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He barely grunted, twisting around in a neat little move that his shorter body wouldn’t have been capable of without intensive training, and his elbow connected to Dante’s back in a hard move.
Fuck.
That one really hurt, but Dante chuckled. “C’mon, little man,” he said, deliberately goading him. God, was it too much to ask for a reaction? He’d been working on his little project to chip away at this guy’s defenses for over a year, and all he’d gotten were blank looks and dead blue eyes. Annoying as it was, Dante liked him, especially because it screwed with his old man. Anything that screwed with Bloodhound Maroni was fucking golden in his books.
The punch to his jaw came out of nowhere, followed by a quick punch to his nose.
Motherfucker.
Dante heard the crunch before he felt the searing pain of his skull being blown. Grabbing his nose, feeling the blood gush out, Dante felt a laugh bubble out of him, blinking the stars from his eyes. Jesus, the guy was good. Served him right for needling him.
Taking out the handkerchief he always kept in his pocket, a habit h
is beautiful mother had drilled into him, even in the frayed jeans that would have his mother probably roll over in her grave, he held it over his nose to stem the bleeding.
“You know I’m not going anywhere, right?” Dante mumbled through the fabric over his mouth, and finally, after a year of drilling, the younger guy spoke.
“Piss off.”
Gold.
He’d hit gold.
Dante grinned behind the handkerchief. “Nice to meet you too, Tristan. You’re my little buddy now.”
Tristan narrowed his blue eyes slightly, before walking out of the training center. Or torture center, as Dante referred to it. Bloodhound Maroni had built an entire structure on his property devoted to training his soldiers and their children – training in self-defense, weapons, and torture, both to give and take it. The building had three levels – the ground floor devoted to hand-to-hand combat and weapons training, the first floor devoted to pain-tolerance training, and a basement devoted to interrogations. And though anyone underage wasn’t allowed there since usually, it held outside enemies, Dante had been down there multiple times. The perks of being a Maroni.
Satisfied with the progress he’d made with Tristan, even though it was barely a centimeter, Dante walked out of the training center, nodding to the two guards posted outside whose only job was to make sure nobody who wasn’t supposed to be there got in. They nodded back with respect.
Dante walked across the well-manicured lawns, uphill towards the mansion. It was such a monstrosity atop the lush green hill, but Dante loved it. His great-great-grandfather had been the one to build it. He’d been a merchant of glass, a well-respected member of the community, and a loner. That was the reason he’d bought the entire hill a little away from town, for his wife and family to live under one roof. Slowly, as the years had passed, more structures had been added to the property. But Dante loved that mansion, for the history and love it had been made with. Only if half the pit of vipers living in it now could somehow jump off the damn hill.
As he walked, the men patrolling the ground gave him respectful nods. As expected. He was the oldest son of Lorenzo ‘Bloodhound’ Maroni, the grandson of Antonio ‘The Iceman’ Maroni, who had been the founder of the Tenebrae Outfit and one of the most notorious leaders of the underworld. Dante was the heir to the empire. He was expected to continue the legacy in his blood, and he fucking hated it.
He was his mother’s son more than his father’s. And he couldn’t understand how someone like his mother had ever been with someone like his father. He didn’t know how they met because she had never mentioned it. And Dante remembered everything about her.
‘You’re my most precious art, my little hell-raiser, my Dante.’
That’s what she’d called him. Her protector in the hell she had tried to survive, the one who would brave this hell and come out. Yes, he knew why she’d named him ‘Dante’. It was after the poet who went through the seven circles of hell and got out. Dante would be lucky if he survived the first.
She’d been a painter, his mother, with the wild, curly brown hair, sad brown eyes, and soft, wide smile. Streaks of paint on her cheek, a poem in her throat, she would recite poetry or even hum songs while he would play with the clay she bought him, and his little toddler brother would be doing whatever toddlers did. She had nurtured the artist inside him, occasionally coming to guide his small hands as he molded the soft clay.
She’d taken a room for herself on the top floor of the mansion. The sunsets were the prettiest from there, she’d said. As a child, he had loved spending hours with her as she worked with her paints and he made little sculptures of clay for her.
It was also the room he’d found her in, her wrists slit open as red pooled around her, her canvas fallen to the side on the floor, soaking in her blood, her last masterpiece.
Shaking off his thoughts, Dante climbed up the low steps to the back of the mansion, walking to the side with a view of the lake, and removed his white handkerchief, now stained crimson. The green went as far as the eyes could see, only obliterated by the occasional structure. God, he loved this fucking hill even though he wished half the people got off it.
Moving his facial muscles, he tested the severity of his injuries. Little bastard got him good. It hurt, but he’d live.
Something barreled into him from the side, hitting him right where Tristan had elbowed him. Gritting his teeth, he spared a glance to the kid who’d slammed into him, now flat on her butt.
“Watch where you’re going, squirt,” he told her absently, calling her what he called his younger brother. Fuck, he needed a cigarette. He wasn’t a smoker per se, but he liked the occasional puff. Taking one out from his pocket, he flicked open his metal lighter and took a deep drag. Smoke coiled inside his lungs, giving him a momentary reprieve from any other sensation. That was until he heard a feminine cough from his side.
Chuckling, he looked at the girl properly, seeing her back on her feet, in a simple blue dress, her black hair in a ponytail, and her large green eyes on him. He’d seen those eyes somewhere.
“Are you supposed to be in this area?” he asked, taking a little drag of the cigarette, watching her cute nose wrinkle.
“I’m hiding from my friend,” she told him, her eyes drifting to the ground. “I think I should go now. Bye.”
