Dante picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth. “Well, at least you know exactly why you’re dying. Goodbye, asshole.”
He saw the man shake, spasm, and fall over the table, a white froth coming from the side of his mouth. Dante nodded to the manager, dropping a wad of cash for the wide-eyed waiter. “Tell the chef the food was fabulous. And keep the change.”
While the men involved in her torture were all dead, the man who had ordered it was still at large. And Dante wasn’t going to rest until he found him.
A month passed.
Dante didn’t see her again, at least not where she could see him. He went to Shadow Port, vetted the apartment she would stay in and her neighborhood, the classes she would be taking, and her professors. He got a flat in Tristan’s building and told him to keep an eye on her when he was in the city. Satisfied, he came home, hoping to see her around the compound before she left.
But she rarely got out of her apartment that last month. He knew she ached for him
, not knowing his ache bled worse. It was only through her mother that he knew the day she got her degree and packed her bags. He saw her mother and Vin drop her at the airport, checked to see when her flight landed on his phone and called the guy he had planted in the apartment across hers, confirming that she had arrived safely.
He would not see her again. He would let her go and let her live her life. But he would be damned if he ever let anyone crush her spirit.
And once she was physically away from his father’s wrath, Dante went to bargain with the devil.
“Where’s Damien?” Dante barged into his father’s study, slamming his palms down upon his desk.
His father frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
He built rage inside him, black, bitter. “Cut the shit. Where is he?”
Lorenzo Maroni blinked at him, leaning back against his chair. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Dante breathed in, calling for all his patience. “I went to see him, only to get there while a fire burned the fucking property down. Why does every home he’s in burn down, huh? I’ve spent hours searching for him, through bodies and survivors, and he wasn’t there. So, dear father, where the fuck is my brother?!”
He saw his father grab his phone from the table, standing up as he dialed someone and started to pace. Dante waited, the acid inside his veins just looking at the man eating him alive.
“Damien Maroni,” his father barked into the phone. “Where is he?” Pause. “No, he’s not at the facility. There was a fire.” Pause. “Yes, I want him found.”
He turned towards Dante, his eyes steady. “I don’t know where he is but he will be found.”
Dante leaned forward, his eyes deadest on the man. “You better hope so, father. Or you and I are going to be having a very different conversation.”
“Don’t you dare threaten me.”
Dante stayed silent, letting his eyes talk, every ounce of hatred he felt for the man and for himself becoming visible to him.
“You don’t find my brother, you have nothing to hold over my head,” Dante told him quietly.
“I have her,” his father told him. “You’re foolishly attached to her. And I have her, son.”
Dante deliberately gave him a little smirk. “Good. And you better make sure nothing happens to her.”
“Or?”
“Or I walk.”
The silence between them loaded with tension. Dante had never made that threat before. But he hadn’t been ready before. He was now.
“You can’t walk away,” Bloodhound Maroni stepped into his space, his finger pointed at his chest, his eyes disbelieving.
“I can and I will,” he told his father, taking a hold of his finger and pushing it down. “A hair on her head gets harmed, I’m out. Your entire legacy crumbles. Lorenzo Bloodhound Maroni becomes nothing but fodder for gossip without an heir.”
“I would kill you before that.”
As expected. “And there would be nothing standing between you and Tristan,” Dante informed his father. “Now that he’s a grown adult, why do you think you’re still alive, father?”