The Emperor (Dark Verse 3)

The only good thing about becoming an adult was moving out of the main house and into his own wing. And although his brother at fifteen wasn’t allowed, Dante sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him behind.

Not a lot of people outside of the compound knew about Damien. The reason for that was pretty simple – Damien was Lorenzo Maroni’s imperfect child. Somehow, he’d had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck during his birth, which cut off his supply of oxygen for a few precious seconds, a few seconds too many. That had cost Damien his ability to gauge the world. Dante was sure he was on some spectrum of autism, especially because his mind was too high-functioning for his age while his social skills weren’t good. It had never been properly diagnosed though, so he couldn’t be sure.

Bloodhound Maroni could not accept that his younger son could have a mental condition that required some help. While he had the abundance of resources to get Damien help anytime, he turned a blind eye to his younger son. Even though he was a great kid, Dante knew he had issues expressing himself, certain behaviors that were not appropriate in the world but appropriate for him. Dante knew that Damien would never, ever find acceptance and love in the world he lived in, and he deserved both those things.

Dante wasn’t even sure exactly what it was – trauma from his birth or the fact that he had been in the room when Dante found their mother pooled in her own blood or just one of those things. Some of that blood had been on a five-year-old Damien, and Dante at all of eight-years had stepped into the blood, scooped up his brother, and walked out of the room. Somehow, he had known his mother had been dead just by looking. Some days, he hated her so much for abandoning her children like a coward. 

Dante took a deep breath, his fingers itching to pull out a cigarette but he refrained. Flexing his fingers, he watched the building from behind his expensive shades, taking measure as his pink-haired girlfriend, Roni, clung to his arm.

Morning Star Home for Lost Boys

He had heard about this place through the grapevine. One of their soldiers had a nephew who had been diagnosed with a low-functioning spectrum of autism and he said this place had helped the boy. While Dante was old enough to take care of his brother as he had been for a long time, he wanted Damien to get the help he needed and deserved. More importantly, the compound was not a good place mentally for any of them. Dante had already started going out of the city for trips and business, and every time his mind kept going back to Damien and his safety. Even though it lodged a rock on his chest, this was for the best.

“This place is creepy,” Roni muttered, her delicate fingers curling over his bicep. She wasn’t entirely wrong. Even though the place was a well-kept stone mansion with manicured lawns, it looked like something out of a thriller movie. Or maybe it was just the fog coming in with the approaching winter.

“Let’s go,” Dante shook off the feeling, pushing open the wrought iron gate with one palm, the cold of the metal sending a little shiver down his spine.

With the other hand, he guided his girlfriend of three years over the threshold. Roni was a little thing, like a pixie almost. Barely came to his neck, hair colored a bright pink and cut short, full of life. She was an outsider who knew about him and his family, and somehow she didn’t care. Maybe it was the rebel in her, thrilling at the idea of him. Dante knew that’s what it was for him.

He had spent so many nights sneaking out to see her, sneaking her into the compound. One time one of his father’s men had caught them and he’d given him a finger, laughing the incident off. Had it been immature? Yes. Had he cared? Not really. He cared about Roni, felt affection for her, definitely loved having sex with her, but he wasn’t in love. Roni was a way of rebelling against his father, and she knew it too, having accompanied him more than once as he’d sneaked her into the compound. Theirs was a relationship of mutual rebellion.

Walking down the small path towards the main entrance, Dante looked around with sharp eyes, noticing a few kids in the windows, all of different ages, peering down at them – some with curiosity, others with mild hostility. Dante wondered the kind of picture he must make to them – tall, ripped, dressed in an all-black expensive turtleneck, leather jacket, and jeans, hair carelessly around his face, with a pink-haired pixie on his side.

He smirked at the mental image as the door opened and an elderly woman greeted them, already expecting them, and took them on the tour.

One of the best parts about having his wing on the compound was privacy. Zia always came to the house once a week with staff to stack groceries and clean everything up, mostly when he was out training or in the city learning the business. Apart from that, he lived alone, and he liked it that way.

