The Emperor (Dark Verse 3)

Dante had been to Shadow Port previously for work and he was going again in two days, but it was the first time Tristan wanted to accompany him. He said it was because he wanted to look at some property in the city, but Dante knew he wanted to spy on the little Vitalio. Over the years, he had seen the man fall deeper and deeper into an obsession that would have been unhealthy had it not been the only thing sustaining him.

Dante’s own obsession, though not as mad as Tristan’s, burned just as hot, even if there was a difference. Morana Vitalio didn’t even know Tristan existed, and his girl had existed with Dante in her life for as long as he could remember. Where Tristan’s obsession was a visible thunderstorm, Dante’s was more like the wind – ever-present and life-sustaining but invisible. It could go from a comforting breeze that gave relief to the relentless wind that fanned the flames.

His obsession was born of an emotion he had not thought himself capable of. When it began, he didn’t know. Maybe it was the second she collided into him and fearlessly demanded his attention, or maybe it was when he held her broken body in his arms after searching for her for days, or maybe it was when she looked at him with mindless pain before slumping in relief; or maybe it was when he saw her trying to walk on her hurting feet, fall and push herself up again.

Dante didn’t know when he fell in love with Amara. He just did.

This was exactly why he sat in the Outfit restaurant in his city, watching as the mustached man across him, the man he’d finally located after four years of searching. The man swallowed his food, his eyes nervous. He should be very nervous.

“It was years ago, man,” the jackass said, his eyes shifty. “We just got the order to take the girl. I can’t remember anything else.’

Something that had always bothered Dante about Amara’s abduction had been the lack of logic behind it. Had it been a normal kidnapping with the ransom, he could’ve understood that still. But with the level of torture she had endured, and from what her kidnappers had told him before he killed them, he knew she’d been targeted specifically. And it didn’t make sense. If someone had wanted Outfit secrets, Vin had been a better choice to take, instead of the young girl who wasn’t in the fold. Also, the fact that her kidnappers had been professionals, the kind that chewed on cyanide capsules in their teeth rather than give information.

Dante used the spoon in his left hand to twine the spaghetti on the fork, before putting the bite in his mouth, chewing slowly to both enjoy the taste and let the asshole in front of him sweat. They were seated in a corner away from the main part of the restaurant, and Dante liked that. Cleanup would be less of a headache. Although, nobody would dare come to them, not with his gun openly visible on the table.

Swallowing down his bite, he deliberately picked up his glass of wine, a decadent red, and swirled it in his hand, his eyes on Gilbert, the man he’d finally found. What the fuck kind of a douche name was Gilbert?

“I swear I don’t know anything, Mr. Maroni,” the man swore profusely and Dante shook his head.

“See, Gilbert,” Dante took a sip of the wine. Ah, so good. “I don’t like people who lie to my face. I know the hit went from you to those boys. So, I’m giving you one more chance. Who told your boys to kidnap the girl?”

Gilbert slugged down his drink, wiping his hand on his palm. “Look, I really don’t know.”

Dante pursed his lips, indicating the man’s drink. “You know the whiskey you just enjoyed so much? It’s poisoned.”

“What?!”

Dante calmly twined another forkful of spaghetti and continued talking. “It’s an extremely rare blend of venoms. Very hard to acquire, to the point I actually had to hire a very skilled thief to get it for me, especially for occasions like this. But that’s beside the point. Three little drops. I’d say you have five, maybe ten minutes top.”

“What do you mean?” the man panicked, his face sweating.

“Unless of course, you get an antidote,” Dante helpfully pointed out, “which happens to be in my jacket pocket.”

The man in front of him adjusted on the chair, breathing heavily.

“In about two minutes your system will start to shut down,” Dante picked up his glass again, leaning back in his chair. “You don’t have a lot of time, Gilbert. If I were you, I’d be singing like a canary.”

“It was a phone call,” the man huffed out, squirming on the chair now. “He didn’t give his name, just transferred all the money and told us to interrogate the girl.”

“Interrogate her about what?” Dante asked calmly as the man tugged at his collar.

“Everything. He said she had some information and we had to break her by any means possible and call him back with the info.”

