Fractured Freedom: A Brother’s Best Friend Second Chance Romance (Tarnished Empire)

Delilah

“Dante,” I whispered, rubbing my forehead and opening my eyes to see him standing before me.

I jumped to claw at whoever’s hands were around me, but their arms gripped mine and then my sister’s voice was in my ear. “It’s me. It’s just me. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

I winced as I touched my hand to my head. I felt a bump as large as an egg. “Wow, ow.”

Izzy smoothed my matted hair. Her legs were around me; she had me cradled on the floor where I must have fallen when Iago hit me. “Yeah, you’re gonna have a pretty good shiner from that one.”

I nodded but didn’t answer her. I took in the man before me as he stared down at my abuser. Dante’s hands clenched and unclenched. His whole body seemed three times bigger as he stared down at a bloodied Iago. He wasn’t just a wolf here, he was a werewolf, ready to kill, ready to rip apart a man.

I saw him now, for the first time ever, as the man he truly was. A ferocious beast ready to protect, breathing in and out.

In and out.

I breathed with him as his eyes met mine, and the wild in them calmed for just those seven breaths. His piercing emerald eyes closed for a second like he was settling his soul, and then he opened them again and they landed directly on me.

“Cade, get the knife.” His gaze cut back to Iago, and I watched Cade smile as if the ideas flying through his head were lollipops floating by and he was a hungry kid with a sweet tooth. He walked to the kitchen counter and pulled a large knife from a wood block.

I hadn’t had a chance to take in the room—the plush carpeting, the granite countertops, the lights twinkling above us in a low-hanging crystal chandelier. This room on a cruise ship probably cost a fortune.

It would be expensive to ruin too, I thought to myself as I stared at the blood seeping into the carpet below Iago’s chair. It dripped from his pant leg.

Cade handed the knife to Dante as he continued looking on, lost in a reverie we couldn’t pull him from.

Cade said softly, “One of the guys on the police force can get us more essentials if you need them.”

Iago wriggled in the dining room chair. The motion was the equivalent of a mouse in a trap. Nothing worked. The duct tape dug into his wrists; a large hole in his arm looked like it had been cauterized closed. His eyes pleaded with mine as he tried to mumble something against the tape over his mouth.

“Did they touch you?” Dante asked softly without looking at me. His voice was full of pain, like he’d wronged me somehow.

“Touch me?” I asked, my mind probably a bit too fuzzy for questions. I shook it. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Besides the bruising on your face, Lilah, did he put a hand or weapon near you, Lamb?”

Running a hand through my hair and glancing away, I lied. They’d hit me in the elevator, choked me, and beaten me too. I didn’t lie, though, to spare the man’s life but only to soothe my wolf’s soul. “No. They were just angry about the twin swap.”

He growled and stalked toward me. Then he leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Lilah, do you know that I know your body better than you know it yourself?” He touched my hair. “You lie, and still I love that I get to find the lie you’re telling me, just by one movement. I’ve learned them all over the years. It’s how I know they’ve hurt you, how I know I’m going to now make them wish they were dead.”

His warning should have scared me. “Dante, you don’t have to do anything for me.”

“Lamb.” It was a plea, heavy in emotion and from deep in his gut. “Don’t ever do something like this again, you understand?”

My eyes filled with tears as I nodded at him. I whispered, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

I chewed on my cheek and glanced back at my sister. Her chest was still at my back, her arms still wrapped tight around me, like she wouldn’t let me go, like she was protecting me.

My baby sister.

The one Iago had tried to hurt.

I looked past Dante at the man whose eyes begged for his life.

I’d tried so hard most of my life not to make a mess in other people’s. I’d tried to be perfect. I’d tried not to share my true emotion, my true pain, everything.

“Had it only been me you touched, Iago, I would have told Dante that you could rot in jail.” I tilted my chin as I said the next words. “I would have shown you mercy.”

This was me embracing the mess, embracing that I was capable and entitled to causing destruction. I wanted it here and I wanted the man who could do that with me. Dante accepted me for who I was and I accepted him too.

Dante nodded, his jaw working up and down as he got up from kneeling before Izzy and me. When his hand left my face, I immediately missed his touch on my chin. “Tell me, Lilah. What happened? And then I want you to watch what happens to them. It’ll be a lesson for you to never risk the life of my lamb again. These are the consequences of your actions as much as theirs. And these men, for the time they are still breathing on this earth, need to know what happens when you mess with an Armanelli’s Untouchable.”

Iago’s eyes widened. He shook his head fiercely. I squinted at what he meant, whether he was talking about Izzy or me or maybe himself.

The other guy tried to argue through the duct tape, and he kept saying in a muffled tone, “You? You’re an Armanelli? Well, we didn’t know she was yours. We didn’t know. We didn’t know.” He started to cry then and looked to me for help.