He’d set up the top floor of his house as his art room, just like his mother had done in the main house. The view from there was pretty fucking spectacular. He had a direct view of the lake, Tristan’s cottage, and the sprawling hills covered with the woods beyond that. This early in the morning, when the sky was a fiery shade swallowing the black night, he loved to come to the room.

Setting his steaming mug of coffee on the work table, Dante looked at the pieces he had made over the last few years. The earliest pieces were pottery, practice pieces until his technique was refined. He started to play with masks after that; people’s faces that he had seen, those that had somehow caught his attention. Most were pretty terrible and he wanted to smash them, but seeing them was an exercise in improvement. And Dante was determined to improve.

Sitting down on the bench, he got out the new box of clay he had bought from a supply store in the city and started to wet it as the audiobook for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince played in the background. He enjoyed working at the early hours of the morning to the sound of words and the natural light of the sun filling his studio, in nothing but his boxers.

And he fucking loved Harry Potter. He hadn’t read it for the longest time but finally gave in, and now he was hooked. One of the things he liked most about the series was how human it was, even in a magical world. Like Harry and Hermione’s friendship, for example. It actually reminded him a lot of the relationship he saw between young Vin and Zia’s daughter. For years, he’s seen her accompany Vin whenever they trained in the open, and he was envious of that friendship.

He wanted a friend like that for himself. Even though he was surrounded by people, Dante didn’t have one person who was his. His brother, though he loved him to pieces, wasn’t his friend. Neither was Roni. And even though he’d been working on Tristan for years, neither was he. Tristan tolerated him at best, was indifferent to him at worst – although after breaking his nose, he had mellowed down a little where he was concerned. His last name didn’t allow him any friends on the compound. Kings, as his father constantly reminded him, didn’t have friends. They had enemies.

Fuck, he sounded like a sorry little bitch.

Shaking his head, Dante put a pile of wet clay before him, before kneading it with his hands, focusing on the stretch of the mass between his fingers. It was still too tight, and gauging when it got loose enough to mold was one of the most important things.

A knock on his backdoor had him pausing. There weren’t many people who would come to his door that early in the morning unless it was an emergency. Getting up swiftly from the bench, Dante washed his hands and grabbed a pair of jeans before making his way down.

Descending the stairs, he pushed his hair back from his face, cut through the spacious kitchen, and opened the backdoor, freezing at the sight of Zia’s daughter standing there in the chill.

Her eyes roamed over the exposed expanse of his chest, down his stomach, before she flushed and looked him in the eyes. Dante stifled a huff of amusement at her reaction. He knew the girl had a crush on him. She had a habit of staring at him whenever he was in the vicinity. It was flattering but it only amused him. She was too young, and he already had a girlfriend.

He liked to tease her though. Sometimes, when he caught her staring, he’d give her a wink and she’d blush and look away. Sometimes, when he caught her sitting with a book, he’d just ask her the name because he knew she loved reading romance and that made her blush. Or sometimes, she’d laugh with Vin and he’d just watch her, thinking how she’d grow up to be a stunner, he had no doubt, especially with her eyes.

“I’m so sorry to bother you,” she spoke in a sweet voice, her nerves making the pitch a little high. Dante felt himself soften, wanting to ease her nerves.

“That’s okay,” he deliberately spoke in the comforting tone that always worked on calming Damien. “Are you fine?”

She blinked, before nodding. “Oh yeah, yeah. I’m good. Ma told me to give you this before I left for school.” She trailed off and handed him foil wrapped tray.

Dante took it, careful not to brush her hands in the process, and lifted the foil. The scent of freshly baked cookies assaulted his nose, almost making him roll his eyes to the back of his head.

“She usually just brings these over herself,” Dante commented, looking around to see if she had come too.

“Um,” the girl nervously bit her lip, her skin turning a darker shade of red. “I wanted to bring them myself. It’s, well, it’s my birthday.”

Dante grinned. “Happy birthday, um,” his smile faltered, realizing he didn’t know her name.

“Amara,” she smiled shyly, the brazen kid who had once asked him his age hidden behind the young girl she was growing into. She had softened over the years. 

“Well, happy birthday, Amara,” he told her softly and saw her blush again. God, her crush was intense, but he wasn’t going to call her out on it. His mother didn’t raise him to be an asshole to women, as long as she’d been alive.

