.
“That sounds dangerously close to an answer.”
“It is.”
He did not touch me.
He did not ask me to reconsider my resignation.
He simply said, “I won’t turn what happened to your sister into a reason for you to stay.
And I won’t use this office to ask you for something you might feel unable to refuse.”
That was the moment my feelings for him stopped frightening me.
Not because the danger around Dante had vanished.
It hadn’t.
Not because he suddenly became harmless.
He wasn’t.
But because when he finally had the chance to use my feelings as leverage, he refused.
I finished my transition at Moretti Holdings under conditions we both kept painfully professional.
