He saw it. He saw it and stood up swiftly from the chair, coming to her in three strides. Going down on his haunches, he took her small, gauze-wrapped hand in his larger one, holding her eyes with an intensity she had never felt in her life.
He looked at her hands, tracing the bandages, then at her feet wrapped in the same, before bringing those dark, dark eyes back to her.
“You’re not going to walk through life, Amara,” he uttered roughly, each word a vow that cemented itself in her heart. “You’ll dance through it. And I’ll fucking remove anyone who tries to break your rhythm. I promise you.”
Amara felt a tear slip out the side of her eye, his words seeping into her soul, wrapping around her in a fierce, warm, protective cocoon. She didn’t know why he was there, or why he had felt the need to vindicate her, or why she was important enough for him to make that promise, or why he had come to tell her that himself, but in that moment, she was just a girl and he was just a boy, and somehow, their broken pieces matched.
“So, I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.”
Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
It had begun when she started avoiding him.
The girl had somehow always been there, on the sides. Every week during his training with Vin, every time Zia spoke of her daughter, every time she quickly looked away whenever he glanced at her. She had always been there, and Dante had never noticed like a man never noticed the light of the sun until he went blind. Not until she had stepped back. Suddenly, he became aware of her absence by the tree, aware of how she changed her course if she happened to see him coming, aware of how she went out of her way to get out of his presence.
In the beginning, he had chalked it down to her getting over her crush. But it had continued, for over a year before he had realized it could have been something else.
He had gone to visit Damien and told him about it, just wondering what the hell had been going on, and Damien – his brother who had never looked anyone in the eye except her – had said, “Maybe she doesn’t like you anymore.”
Looking at her sleeping, her young body a witness to nightmares she should never have witnessed but had somehow survived, Dante knew she was on his chessboard. He still didn’t know how and what her role was, but he had learned to trust the voice inside him after everything that had happened with Roni. Her death taught him never to rebel with an outsider again.
And that voice told her this sleeping girl was important. It had become an insistent whisper a year ago. Now, it was a roar.
She was important and he was not going to ignore that.
They had just brought her home from the hospital, and since she’d fallen asleep on the way, Dante had carried her to her room and placed her under her covers. He knew he had become more subdued on the outside after Roni’s death – the perfect prince to the imperfect kingdom – even as he rebelled on the inside. He’d just learned to hide it better.
Amara’s abduction had shaken him. He had known something had been wrong with her that evening of the party, and he’d let her go, even as his gut had wanted to keep insisting she tell him. He had let her go and she had been taken, brutalized, and he carried a part of that on himself. They had searched for three days when Tristan had given him a call, telling him he’d found her a few miles out of the city.
Dante would never forget the moment he had run inside that garage, the lead in his stomach as the sight of her had hit him, covered in bruises and burns and blood, wrapped in Tristan’s jacket, slumped on the table. The rage he had felt, still felt, had been a black hole inside his body, sucking everything into itself, expanding, until it was the only thing flowing through his veins. He had asked Tristan what had happened to her and the other boy had simply told him to take her to the hospital quickly. Dante had picked her up carefully, and she had opened those beautiful green eyes of hers for a second, glazed in pain but recognizing him, before collapsing on his chest with a trust that had unmanned him.
Yeah, she was fucking important to him.
Dante pushed her hair away from her face and leaving her to her slumber, he walked out of the bedroom into the cozy living room, to see his housekeeper standing by the window, looking out.
Dante joined her there, his eyes taking in the view of the falling dusk and the mansion.
“Who did this?” she asked after a long time, finally now that they were alone and away from ears.
Dante thought back to the interrogation he had subjected her abductor to while Tristan had violently taken care of his minions. It had taken hours for Dante to break him but he had, with that black rage and vengeance for that important girl with the forest eyes driving him. All he got was one name – Gilbert – before the man had died. Tristan and Dante had agreed to keep it to themselves. Until they knew the truth, they were telling everyone that it had been a rival family trying their luck. Though it didn’t sit well with him since she deserved the truth, Dante lied. “It was a rival gang. Amara had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Zia took a deep breath before asking him, “Should we leave this place? A part of me wants to take her away from here.”
Dante shook his head. “It’s too late. You’ve lived here too long. It’s safer for both of you to stay here on the compound.”
She accepted that, having already thought of it. “The boy at the cottage, the one who saved my baby,” she asked. “Do you think he would like it if I took care of his place?”
Dante felt a smile curl his lips, imagining Tristan seeing the maternal housekeeper on his doorstep. “Yeah, I think he’d like that.”
She nodded, turning to look at him with the odd, beautiful green eyes her daughter had inherited from her. “Thank you, Dante. You didn’t have to do any of this for us, but I am grateful.”
Dante put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a slight squeeze. “She’s going to need all of us.”
Her mother shook her head. “She will appreciate all of us but all she needs is her heart. Amara has always been strong but so kind in a way I didn’t think people could be. I used to think strength had to be jaded until she taught me otherwise. She is strong like water is strong – it doesn’t appear that way because it’s adaptable, but it can seep into the smallest of cracks and break open the largest of rocks over time. She’ll be fine.”