Giving him a little nod, she quickly went down the low steps and onto the lawns, heading back to the staff quarters situated about a few hundred meters away. What was she now? Fourteen? Fifteen? Dante watched her go, her form already tall for her age, her inky hair in a high ponytail that swayed in the morning wind.

He was about to shut the door when he saw Tristan heading into the woods quietly. Well, well, well, who was he to turn down such an invitation?

Even though he shouldn’t leave his tools and clay out, Dante couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Grabbing the leather jacket he’d thrown on the kitchen chair the previous night and pushing his feet into the heavy shoes by the door, Dante locked the door and sprinted out to the woods, determined to find out what his little buddy was up to. He wasn’t really little anymore though. Tristan at sixteen was already filling out pretty solidly, his body a witness to his harsh training.

Dante wondered sometimes if he wouldn’t have been the same in his shoes. Though he’d been training for years, Dante had yet to make his first kill. He had seen people executed, he had interrogated many of them himself, but the actual kill? He still had to take a life.

Maybe that left a mark on the soul. Maybe that was why Tristan was as he was. Killing, that too his own father, at such a young age after losing his sister. Some days, Dante wanted to give the bastard a hug. But he was pretty sure he’d come back missing a limb if he even tried.

After trying to find him for a few minutes, Dante realized he’d lost the guy. More likely, Tristan had shaken him off his trail. Sighing, he decided to head back and have some cookies, taking some over to Damien. At least his brother liked his company.

“You like the cookies?” Dante asked Damien as they sat in the gazebo behind the mansion, playing chess. Damien loved to play chess and Dante loved to play with him.

Damien’s foot tapped in sets of three as he moved the knight, nodding. “These cookies taste better than last time. Her sugar content is lower this time.”

Tap, tap, tap.

Tap, tap, tap.

Dante grinned. Trust his brother to note the technicalities in a cookie.

“Zia is nice. Her daughter brought me the cookies this morning,” Dante informed him. “She has really nice green eyes that I think you’ll like.”

Damien looked up towards Dante’s neck. He didn’t like eye contact. “Did you know green eyes are the rarest in the world? Less than 2% of the entire population has them. What shade are hers?”

Dante recalled the eyes he’d seen that morning. “Um, forest green I think? Like the color of rainforest trees.”

Movement from the side had him watching Tristan coming out of the woods. The younger boy stopped in his tracks, watching both Dante and Damien for a long minute, before walking off towards his cottage.

“They’re the only eye color that can change shades depending on mood and light as well,” Damien continued as Dante focused back on the chess, moved his piece, taking out a pawn. “It’s called the Rayleigh effect. Does it happen to your Green Eye Girl?”

“Her name is Amara,” Dante helpfully supplied but his brother had found his new little passion.

“Green Eye Girl-”

“And no, I don’t think her eyes change color.”

“-has an even rarer shade even in the spectrum of green eyes. If hers are the ones that don’t change the color or follow the Rayleigh, that’s even rarer. Fascinating-”

Dante smiled as Damien continued about the green eyes, playing chess.

Something was wrong.

Dante had made the arrangements for his brother to live at the home for a year, under the care of psychiatrists who could hopefully guide him into understanding himself and give him the tools he needed to navigate the world. He had spent the last hour talking to Damien about it too. While people underestimated Damien’s intelligence, he was a keen boy. He understood that he needed more help than he got at the compound, and accepted a little trip out of the place as long as Dante promised to visit him regularly. There wasn’t a chance he wouldn’t. He loved the little fucker.

But something was wrong. He didn’t know what, couldn’t put a finger on it. But there was a weight in his gut, an age-old voiceless scream at his protective instincts.

Could it be separation anxiety, perhaps? After all, it was the first time he’d be away from his brother.

‘Your heart will always know your truth, Dante. Trust it.’

Was he lying to himself? God, this was a mess. No, it was the best for his brother to get away from this place and get a shot at a normal life.

The ringing of his phone brought him out of his conflict.

Father calling.

Peachy.

“Yes, father?” Dante addressed him as he always did, barely able to suppress his loathing for the man.

“Come to the shack.”

