The Emperor (Dark Verse Book 3)

by RuNyx

  “Don’t you dare threaten me.”

  Dante stayed silent, letting his eyes talk, every ounce of hatred he felt for the man and for himself becoming visible to him.

  “You don’t find my brother, you have nothing to hold over my head,” Dante told him quietly.

  “I have her,” his father told him. “You’re foolishly attached to her. And I have her, son.”

  Dante deliberately gave him a little smirk. “Good. And you better make sure nothing happens to her.”

  “Or?”

  “Or I walk.”

  The silence between them loaded with tension. Dante had never made that threat before. But he hadn’t been ready before. He was now.

  “You can’t walk away,” Bloodhound Maroni stepped into his space, his finger pointed at his chest, his eyes disbelieving.

  “I can and I will,” he told his father, taking a hold of his finger and pushing it down. “A hair on her head gets harmed, I’m out. Your entire legacy crumbles. Lorenzo Bloodhound Maroni becomes nothing but fodder for gossip without an heir.”

  “I would kill you before that.”

  As expected. “And there would be nothing standing between you and Tristan,” Dante informed his father. “Now that he’s a grown adult, why do you think you’re still alive, father?”

  That shook him. He could see that.

  Dante pat his shoulder. “Thinking she was a pawn was your biggest mistake, old man. So, tell your watchdogs to keep her safe. She gets so much as a paper cut, it’s your reputation and your neck on the line.”

  “I will not have you sullying our blood with a common little whore.”

  What a pompous prick.

  “That ‘common little whore’ is going to be the mother of my children one day, father,” Dante smiled at the man. “Your grandchildren. The future Maronis.”

  “You get with her, I will slit her and her mother’s throats,” the older man spat out.

  Triumph rolled through him. He had maneuvered his father exactly where he had wanted him. “So, as long as I stay away from her, you leave her alone?”

  “She was going to meet with an accident,” his father said, making Dante’s gut clench. He had already suspected that though. “But you’ve learned to bargain, son. I won’t touch her as long as you put her out of your head. Find someone else to fuck.”

  Dante gritted his teeth, knowing now wasn’t the time to tip the scales of this precarious balance. With that, he turned around to leave and paused. “Oh, and as of today, her mother is my employee, not yours. The same rules apply to her. Now, I’ll leave you to find my brother.”

  He knew what his father would find – a burned corpse of a teenage boy by the edge of the property. Dante doubted it would occur to his father that he had been played. His brother was across the ocean, safe in a wonderful house with friends he had made in the facility, living a good life away from these games, no longer a pawn on the board. Dante could never see him again, never risk having anything trace him back to Damien, for his own safety.

  Dante had known, as soon as Amara had told him about his father’s generous offer, that her life was forfeit. His father was going to break her rhythm and that, he fucking couldn’t allow. So he had removed the only leverage his father had had over him for years, planning his brother’s fake death and protecting the woman who had his heart, even as he broke hers.

  Something clogged in his chest, remembering the last time he had seen his brother a few weeks ago, almost as tall as he was, intelligent enough to understand what Dante was telling him. Damien understood his brother loved him, which was why he had to let him go. He would always watch over him, but until the old man died, they couldn’t see each other again.

  With Amara, he had to lay low. Her life hung in the precarious balance between his father’s threat and Dante’s promise. It was a sacrifice worth the wait. She was worth the wait.

  Although he imagined she’d tell him to go to hell if he showed up, her voice low and raspy and fucking messing with his heartbeat like it always did. He didn’t think she knew how much he loved her voice. In his world of gunshots and screams, her voice was a gentle prayer, evidence that there was life after the endless noise.

  There would be life after this.

  The old man couldn’t die, not yet. There were too many variables that would impact a lot of lives if he was killed.

  Dante imagined killing him a lot, torturing him in different ways for everything he’d done to his mother, his brother, to Roni, to Amara. He wanted to sneak up to his room and slit his throat in his sleep. He wanted to march into his office and put a bullet between his eyes. He wanted to drag him to the interrogation room and make him bleed for hours.

  Dante nurtured the hatred he felt for the man, cloaking it under an easy smile, all the while planning to take his kingdom apart, bit by bit, moving the pieces until nothing remained but the bare foundations of the empire that Dante would build.

  It wasn’t time yet.

  But one day, it would be.

  And that day, Dante would smoke a fucking cigarette as he watched him bleed, and he would come home to fuck the woman he loved.

  The new city was a stranger, made worse by the fact that she was completely alone.

  She missed her mother, her best friend, her half-sister.

  She missed the hills, the woods, the views.

  She missed him.

  She missed his kisses, his eyes, his voice. That little grin he gave her, that polished look on his face, that fire in his endless eyes. She missed the sculptures and conversations and books, the dances and the drives and the dreams.

