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Dante was glad. “I’m getting married soon, by the way.”
“To Green Eye Girl?” Damien asked. Even though he knew Amara by name, Damien had fallen in love with her eyes, so much so that he had spent a month obsessed with researching green eyes and that particular shade of green.
“Yes,” Dante confirmed. “Do you want to come for the wedding?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.
“I want to,” Damien sighed. “But it’s better nobody know about me. I like my life here.”
Dante hoped one day his brother would give another answer, but he respected his wishes. Given the chance, wouldn’t he have chosen to stay out of this shithole himself?
“No worries,” he said easily, knowing Damien got upset if he felt like he’d hurt Dante. “I actually called to talk to you about mom. Is it okay if I talk about her?”
He heard Damien’s breathing pick up, and he waited.
“Yes, okay,” his brother said. “I talked about her in therapy a lot back in Morning Star.”
“You remember her?” Dante asked, surprised.
“A bit.” The sound of something tapping came over the line – pencil on wood. His brother was tapping a pencil on wood. Not good.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Dante reassured him. “We don’t have to talk about her.”
“No, I should tell you,” his brother said. “Dr. Sanders tells me I should tell you. It will help me. We were talking about these dreams I’ve been having forever but they’re the bad kind. The good are mostly sex dreams or dreams where I build things you know, but that’s not what the doctor told me to tell you.”
Dante felt his heart begin to pound. “What did he say to tell me?”
“Dreams about mom,” Damien spoke, the tapping of the pencil on wood constant in the background. “I don’t have any memory of her but I always see this dream of this man holding me and mom crying and cutting herself and so much blood, and I wake up feeling really scared. Dr. Sanders said it could be trauma from what happened to her and I should talk to you about it, because in the dream sometimes you pick me up and get me out. You’re my hero.”
The tightness in his chest had his throat locking. “Thanks for telling me that, Damien. You’ll tell me if you need anything, right?”
“Yes,” Damien said. “Talk to you later, brother.”
He hung up abruptly. Dante wasn’t surprised, used to his brother being abrupt with the phone. He stood in his study, looking out at the lawns and the lake, his mind reeling from every piece of the puzzle that was coming to light. His brother had a high-functioning brain, so while it was possible that it could be his imagination, a vivid, recurring dream like that could also be a memory.
Their mother had wanted him to hide. She had felt hunted. She had been murdered.
Dante rubbed a hand over his face, trying to discern the threads of mysteries around him that just kept getting more and more tangled.
Over the next few weeks, things stayed quiet, or as quiet as they could be for a man leading the largest mob family in the underworld. Dante had truly taken over the reins of all businesses, surgically removed all liabilities, and strategically placed in assets – both people and things – that maximized their profit.
Tristan and Morana had gone back to Shadow Port with a young Xander, with the excuse that she would try to locate his next of kin herself while Tristan talked to the boy. Dante had scoffed at that, aware that just the act of them taking the boy meant they were thinking of keeping him. Dante was happy for them, but the shadow looming over the boy’s appearance in their lives kept him skeptical, especially because it had been Xander who had coordinated their rescue with the Shadowman, even though he claimed not to have seen him.
Shadowman, or Morana’s airport asshole, was an unknown entity. He had ties to the Syndicate, and that alone made him someone Dante was extremely wary of. He didn’t know what game this guy was playing, or to what end, but he didn’t like it.
Alpha called Dante in the weeks too, telling him that while he hadn’t heard anything back from the feelers he’d put out, he was positive something would turn up. The call had been an update, but also a subtle hand reaching out, accepting the offer Dante had made to the man. It left him feeling good.
He had also begun looking into his mother’s death, trying to find any reports from all those years ago, her history, anything. So far, he came up empty.
On the ground, he had restructured his father’s resources, putting the army he’d been building over the years on the front and center of the fringe, men he had recruited and trained to make up the core of his organization. Vin, his most trusted man, he had assigned to Amara’s security. That was a good move both because Amara was comfortable in his presence and because Dante trusted Vin with her. Having seen them attached at the hip for years, he knew his presence in her life was good for her.
And she was good for Dante.
Sleeping with her in his arms every night, waking up to her flush against him, knowing there was no need to hide his love for her had been the biggest, most beautiful change in his life. Some mornings, he woke up early, just looking at the woman he had wanted for years, unable to believe he had her.
Dante scraped the statue he was working on, early morning light filtering in the new studio on this side of the house, Wuthering Heights playing on audio, as he wielded the scraper over the rough surface of the dried clay.
‘Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!’
Fuck, he should have listened to it years ago. The angst, the longing, the passion was reminiscent of his own tale of woe with Amara back then.
