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"He's nothing more than the fool we always thought him to be," Preacher whispered to me as Yamamoto withdrew a blade from a sheath at his leg. I hadn't even noticed the placement earlier, but it makes sense given how he warned me I'd need to redo this space once he was done.
The first slice of his blade had my father screaming. The second had him pleading.
It took the third for reality to set in. Then his cries turned to whimpers.
I would have stayed to watch had I not felt Preacher urging me to move. When I turned to look at the reason why, I found Pharrell standing over his dead wife, his expression barely contained.
"Come, Pharrell," Ricardo said in a firm tone.
The other man didn't move at first. He kept his eyes on the woman beneath him. Then all at once, it was like a switch flipped. He stuffed the emotions away and turned to face us. "Let's leave Yamamoto to his work while we begin cleaning. Unless, of course, you'd like to burn this place to the ground."
I thought it over for a moment. The idea held merit. Starting over could be amazing. But at the same time, there were so many memories tied into here. It was hard to know what the right choice was.
"What do you think?" I asked Preacher.
He looked around the area outside my father's office. The hall was littered with bodies and blood, but otherwise the space looked much the same as it had since I was a boy.
Preacher shrugged. "We can keep it to preserve the memories. Or we can clean out the important things we'll need and start from scratch. Whatever you want, baby."
I shivered at the look he gave me. It was one that promised me no matter my choice, he'd ensure our home would be different from what we grew up with. There would be love. So much love. We wouldn't be scared to walk down the hall at night or have to hide the connection we'd had from the beginning.
And still... "Let's keep it," I told him. I can't bring myself to burn down the home our mothers lived in. Even with all the evil inside, their memories live on in these walls. Our memories live on in them.
Preacher nodded, as did Pharrell and Ricardo. We turned to head down the hall, our steps taking us past the men my father once ruled over. There was work to be done, and I was finished wasting time on the pathetic excuse of a man I once called my father.
CHAPTER TWENTY
PREACHER
The cleanup took foreveronce Dante decided not to burn down the compound. We started with the bodies. Each one had to be loaded into a trash cart, then thrown into the back of one of our 'carpet cleaning' vans. It was one of the few legitimate businesses the organization used.
Except it was bleeding across the line of legal versus illegal by being our transport for the dead bodies. There just wasn't another way.
Once the truck was loaded, Ricardo and Pharrell drove it to the pig farm outside of the city. The owner had more hogs than he could always feed, so when I called him two days ago to suggest he hold off on dinner until tonight, he was more than happy to comply.
With the bodies gone, we began the task of deciding what could stay and what needed to leave. Several pieces of furniture were broken or bloodstained. Dante voted all of it be set on fire in the backyard, so I set a few of Pharrell's men to do that.
From there, it was a matter of cleaning with bleach to clear out the stains. We called in several of the men, along with a few women I knew wouldn't bat an eye at the scene. They worked for hours on end clearing the space so that you wouldn't be able to see the carnage that had taken place.
Even so, I doubted if I'd ever be able to unsee it. The memories were burned into my mind, like a permanent reminder of what we had to overcome to have all of this.
"Are you ready to lead them?" I'd asked Dante that first night we'd fallen asleep together in his old bed.
The room he grew up in was mostly untouched. It held tons of memories from years past, and I was thankful we hadn't burned it in our haste for change. Our childhood games of hide and seek were in there. Our stolen kisses and secret touches. Promises of forever. All of it was in that room.
"I think I've been ready for a while now. I just didn't want to do it without you. Are you ready to be by my side?" He teased me.
Growling, I pulled him into my chest. "Forever. Try to get rid of me. It won't go well."
"Not a chance, Daddy. I want to keep you forever. We're going to change the organization. Make it a safe place for people like us. Give our family name a better reputation."
We'd fallen asleep sometime between talking about his ideas for the future and my thoughts about how I'd be able to keep him safe should anyone try to take his seat from him. They'd always have to go through me first. And I wasn't going down easily. Never again would I be told to abandon him or give someone else control over our future.
My husband. My boy. My Dante.
* * *
The next morning,we're greeted by the sight of Pharrell and Ricardo waiting for us at the breakfast table. A spread is laid out for us to dive in to.
