“No such luck, I’m afraid,” Emilio sneers. “You’ve just murdered thirty of my best men.”
“And I’ll murder another thirty given half the chance. Why did you do it? Why kill my daughter? She was only three years old… an innocent in all of this.”
My eyes fill with tears when I hear the raw emotion in his voice.
“Because I knew how much it would damage you. Because I knew what you were capable of even as a boy and I wanted to twist it to my advantage and turn you into my pet killer, for a while at least…” In the darkness I can see the sinister white outline of Emilio’s grin. “It forced you back to Colombia, didn’t it?”
“We are brothers no more!” I hear him roar.
“My thoughts exactly. Goodbye Dante.”
Two shots rings out sharp and deadly in the cool night air, slamming into that beautiful body that I love so much and I watch in horror as he goes down.
“No!” I scream, leaping up from my hiding place, my mind a dangerous blank. Emilio turns in my direction and I see surprise and intent written all over his face but I’m too quick for him. Flicking off the safety, I fire five rounds in quick succession and watch his body fly backwards against the tarmac, my arms and shoulders absorbing the gun’s harsh recoil with grim satisfaction.
The silence that follows is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard.
I feel no regret, no guilt. Nothing.
Dropping the gun, I rush over to Dante who’s lying facedown, a sinister red pool spreading out from underneath him. Somehow I roll him onto his back. Two gaping holes mar his chest and abdomen. “Please don’t die, please don’t die,” I sob over and over again as I rip my sweatshirt over my head to press against the bloody wounds.
“You know I can’t resist you naked,” murmurs a voice.
I fall back in shock. His dark eyes are staring right at me. The skin on his face is waxy and pale and pain is etched into his every feature but he’s alive. He attempts a weak smile.
“Oh my god, Dante Santiago, don’t you ever die on me again.” I throw myself on his chest and he groans.
“Not planning on it. Don’t curse.” He coughs and it’s a rough, agonizing sound. “Fuck, that hurts.”
The sirens are nearly upon us now. I can see a convoy of lights barely half a mile away, hurtling up the road that runs parallel to the container docks.
“You need to stand-up,” I say urgently. “I have to get you to the water’s edge. I called Rick. He’s sending a boat for you.”
He turns to look at me. His eyes are softer now. I can see golden flecks re-emerging in a sea of darkness. “You really are my angel, Eve.”
I shake my head. “I just killed your brother. I don’t get to hold that title anymore.”
“You will always hold that title with me,” he says harshly, coughing once again.
“No more talking. The police will be here any minute.”
“And you said you’d never visit me if I got locked up.”
“Let’s not hang around to find out, shall we?” I help him up into a sitting position and throw his heavy arm around my neck. “Do you remember everything I’ve said to you?”
He nods and nuzzles into my neck, smelling like sweat and death and the man I love most in this world. “Every single word.”
Somehow we both stagger to our feet and I half-drag, half-carry him to the edge of the dockside. He’s twice the size of me and my arm muscles are screaming out in protest from all the times he keeps collapsing. We stop to rest as we pass the dead body of Emilio. He’s sprawled out on his back, a thin trickle of blood oozing out of the corner of his open mouth. He eyes are no less cold and flat than they were when he was alive.
Did I really just kill a man?
“You did well, Eve,” Dante murmurs.
“I didn’t expect to feel this… numb about it.”
“It gets easier,” he says grimly.
Not for me it won’t.
“Dante!”
Joseph is materializing from the warehouse, dragging his left leg behind him, chucking away his gun away as he goes.
“Old friend.”
They collapse against each other, clutching at each other’s faces as if they’re disproving a mirage, two soldiers surviving against all the odds again.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” says Joseph, breaking away first.
Dante nods, looking grey and exhausted suddenly as he takes back my hand. The police cars have reached the roadway now but a lone speedboat is racing up alongside. It pulls up as close as it can get to us but there’s still a ten-metre gap between the stern and the dockside and no space to unload a gangway. I watch the two men glance at each other.
“Jump!” I urge them. “What are you waiting for?”
Dante grips my hand tighter. “Are you ready for this?”
“Not me.” Somehow I wrench myself free. “I can’t swim, Dante.”
I watch him process this information. “It doesn’t matter, we can keep you afloat between us.”
“No,” I say quietly. “You’re both bleeding heavily. You’ll barely be able to keep yourself afloat.”
“I won’t leave you,” he snarls.
“There’s no time for this.” My face is working hard to push the tears away.
“Eve…”
“Please, Dante! They have your name. They know what you look like. You’ve saved me. You’ve saved my father. You don’t belong in a cage for that.”
“Come with us,” he pleads again, taking my face in his hands, smearing his blood all over my cheeks.
I shake my head, my heart breaking a thousand times over. “There’s too much mess. I need to stay here and face the consequences. I have no idea how I’m going to explain everything to my father but I have to try. They can’t lose me too, Dante.”
I see the comprehension in his eyes. He has to let me go. He has to make that sacrifice. He has to return me to my family because it’s the only way he can ever hope to atone for driving my brother to his death.
“My angel,” he says softly, pressing his forehead against mine, enveloping me in his warmth.
I breathe him in as deep as I can. “My devil,” I whisper, smiling through my tears. “Find your daughter’s body. Grieve. Come back for me.”
“No question,” he says gruffly.
He stumbles away from me then, keeping hold of my hand until the very last second like he did on the plane in Africa, and when the contact finally severs my own grief is like a blunt knife lodging deep within my heart.
“I love you, Dante Santiago,” I call out after him, my voice breaking. “…And I forgive you.”
