The fucked-up stories of his father’s selfish, monstrous actions made him want to raise the man from the grave and kill him again. One man’s monstrosity destroyed so many lives and counting.
Fuck.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Dante shook his head, still trying to wrap his head around everything.
Alpha tilted his head to the side. “I thought you knew when I got the request for the meeting. Especially since one of your soldiers recently came to confirm the story with me.”
“Nerea?” Dante asked. “She was here because she knew this? How?”
Alpha shrugged. “She said she was looking into your mother’s past and came across me. I never had any intentions of telling you.”
That brought him up short. “Why not? And why didn’t you ever contact me?”
Alpha huffed a laugh, without amusement. “Oh, I did contact Lorenzo Maroni. When I was thirteen, on the streets, and my mother was dying, I needed money for her surgery, and as a last resort, I contacted him.” He put the mug down on the table. “And I got nothing except confirmation that he was a rotten asshole and we were better without him.”
Dante felt his teeth gnash, his hands fisting. All this time, he’d had an older brother, a true heir to the empire he’d never wanted, and his father had fucked him up.
“Anyways, why are you here, if not for a family reunion?”
“Do you own any property near Tenebrae, Alpha?” Tristan spoke up for the first time, his voice tight. Dante took a deep breath and walked to the edge of the terrace, needing to wrap his head around everything.
“No,” Alpha answered. “I never wanted to get anywhere near Maroni territory.”
Dante didn’t know what to believe. While he could be telling the truth about his father, it could also be something to manipulate him and Tristan. If this man was in cahoots with the Syndicate, he could very well misdirect them.
“Do you know anything about the Syndicate?” Dante turned, pushing his hands into his pockets, focusing on the reason for their meeting.
Alpha stared at him evenly with one eye. It would intimidate a lesser man. “They trade children. But I have nothing to do with them. Why come to me?”
“Because we found a house registered in your name where the Syndicate was initiating new members by raping a little girl,” Tristan stated, his hands fisted on his thighs.
“Which name? Alpha or Alessandro?”
“Alessandro,” Dante chimed in.
He shook his head. “That’s not possible. Nobody in the underworld knows my given name. Everything I have is under Alpha or Alpha Villanova. Nobody knows Alessandro except my sentinels.”
“You told Amara both your names,” Dante chimed in.
Alpha’s eye came to him. “Ah, she’s yours. Good woman, but I gave her both the names thinking there might be more there.”
Dante’s gut burned. Fuck, no. “She’s mine.”
Alpha grunted. “Point is, I don’t know why anyone would buy a house in my given name and why the Syndicate would use it. I’ve heard of them, and in my business, we hear things. But I’ve never had contact with them.”
“What is your business?” Dante asked, curious as to how a boy from the street with no money had amassed the compound he was standing upon.
“Security and retrieval,” Alpha left it at that, and Dante almost smiled. Reclusive bastard.
“The Syndicate is responsible for a lot of shit we’re just getting to know about,” Dante walked back to the seat, taking off his suit jacket in the warm weather. “Our father was working with them in some capacity, I don’t know how yet.”
Pushing his jacket to the side, he leaned forward, looking his older brother in the eye. “Can I trust you, man to man?”
Alpha’s eyebrow went up. “As long as you’re not like your father, I have no problem with you.”
Dante nodded. Good enough. Any man who hated his father had a point in his book.
“Twenty years ago,” he began,