The next day after his lie, London was a different city.
Dante walked through the city center at dawn, his boots clanging on wet cobblestones from the previous night's rain. The fog had burned off, leaving a sky the color of old silver, and a scent of coffee and warm bread wafted through the air from bakeries that lined the streets.
He ought to have been on his way home to Naples by now. Ought to have been facing his father, explaining that a job had been well done. But he was here, wandering in a city that had transformed him forever, carrying secrets that would ruin all that he'd ever loved.
The phone in his pocket had been silent since last night. The Don would be aware now that the mission failed. That his own flesh and blood had betrayed him. That blood loyalty meant nothing when faced with the choice of duty or humanity.
Dante strode through a tight alley, walls encroaching on either side like sentinels made of stone. He had no idea where he was going—only that he couldn't stay in his hotel room, couldn't gaze at walls which had witnessed him transform from killer to something else entirely.
The alleyway opened up into a small square, and there, amidst the grey buildings, was a garden that was unlike anything he had seen in London before.
It was small, perhaps twenty feet in width, but seemed to be in a world of its own. Rusted iron gates stood open as if to greet visitors. Inside, flowers sprouted in mad colors—reds and purples and whites that glowed in the morning light.
And in the center, surrounded by a ring of white stones, stood a flower with black-green leaves and small, bell-shaped blossoms of deep purple.
Belladonna.
Dante had been taught the name. Poisonous nightshade. Poison that could kill a man within minutes. Beautiful and fatal, much like the world he was born into.
He stepped through the gates, his boots crunching on the gravel path. The garden had the smell of earth and flowers and something more—something old and mysterious that tickled his skin with sensitiveness.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
The voice had been behind him, low and melodic, and Dante turned to see a woman at the boundary of the garden. She was older, perhaps in her sixties, with silver locks that fell down her back and eyes that saw right through into his soul.
"The belladonna," she continued, advancing on him with the refinement of a woman who had spent her whole life among flowers. "It's been thriving there for hundreds of years. They tell me that it was planted by a woman whose lover died in war. She tended it every day until she died, hoping he would return to find her standing here."
She knelt beside the plant and sent her fingers touching the black-green leaves, a gentleness that spoke of years, as she said nothing."Did he ever come back?" Dante asked, although he knew he already had the answer.The woman smiled; her eyes, however, were sad. "No. But the garden survived. A witness to love that did not die, even when hope had passed."
She stood up, running her hands over her apron, and looked at Dante with those intense eyes.
"You're not from around here," she said. It was not a question.
"No."
"But you do now. I can see that by your eyes. You've been changed by this city."
Dante said nothing. How could he explain what had happened to him? How could he tell this stranger that he'd come to London as an assassin and was leaving as something else?
The woman stood up and walked to a bench next to the belladonna and sat down, invitingly patting the space next to her. Pausing a beat, Dante sat next to her.
"My name is Eleanor," she said. "I've worked in this garden for thirty years. Seen a lot of people come and go. But you. you're different."
"How?"
"You carry death with you," she said. "I can smell it in your clothes, see it in the way you move. But there's something else too. Something which wasn't here before."
Dante looked at the belladonna, its purple flowers gently swaying in the morning wind.
"What do you see?" he asked.
"Life," Eleanor answered briefly. "You've learned that life matters more than death. That love is stronger than hate. That sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to turn your back on the darkness."
She touched his hand and held it lightly, and for a moment, Dante felt something he hadn't felt in years—the sensation of human warmth, untinged by blood or duty or fear.
"Who is she?" Eleanor asked.
Dante looked at her sternly.
"The woman who changed you. I can see she's in your eyes. She's beautiful, isn't she?"
Dante recalled Fianna—her wild curls, her smudged fingers, the expression in her eyes that had seemed to plunge right through to his very soul.
"Yes," he replied softly. "She is."
"And you love her."
It was not a question. Dante didn't answer, but he didn't need to. The response was in every line of his body, every breath he took.
"Love is like the belladonna," Eleanor whispered, her voice filled with comprehension. "Pretty and lethal. It can cure or destroy, depending on where it is applied. But in the right hands, it becomes something heavenly."
She rose, walking quickly over to the belladonna and plucking one flower. She held it out to Dante, the purple petals glinting in sunlight.
"Take it," she told him. "As a reminder that sometimes the most beautiful things are also the deadliest. And that love, true love, is worth any risk."
Dante took the flower, the stem icy against his palm. The petals were silk to the touch, their color, purple. Deadly and beautiful.
"What do I do now?" he inquired.
Eleanor smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.
"Now you choose," she told him. "You can return to the darkness from which you came, or you can grasp the light that you've discovered. But be careful—once you've seen the light, you can never truly return to the darkness."
Dante studied the belladonna flower in his hand, then the garden itself. In the morning sun, it seemed to glow with a mystical beauty.
"Thank you," he said.
Eleanor nodded, then went back to work among her flowers, humming softly as she labored among the garden that had witnessed so many stories of love and sorrow.
Dante stood, holding the belladonna flower in his hand. He moved towards the gates, listening to Eleanor's voice from behind.
"Remember," she said. "The garden will always be here. When you need it."
Dante stood at the gates, looking back at the woman who had seen past his darkness to the light in him.
"I'll remember," he said.
And then he strolled through the gates and into the city beyond, carrying a flower that was beautiful and deadly—like the love that had changed everything.
The phone in his pocket did not ring, but Dante recognized the silence as temporary. Sooner or later, his father would call. Sooner or later, he would have to pay the consequences of what he had done.
But meantime, he walked the London morning streets, the belladonna flower in his pocket a reminder that the most dangerous things could also be the most beautiful.
And somewhere in the city, Fianna existed, unaware that her life was about to be changed forever.
The belladonna flower burned in his pocket like a pledge—or a threat.
Dante wasn't sure which.
But he knew he would never again be the same man who had arrived in London with death in his heart and a darkness in his soul.
The garden had shown him there was an alternative.
And he was ready to take it.