End tone.

Gritting his teeth at the order, Dante walked out of the mansion, down the hill, to the shack in the woods. Once upon a time, the little shack had been a hunting shed. It was barely bigger than a few square feet, and mostly abandoned. Nobody really went there so it had been a pretty good place for his little trysts over the years. 

Frowning as to why his father would call him that far out, Dante breathed evenly and adopted the little mask he usually wore around the older man. As much as he despised him, Dante admitted that he was a powerful leader and he didn’t get to that place by being dumb. He was sharp and he scented weakness before anyone even knew about it.

There was both pride and shame in him for having that blood in his veins.

He saw his father standing outside the shed, dressed in a suit, his beard starting to show little greys here and there. And he was smoking a cigar. Not a good sign.

“You called?” Dante asked, joining him, realizing that he was taller than the other man now, much more casually dressed though. His father didn’t like his attire. He didn’t want Dante in ripped jeans and leather jackets, looking like the quintessential bad boy. No, he wanted Dante in suits and ties, looking like a good bad man.

Bloodhound Maroni smiled. “Yes. It’s time.”

Dante’s stomach dropped, even as he kept his face even. It was time for the kill.

Taking a cigarette out of his pocket, he lit it up, and exhaled a cloud of smoke, seeing it swirl up at the cloudy sky. Usually, Dante loved the winters in Tenebrae. It got cold, wet, and snowy, and it made him love the summers even more. Not today though. Today, the clouds seemed gloomy, foreboding.

That feeling returned tenfold.

“Who is it?”

Lorenzo Maroni smiled again, a smile that made the back of Dante’s neck prickle and went to the shack’s door. Dante threw his cigarette to the side, crushing it under his boot before slowly approaching the door, to see who was inside.

Roni.

No.

Fuck, no.

She sat tied to a chair, tape over her mouth, her eyes red and swollen from tears as Al and Leo stood behind her.

Tension knotting on his shoulders, he turned to look at his father, his spine rigid as his hands fisted. “What the fuck is this?” he demanded.

“This,” his father said with a theatrical flourish, “is what you created, my son. You thought you would get involved with an outsider, a common girl, and I would do nothing?”

He hadn’t thought of what his father would do. He might be indispensable but she wasn’t. He should have thought of it. Fuck, he should have.

“Let her go,” he told the older man, his voice firm. “I won’t see her again.”

Lorenzo Maroni shook his head, finally putting out his own cigar. “This is a lesson, son. A lesson you need to remember. Love has no place in our world.”

Dante locked his jaw. “You loved mama,” he reminded the man.

His father laughed. “No, I didn’t. I wanted her, so I took her. That’s what men like us do. You’re too soft and I’ve let it go on too long.”

“What do you mean you took her?” Dante stared at his father, surprise filling him, followed by disgust at the implication. He had never imagined what his father was hinting at.

“Took. Snatched. I saw her and took her right from her car, brought her here, married her,” his father said, almost proudly.

Dante thought of his mother, beautiful, warm, but always sad, acid in his stomach. “Did you rape her?”

“Why does it matter?”

He had.

Disgust filled Dante, bile rising his throat as he swallowed it down. He looked away from the man who had sired him, perhaps forcefully, on his mother, and his skin crawled.

Roni whimpered, making him look at her small form. She didn’t deserve this. She really didn’t deserve this. She was an amazing girl, and the closest thing he had to a true friend. His first lover. She made him laugh. She didn’t deserve these ropes and tape.

His heart clenched, processing everything he had been told and everything he was seeing. He had to get her out. Somehow.

“Leo tells me you’ve gotten excellent with knives,” his father’s voice cut to the desperation filling him. Dante focused on his words, his heart slamming as the words dawned on him.

“Let her go, father,” he looked to the man, his eyes burning. “I swear fealty to you. I swear to follow every command you make. I swear to never see her again. Just please, let her go. I’m begging you.”

“Don’t beg!” his father yelled at him, grabbing him by the arm. “You are a Maroni! Maroni’s don’t beg, not even on their deathbeds. Do you understand?”

Dante nodded, letting his father shake his arm. Fear filled him at how the situation was unfolding. Huffing out a breath, his father cooled himself down, looking back at Dante again.