“You know, it would be one thing to take a shot at the person undercover working against you. It’s another to take an innocent bystander and cause her pain. Did they know you were innocent, Delilah?” Dante asked, but we’d lost him. His voice was monotone as he twirled the knife in his hand.

I bit my lip, my brows furrowing. I nodded yes.

The sound that came from him was animalistic as he stopped the knife from spinning and drove it down into the man’s hand.

Flesh being stabbed sounds a lot like meat being thwacked with a mallet. It has that wet, squishy sound, like you’re ridding it of blood.

Iago’s scream must have been heard throughout the cruise ship. Both Izzy and I jumped, but I didn’t shut my eyes. They were on him.

Glued to him.

Mesmerized by him.

Before I knew what I was doing, I’d grabbed the phone from my back pocket and found the soundtrack Dante had played for me during my massage. Dante stopped for a split second to whip his head around and stare at my phone. His brow furrowed, and a small smile teased his lips. “Little Lamb,” he murmured, and I thought I caught what I felt for him in those green eyes of his.

Love.

Hope.

Comfort.

Then he turned and stabbed the second guy.

The music mingled with the screams and whimpers.

“Damn, this is going to be bloody,” Izzy murmured.

I shrugged. “You need to report Iago’s assault on you, Izzy.”

I felt her body tense, and I didn’t ask for more information. She’d share when she was ready.

All she said now was, “There will be nothing to report on a man who’s gone, Lilah.”

I chewed my cheek, not sure what to make of it all. For some reason, my body didn’t reject what was happening in front of me. I knew the man I loved planned more torture. I knew as he sucked in air nice and slow like it was feeding his soul that he was going to truly enjoy what he was about to do.

I knew it all.

And it made me love him more.

He hummed as he bent down to glare at both the men at their eye level, just inches from their faces. “Did you think the Armanellis would let you get away with drug smuggling in our territory when we cleaned this up years ago?”

He ripped off the duct tape from Iago’s mouth. The man had long since stopped talking; his groaning was all that could be heard, just louder now without the barrier of the tape.

“Now,” Dante snarled, and I found my body reacting in a way it shouldn’t have to all this.

My mind swirled at seeing my wolf take his territory back; all of my insides tingled with a newfound kink completely unlocked.

“I should ask Lilah and Izzy what part of you they want as a gift, but I can’t bring myself to let any part of you remain. So instead, Cade, call the police. I need acid for Iago.”

“Wait!” he cried. “I know where the drugs are. Only half are on this boat. Please!”

Cade stopped him. “Police already found both locations. We got it all.”

Dante chuckled.

It sounded so far away, though.

The tingling didn’t seem very pleasurable anymore, either. It was like I was losing the feeling of myself, like my mind was running away and I couldn’t catch it.

“I don’t feel right,” I murmured to Izzy.

I heard her mumble shit and something about the back of my head bleeding, but I lost that running mind.

It got away.

And everything went black.

I’d handled brain traumas in my nursing career. I knew what they were, knew they could affect speech and cause paralysis, comas, death.

I knew all that.

I just hadn’t expected to experience it myself.

Snapshots of what I thought was reality pushed through my subconscious to the all-encompassing black abyss I kept falling into.

I knew the hospital was in the United States—I heard English from the doctor, and I heard my mother crying and asking if I would be okay.

I focused long enough to tell them my age, my name, and what I thought had happened. I believe I answered all the questions. I was just too tired to answer more.

Blackness found me, and I went under again.

When I came to, I heard my sister’s voice. She was crying now too.

Everyone was always crying.

Had a week passed, a day, just an hour?

She wasn’t alone with me though.

“She’s going to be okay, Izzy,” Dante said. His voice was the one I needed to hear.

My muscles relaxed, my body stopped tensing, the pain in my head seemed to vanish.

But then I heard the strain in his voice, the little quiver. “Izzy, don’t cry. She’ll be just fine, huh? And then we’ll be back to work. You and me, right?”

That sounded odd.

Wrong.

Him and her.

“She has to be,” Izzy whispered. Then I heard footsteps pacing back and forth. “Thank you for staying with me and her tonight. I don’t think I could be alone.”

“I wouldn’t leave.” Dante’s voice was firm, solid, like he wanted to comfort her.

Not me.

A soft breath was taken before she whispered, “I know. I’m … You always take care of me, Dante. Jesus, when no one else did, you took care of me.”

“And I always will, Izzy. You’re my girl, you know that?”

I heard rustling, and it was enough to make my eyes open to see what I needed to see.

Izzy was in Dante’s arms, her lips on the lips I thought were mine.

He didn’t fight her off.

He wasn’t even pushing her away. His hands were on her shoulders.

He’d said she was his girl.

And then the hospital did what hospitals do. It recorded my heart beat—how it picked up, how suddenly it started going a million times a minute—as I stared at them, eyes wide.

Immediately, Dante’s hands pushed her back like he could hide what I’d just seen. He rushed toward me, but my mind ran away.

I whispered, “You let her kiss you.”

And I was gone again.