“And did you?” Dante looked down at his watch. “Call him back?”

“No,” the man started to shake. “She didn’t break.”

Fuck, no, she didn’t break. Not his fierce warrior queen.

Dante didn’t ask for the number. After so many years playing the game, he knew well enough how things worked. The number would be a dead end.

“You gotta give me something if you want to live,” Dante said in a singsong voice, seeing the hands on his metal watch.

“I just know he worked for a group, alright?” the man panted, sweating profusely. “Some kind of guild or syndicate or something. Give me the antidote, please!”

A few patrons in the restaurant looked at the table, at both the men and the gun on the table, before looking away. They all knew this was an Outfit establishment.

Dante chuckled. “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Gilbert. You gave your boys the permission to torture a fifteen-year-old kid.” He leaned forward, the rage inside him simmering. “Did you know she was mine?”

The other man’s eyes widened as he sputtered. “No, no. I swear I didn’t know she was yours. I never would have taken the job if I knew.”

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?”

That shook him. He could see that.

Dante pat his shoulder. “Thinking she was a pawn was your biggest mistake, old man. So, tell your watchdogs to keep her safe. She gets so much as a paper cut, it’s your reputation and your neck on the line.” 

“I will not have you sullying our blood with a common little whore.”

What a pompous prick. 

“That ‘common little whore’ is going to be the mother of my children one day, father,” Dante smiled at the man. “Your grandchildren. The future Maronis.”

“You get with her, I will slit her and her mother’s throats,” the older man spat out.

Triumph rolled through him. He had maneuvered his father exactly where he had wanted him. “So, as long as I stay away from her, you leave her alone?”

“She was going to meet with an accident,” his father said, making Dante’s gut clench. He had already suspected that though. “But you’ve learned to bargain, son. I won’t touch her as long as you put her out of your head. Find someone else to fuck.”

Dante gritted his teeth, knowing now wasn’t the time to tip the scales of this precarious balance. With that, he turned around to leave and paused. “Oh, and as of today, her mother is my employee, not yours. The same rules apply to her. Now, I’ll leave you to find my brother.”

He knew what his father would find – a burned corpse of a teenage boy by the edge of the property. Dante doubted it would occur to his father that he had been played. His brother was across the ocean, safe in a wonderful house with friends he had made in the facility, living a good life away from these games, no longer a pawn on the board. Dante could never see him again, never risk having anything trace him back to Damien, for his own safety.

Dante had known, as soon as Amara had told him about his father’s generous offer, that her life was forfeit. His father was going to break her rhythm and that, he fucking couldn’t allow. So he had removed the only leverage his father had had over him for years, planning his brother’s fake death and protecting the woman who had his heart, even as he broke hers.

Something clogged in his chest, remembering the last time he had seen his brother a few weeks ago, almost as tall as he was, intelligent enough to understand what Dante was telling him. Damien understood his brother loved him, which was why he had to let him go. He would always watch over him, but until the old man died, they couldn’t see each other again.

With Amara, he had to lay low. Her life hung in the precarious balance between his father’s threat and Dante’s promise. It was a sacrifice worth the wait. She was worth the wait.

Although he imagined she’d tell him to go to hell if he showed up, her voice low and raspy and fucking messing with his heartbeat like it always did. He didn’t think she knew how much he loved her voice. In his world of gunshots and screams, her voice was a gentle prayer, evidence that there was life after the endless noise.

There would be life after this.

The old man couldn’t die, not yet. There were too many variables that would impact a lot of lives if he was killed.

Dante imagined killing him a lot, torturing him in different ways for everything he’d done to his mother, his brother, to Roni, to Amara. He wanted to sneak up to his room and slit his throat in his sleep. He wanted to march into his office and put a bullet between his eyes. He wanted to drag him to the interrogation room and make him bleed for hours.

Dante nurtured the hatred he felt for the man, cloaking it under an easy smile, all the while planning to take his kingdom apart, bit by bit, moving the pieces until nothing remained but the bare foundations of the empire that Dante would build.

It wasn’t time yet.

But one day, it would be.

And that day, Dante would smoke a fucking cigarette as he watched him bleed, and he would come home to fuck the woman he loved.