He turns to smile at me, a sight so rare, so exquisite, that I feel my whole body shuddering from the power and intensity of it.
I watch as he tips his glorious head back to first, look at the myriad of stars above our heads and then at the soft lights reflecting on the water below. He opens his mouth to say something but stops himself just in time.
Moments later he’s diving headfirst into the water.
Epilogue
Six Months Later
Eve
“This is good, Eve, this is really good.”
The sound of my new editor’s enthusiasm rouses me from my thoughts. I turn away from the window and smile down at him as he pores over my copy for the third time this morning. I’ve spent the last few months investigating the rise and downfall of a Ponzi-type scheme that has gripped and devastated the upper societies of New York in equal measure. Dante was right. It appears that dangerous criminals lurk in every facet of life.
“Thanks Rob,” I say, grinning at my overweight, overworked but perennially cheerful boss as he sits back in his chair to consider printing schedules.
“We’ll run this at the weekend. Front page. Excellent work again, Miss Miller.”
“Does this mean I get a corner desk?”
He tips his balding head back and laughs. “Lets see what the circulation figures look like first, shall
we? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
I return his good humor with another quick smile then head for the door, running my fingers along the delicate chain of my necklace as I do. I’ve given up biting my nails. I have a new habit now and I catch myself doing it often.
The necklace arrived fourteen days after I was rescued from the dockside dressed only in my underwear and covered in blood, mute from shock, surrounded by dead bodies and unable to explain what the hell had just happened to me.
It was delivered with no note but I knew who’d sent it, even before I opened the exclusive black box with the embossed lettering spelling out the name of a famous jeweller renowned the whole world over. Resting on a light grey velvet cushion was an exquisite silver necklace featuring a pendant like no other. It consisted of three numbers spelt out in dozens of tiny diamonds.
‘666’
The mark of the devil.
The mark of Dante Santiago.
A man who has branded himself across my heart and soul forever.
The authorities aren’t buying my story of ‘wrong place, wrong time’, even though Rick had Manuel’s body removed and my apartment cleaned up for me. Thanks to Dante, I recognize a tail when I see it, and the FBI aren’t exactly discreet. I’m being watched 24/7, and I tell myself that this is the real reason he hasn’t returned for me yet.
I may have forgiven Dante for what he did to my family but my family won’t forgive me. I’ve put my father in an impossible position and I hate myself for it. He knows exactly who Sebastian Días is. He knows it was him who stole me away. He holds the key to linking me with the man who murdered his only son but he’s keeping my secret safe for now. I may disgust him, he may think I’m a traitor to my brother’s memory, but he doesn’t want to see my locked up either. I’m still hoping that one day he’ll understand.
“Are you coming out for drinks tonight?” Rob calls out after me.
“Sure. You’re buying right?”
“After you turned in a piece like that? Damn right I am.”
“I’ll see you at six then.”
I make my way along the corridor and back to my desk, pausing for a moment to gaze out at the familiar sprawling skyline of Miami. I know he’s out there. Sometimes I’ll catch the last few threads of the news and I’ll find myself face to face with the hallmarks of his handiwork. The African dictator cut down in a hail of bullets, the rogue snipers who assassinated a wanted terrorist. He’s still slaking his bloodlust. He still hasn’t broken the cycle but perhaps in time…
In the immediate weeks and months following that night I found myself questioning my place in the world and my whole identity. How could I profess to be a good person and then kill a man and feel no remorse for it?
How could I love a man like him?
I’m still searching for the answer to that. We’re all flawed and broken in some way and it’s up to us to find happiness in the unlikeliest of places. Sometimes in the unlikeliest of men.
My pulse quickens as I remember his hard body looming over me and those deliciously tense moments right before he thrusts himself inside me.
I miss his touch, his scent, and his words.
I miss the way he makes my body scream with need.
I miss the dark and dirty way he twists my emotions to satisfy his every whim.
I miss how he pushes me all the way to my limits and beyond, smashing through my barriers in his haste to claim me. Like I’m the only woman alive who can calm the storm that’s raging inside.
I close my eyes and finger my necklace chain again, willing the beat between my legs to subside. Maybe it’s ok to hover on the edge of morality for Dante Santiago. We will never be conventional after all.
My dark and dangerous lover.
My reason for living.
“Oh, where are you, Dante?” I murmur for the twentieth time that day. And just like before I swear I can hear him answering me from the shadows.
“I’m here with you, my angel… Always.”
THE END
Thanks so much for reading!
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HEARTS DIVINE
The second instalment in the Dante Santiago series is coming soon…
EYES TO THE WIND
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Now his enemies are dying to exploit it."
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Jake’s the King of LA, the president of a Hollywood empire, yet he’s consumed by a darkness of his own design. What is it about Charlie that keeps smashing through his defences? In turn, Charlie finds herself drawn to a man as damaged as her.
But soon there are too many outside forces tearing them apart, like the dark family secrets he refuses to share and a beautiful ex who won’t leave him alone. When an enemy’s quest for revenge spirals them into danger, Charlie risks paying the ultimate price for falling in love with Jake Dalton...
About the Author
Catherine Wiltcher is a thirty-something freelance writer and former TV producer.
After being diagnosed with cancer, Catherine decided to follow her dreams and write romance novels about feisty women and hot, conflicted men, and something that removed her as far away from oncology rooms as possible. Sixteen years of working in film and TV production has provided endless inspiration for her writing…
Catherine lives in a village near Bath, UK, with her husband and two young daughters.
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Hearts Of Darkness (The Santiago Trilogy Book 1) Page 28