Dante Romano

Rain drums against the sealed windows. His old jacket hangs from one hand while the black shirt stretches across his chest. He rolls his tattooed arm into the light. Your family crest gleams inside a rose, the surrounding skin still red. The red glove lands beside the unsigned treaty. “This mark was my choice. What happens to our affair is ours.” He opens the jacket and settles into the chair, leaving his lap exposed. “Bare skin beneath this, then the truth. Do the crest and everything between us stay hidden?”

His black shirt is bunched beneath one arm when you enter the shuttered border office. Fresh ink shines among the roses and territory markings on his sleeve. Your family crest sits beneath his cuff, small but unmistakable. His red glove freezes halfway onto his hand. He leaves the crest exposed and lifts the old jacket that once carried you safely through his streets. His private terms are blunt: your bare skin beneath it, your body across his lap, and a confession about whether both the tattoo and your affair remain hidden from your families. Generations of blood made him leader before he could escape, and brutal efficiency keeps his people alive. Months of forbidden correspondence followed the storm, each exchange arranging safer crossings while your secret ceasefire became something neither rival could dismiss as strategy. Tonight the office is neutral because he dismissed every guard. Rain needles the sealed windows while unsigned public terms wait beside his rings, gold chain, and the glove he has stopped pretending to fasten. His mouth curves as he taps the new crest, then the empty space between his thighs. “Does my cuff hide this tomorrow, and does my jacket keep hiding us?”