“Take this as another lesson,” he continued speaking, almost in a gentle voice. “Always have the upper hand when you’re bargaining. Right now, you have nothing. I am the one holding the power. What happens to this girl is under my control. What happens to your brother is under my control. You want him to get the help he needs? Kill the girl. A life for a life.”

Dante breathed out slowly, his mind racing to find a way, find a loophole, something, anything.

Nothing.

Fuck.

There had to be something.

Roni whimpered again.

Dante went to kneel before her, in a way he had kneeled before her countless times and saw her tears drench her face, words trapped between them. His head dropped to her lap, his hands gripping her chair.

“You don’t kill her,” his father’s voice said in that same even tone, “I’ll give her to the men who will have her first and kill her later. She will suffer. You, on the other hand, can give her mercy, my boy.”

No.

No.

He couldn’t. This was his fault. He never should have gotten involved with her. So many years they had spent together, and this is what it had come to.

“You have two minutes to choose.”

Two minutes.

One hundred and twenty seconds.

Suddenly, Dante could hear every beat of his heart pounding in his head, the blood rushing to his ears, ticking like a time bomb, every second closer to detonation.

He looked up at the wide, frightened blue eyes of the young girl who had dared to stay with him, knowing what he would choose. He couldn’t let her suffer, not at the hands of his father’s men. He couldn’t let her die like that.

He couldn’t do shit. He was a helpless little asshole who’d thought he could get away with playing with fire, without burning himself or his lover.

“Motherfucker!” he screamed in helpless frustration, getting up to pick an empty chair, throwing it across the room.

He looked back at his father, his heart racing. “Don’t make me do this.”

“One minute,” came the reply.

Grabbing fistfuls of his hair, Dante shook, howling at the ceiling in his helplessness, not wanting to do the one thing he knew he had to do to spare her.

“Thirty seconds.”

Tension climbed up in the room.

Exhaling out a deep breath, Dante slowly let a sense of calm wash over him. Without a word, he walked to his father and took the knife from the inside of his coat pocket, the little weight feeling like a rock in his hand. “You unleash this beast, father, do it knowing that one day, it will kill you too. This is your last chance to stop this madness.”

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.

Clean as he could be, Dante walked back to the grave, to see Tristan almost finished with covering it up. It was unexpected, this little assistance. Considerate, even. He never would have described the boy like that.

Swooping down to pick up the clothes in a pile beside him, Dante found his own white sweater and jeans and shoes. Frowning, he looked at the seventeen-year-old dedicatedly covering the ground.

“Did you break into my house?” he asked, mildly surprised.

Tristan shrugged, a fine sheen of sweat on his face. “Wasn’t hard to break into.”

Dante shook his head. Quickly dressing, he went to sit down by the lake, and looked up at the mansion on the hill, crowned above the woods, flexing his fingers. Tristan came to sit beside him after a few minutes, throwing the shovel to the side, handing him a bottle of Jack Daniels from Dante’s stash.

Dante almost chuckled at that, before sobering. “Are we friends now?”

“No.”

“So what’s this? You watch my back and I watch yours kinda deal?”

“Fuck off, asshole.”

What he expected.

Taking a swig from the bottle, he passed it to Tristan even though they were underage for it. They were underage for a lot of shit they did. What was the right age to kill someone, after all?

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Tristan spoke after a long beat of silence.

“No,” Dante agreed. “It shouldn’t have.”

“You gonna do something about it?” the other boy asked, the most he had said in a conversation with Dante.

“Yeah,” Dante nodded, his eyes on the mansion lights turning on. “But not today.”

“Good.”

The clouds got darker, the wind chillier as night approached. Minutes went by. 

“How do you move past it?” Dante asked him quietly. “How do you forget?”

“You don’t.”

Yeah, he didn’t think they could.

“Thanks,” Dante muttered after taking another swig from the bottle. “I appreciate this.”

He was met with silence, but for once, it was companionable.

And so they sat that night, two young killers, one fresh and one seasoned, swallowing down alcohol to drown the chaos inside them, and knowing that love truly didn’t have a place in their lives.