His father almost smiled proudly. The man was fucking fucked in the head.
“Time’s up, son.”
Closing his eyes for an instant, Dante was tempted to slice him with the knife. But it wouldn’t solve anything – Roni would still die and the underworld would get thrown into chaos he wasn’t ready to handle yet.
Taking the knife, he went back to his kneeling position, and removed the tape from her mouth, wet with her tears.
“There has to be a way, Dante,” Roni’s voice shook, trembling with her body. “Please don’t do this.”
Dante looked her in the eyes, his own burning, throat tight. “Forgive me, Roni,” he could hear his voice roughened with pain.
With that, he thrust the blade right into her heart.
Her scream penetrated the air, her throat gurgling as blood seeped out from the stab wound. Hands shaking, he pulled the blade out and put it on her neck – the same neck he had kissed so many times – slitting her carotid artery, giving her as instant a death as he could. She didn’t deserve this. This, this was on him.
Through it all, he held her eyes, seeing the life slowly seep from her body as his own changed with every passing second, his heart hardening.
“Dan…” she choked on her blood one last time, before going limp.
It was over in seconds.
Dante kept looking at her vacant face, feeling her blood pool around them, something cold, cold settling into his heart. He hadn’t been able to protect her. His first lover, his first kill.
Someone clapped him on the back. His father.
Dante looked at his hands stained with her blood, felt the rage for the man simmer, and took a deep breath.
Now isn’t the time.
One day. He would make him pay, for his mother, for his brother, for Roni. One day. He just had to wait. He just had to wait and patiently dig his grave. He just had to play not in the open like he had been playing, but in the shadows where Bloodhound Maroni wouldn’t scent him.
One day.
“Bury her,” he heard his father order Al.
No.
Dante shook his head, his heart heavy, his body covered in her blood. “I’ll do
it.”
After a pause, his father nodded to the men to clean up the shack and left. Dante stood, his arms slightly shaking as he cut through the ropes tying her, and hauled her up. Her body felt heavy, heavier than it had when he’d carried her before.
Without looking at the men, he walked out of the shack and deeper into the woods, the silence, the cold, and her body his only company. He felt the first tear escape his eyes and tightened his jaw, blinking to clear his vision as he edged closer to the lake. No. He wouldn’t cry. His father was right – this was a lesson, a lesson to never, ever expose any weakness, anything that could be used against him, at least not where anyone could see. That was where he’d failed Roni.
He was smart, he was sharp, and he was cunning. And going forward, he was going to use every single one of those things to his favor, while letting his father think he was on a leash. A mask. He would wear a mask.
“Here.”
Dante turned at the voice, to see Tristan standing in a small clearing with a shovel and a pile of clothes beside him, a hole in the ground between them. He looked at the younger boy, surprised, but stayed silent.
Quietly, Tristan took out a cotton sheet and laid it on the ground, indicating for Dante to place Roni’s body on it. Dante did, almost on autopilot, looking one last time at another lifeless body of a woman he had cared for. Tristan wrapped up her corpse, tying the sheets in precise knots that had Dante clenching his jaw.
“Your clothes too,” the younger boy said briskly. Dante realized he was right. The clothes were covered in blood. They needed to go.
Taking off his leather jacket, Dante held it in his hands for a second, realizing he would probably never wear one again, and threw it in the hole. Stripping off the rest of his clothes, standing in the freezing wind naked, he felt the cold seep deep into his bones, to his heart.
“Go clean up,” Tristan nodded to the lake, and Dante, for some reason, listened to the boy. His mind wasn’t working. The water was frigid, but the cold didn’t penetrate this brain. As he took the water and rubbed at his skin, he realized things inside him were shifting. After everything that had happened in the last hour, Dante was not the same. Though he was washing the blood off his skin, it had already seeped into his pores, mixing with his veins, a scar on his heart every time it beat.