AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He grimaces, then shrugs again. “Yeah. It was pretty bad.”
“Oh.” I know there’s a lot more to him than the easy-going charm that’s usually on display, but I’m not used to him letting me see it. “A nightmare?”
“Not my first,” he says, his lips quirking up as he finally tears his eyes away from the painting and looks at me. “Bad shit tends to surface in the still of the night, you know? Painting is a pretty good way of dealing with it, though.”
I remember that he told me something similar the first time he showed me his studio, about how painting helps him unwind and process things, and I wonder if the “bad shit” he was putting onto the canvas is somehow my fault. Something to do with all the shit that’s come down on the Reapers thanks to our ongoing search for Chloe.
Dante smooths a hand down my bare back and cups my ass. “What is it, princess? I can feel you thinking too hard.”
I scoff, but I don’t hate the idea that he sees me that well. “You can’t feel something like that.”
“Sure I can. Come on now, tell me.”
I look back at the painting. At the red explosion he decorated the middle with, and how my body softened it. Spread it around and changed it. “I was wondering what your dream was about. What kind of bad shit you wanted to work through.”
“My dad.”
The tension he must have picked up on eases out of my body with his answer. I’m glad it’s not my fault. But now I’m also curious. Dante hasn’t told me much about his past, but he did give me the impression that he had a good relationship with his father. Nothing like what Chloe and I have had to deal with in Frank. But if Dante’s having nightmares about the man…
“Did something happen to him?” I ask hesitantly.
Dante sighs, his gorgeous face going bleak for a moment. Then he nods.
For a moment, I think he’s going to leave it at that, and I decide not to push. Just because he’s admitted to having feelings for me doesn’t mean I’m entirely sure what to do with those feelings, or whether they can really go anywhere.
But then he opens up.
“A lot of shit happened to my old man. He was a hitman. Freelance. And since I trained up with him, some of what I saw, what we did, pops up in my dreams from time to time. But those are just memories, not really nightmares.” He glances at me for a moment, then looks away again. “Killing doesn’t bother me.”
I wonder if he thinks I might judge him for that.
I wonder if Idojudge him for that.
I sit with it for a moment, and realize I don’t.
Death happens, and there are plenty of pieces of shit out there who deserve to die. Plenty who deserve a hell of a lot more than that too. I just can’t find it in me to give a shit that Dante’s the one who sometimes deals out the sentence. It’s not even really a surprise, given his position with the Reapers.
And maybe, if I’m brutally honest with myself, that darkness inside me finds that part of him just as appealing as all the rest.
“Then what does bother you?” I ask, thinking of the red paint he attacked the canvas with again.
Dante sends me another long look. “The way he died.”
Not that he died, but the way it happened. Or maybe both.
I fold my arms on his chest and sink down, pressing our bodies together again as I rest my chin on my folded hands. “Tell me?”
Dante smiles, a small, soft one, and cups the back of my head, lifting his for a kiss. Then he folds the arm that’s not gripping my ass under his head and looks back at the painting.
“Dad started training me before I could walk. Even before he let me touch any tools of the trade, it was the rest. How to read people. Situational awareness. Picking out targets, noticing a tail, all that shit. As soon as I was old enough not to fuck up the job for him, he started taking me with him.”
An involuntary shiver goes through me. “He killed people in front of you?”
Dante’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “My degree wasn’t the book-learning type, princess. Some skills gotta be hands-on.”
I nod, my eyes lingering on his bicep, flexed and bulging in this position. I can’t help wondering if any of the intricate patterns and images inked onto his body—maybe the row of dark birds drawn in silhouette that wander across his arm there—represent that part of his past. If they represent his kills.
Maybe someday I’ll ask.