  After years of spending every day together, the separation felt more brutal. But she’d make it. She had to.

  “Hi, I’m Daphne!”

  The bright girl in her class came towards her. First week of school and it had been slightly overwhelming. The campus was beautiful and the classes were interesting.

  Amara smiled. “Hi,” she whispered in her soft voice.

  The girl frowned. “Why are you whispering?”

  The smile stuttered.

  “I don’t know how to connect with anyone,” Amara told her new therapist, a nice middle-aged black man with an office close to the university campus. “People always ask why I can’t speak normally and I can’t really tell them that I screamed too much now, can I? I don’t think torture is a part of the polite conversation!”

  Dr. Nelson watched her quietly, letting her vent the acid out.

  “I can’t go out without the bracelets or scarves because one time this boy saw my wrists and asked me what happened. Can people not see it’s something traumatic? Can they not be more sensitive? I miss being myself. I miss being able to just be myself without feeling that I’m broken.”

  She stared at the ceiling, watching the fan move slowly, heart thundering after waking up from a nightmare. Her studio apartment was dark, and she was alone. Anyone could break-in. Anyone could take her from her bed. And she wouldn’t be able to even scream for help.

  She watched the ceiling, wondering why she was even there, wondering how high the fan was from the floor, wondering if it could hold enough weight.

  Then she flushed those thoughts out.

  “Do you want me to come to visit you?” Nerea asked on the phone. “We can have a weekend of fun. You can show me around the city.”

  “I’d love that, Nerea,” Amara whispered into her phone. “You’ll like the museum here.”

  “Do I look like someone who’d enjoy a museum?” Nerea chuckled.

  They made plans. Nerea came to see her and for a weekend, Amara felt amazing.

  On Monday, loneliness encroached again.

  She woke up, went to classes, came back to a dark apartment, studied, and slept.

  Rinse and repeat.

  Some nights she woke up shaking with nightmares, some she fell into an exhausted sleep. She always aimed for the latter, working and studying and tiring her mind.

  A noise made her paus
e, her key in her door, her hand on the handle.

  The noise came again, from behind the plant at the side of her door.

  Amara bent down, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder, and placed the books in her hands on the floor, her bracelets jingling with the movement, and noise came again. A mewl.

  She looked behind the plant to see a tiny little cream-colored kitten with the biggest olive green eyes mewling quietly.

  Her heart melted. Picking her up carefully in her palm, Amara brought her up close to her face, a true smile on her lips after so long.

  “You lost, baby?” she asked in a small baby voice. “How did you get here?”

  The kitten blinked up at her, mewling again, before putting her head on her hand in a motion that made Amara a puddle.

  She straightened, unlocked the door, and brought her companion in loneliness home.

  “So, what do we call you, huh? Pixie?”

  Stare.

  “Pogo?”

  Stare.

  “Stardust?”

  Stare.

  “Lola?”

  Stare.

  “Lulu?

  Meow.

  “Lulu it is.”

  Months passed.

  It wasn’t easy living alone. It took her some time to get used to the idea. Having Lulu helped.

  Amara hadn’t realized how safe living on the compound had made her feel. She missed her mother, missed her best friend, and even missed the bastard who had broken her heart. Though she still loved him for everything he had been through with her, she was glad to not see him since that day in the woods months ago. After the breakup of a relationship that had never been, Amara had swallowed the bitter pill, asked Vin to drive her to Dr. Das, and cried like a baby while the older woman had listened to her vent without any judgment.

  ‘You’re brave to open your heart to him after everything you have been through, Amara. While it is sad that he doesn’t reciprocate your affection, it could be a good thing. You’ll be able to explore more once you go to university.’

  Yeah, the only problem with that? Amara couldn’t trust anyone for shit. She gave the men a wide berth, somehow always wary if one of them would pick her up and put her in a truck. The girls she didn’t know what to do with. There were a few who simply ignored her, and the few who had tried to talk to her Amara realized were normal girls. They hadn’t lived their whole lives on a mafia compound, with a best friend who was a mafia soldier, and an ex-something who was an underworld prince. Her normal and their normal did not match and Amara couldn’t find herself talking beyond a certain point with anyone.

  The only good things about her new life were the accelerated classes that she really enjoyed, Dr. Nelson – the therapist in the city Dr. Das had recommended, and Lulu, the fluffy little thing who had immediately curled up against her with such trust, Amara had fallen in love.

  Amara looked at Alex, her TA who kept asking her out until she said yes, as he danced against her. She had given him every excuse in the world, especially the fact that with her accelerated modules she had to finish in two years, she didn’t have time to date. He had been persistent.

  The lights in the club he had brought her to flickered neon all around her, the music loud and throbbing and all wrong. Amara had thought he’d take her out to a restaurant or something for the date. Instead, he’d brought her to the hub of hedonism and it wasn’t her scene.

  She swayed on her heels, not accepting any drinks from him no matter how much he tried, to the point she started getting annoyed. “Dance, Amara” he shouted over the music, stepping into her personal space. Amara involuntarily stepped back, hitting a wall, her nerves shot but pasted a smile on her face.

  He stepped closer to her, backing her into the wall, and her palms started to get clammy. She didn’t like this. “Step back, Alex,” she said but her voice got drowned in the music. He leaned closer to hear her, the scent of vodka strong on his body, and Amara’s gut churned.

  She just wanted to go home to Lulu.

  “Gonna kiss you, yeah,” he said, caging her in.

  “You’re not owed a kiss for a date,” she told him, inhaling deeply to keep her nerves at bay. “I said step back.” But it was fruitless. The music was too loud. She gave him a shove, clearly indicating her displeasure, hoping he’d give her space.

  He didn’t. Evidently, entitled assholery afflicted men out in the normal world too.

  Amara kneed him in the groin in a move Vin had taught her, pushing him off. Alex cupped his balls, gritting his teeth, his face turning red. “What the fuck!”

  She ran to the side door, pushing bodies out of her way, and exited into a narrow, secluded side entrance of some kind. A red bulb hung over the wall, lighting the stairs that led up and out into the street hopefully.

  Amara leaned against the wall, holding her stomach, trying to catch her breath. She didn’t have anyone she could call in the city, who would drop everything and pick her up and take her home. She was a big girl but she didn’t trust people. The cab she got into could drive off the path. The driver could be a psycho and take her somewhere else. Scenarios like that always ran through her head, making her anxious, and she needed to keep calm.

  The side door opened, and Amara looked at it, suddenly alert, ready to run up the stairs if need be.

  Only to feel her heart stop.

  Dantes Maroni stood in the narrow corridor, making it seem smaller, dressed in a crisp dark shirt and dark pants, his dark eyes on hers, not saying a word.

  Months.

  She hadn’t seen him in months and he dared to stare at her with that possessive look in his eyes, had the fucking audacity to stand in front of her like no time had passed, to make the need in her heart so acute it hurt.

  Amara glared at him, her chin starting to tremble as her eyes burned, rage enveloping her as she just looked at him.

  She closed the space between them, her hands shoving his chest, all the pain and hurt and loneliness she’d kept inside herself for months bubbling to the surface. Red edged around her vision, her body quivering from the force of her emotions, and she shoved him again, her sight blurring with tears. She punched him in the chest, little sounds of aggression leaving her, almost feral, and he let her, not stopping her until she was spent.

  “Get away from me,” she pushed him on his solid muscles that didn’t even move, glaring at him through her tears, her body shaking. Fuck, she was having an emotional breakdown.

  “Amara,” he said softly, taking a hold of her wrists in his hands, his fingers going right over her bracelets that covered her scars.

  “You didn’t fight for me,” her mouth trembled as she pulled but his grip didn’t loosen. “You didn’t fight for me, Dante!”

  He tugged her close, until she tipped into his chest, holding both her wrists with one hand while cupping her face with the other, his eyes wild on hers. “I fight for you every fucking day, Amara.”

  God, she hated him for meaning it. She loved him too, even after all this time.

  A tear escaped her eye and Dante leaned in, kissing it from her cheek like he still had the right.

  “You need to let me go,” she told him, her voice breaking, meaning more than her hands. “I can still feel you haunting me here. I can feel you and I can’t live like that. You need to stop. Please. Let me go. Please, let me go,” she started sobbing against him, not realizing when his arms came around her, holding her tight. “Let me go. Let me go. Please. Please,” she hiccupped.

  He pressed his forehead against hers. “You’re in my blood, beating in my fucking heart. The only way you go is when the heart stops.”

  God, he couldn’t say shit like that to her. Falling with him was so easy, so exhilarating. It was the crash that scared her.

  Wiping her cheeks, Amara straightened, looking at his tie slightly askew because of her shoving. Taking hold of it, she set it straight, putting her hand over his heart, and looked him in the eyes. “I’m in love with you, Dante,” she confessed to him, a
lthough they both knew. “But I won’t let you waltz in and out of my life as you please. You say you’re fighting for me, and you might even win the battle, but you will lose me. End our suffering right now.”

  Dante clenched his jaw. “Go to your apartment. I’ll come to talk in a few days.”

  Amara nodded, took a deep breath, and stepped back from him, turning to go up the stairs.

  A hand suddenly spun her around and his mouth lingering close to hers, inches from her, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath over her lips, the air between them hard, intense, electric, making her tingle from the root of her hair to the tips of her curling toes. She leaned into him, soaking up the tension, the magnetism, the physicality she had missed so much, a hello and a goodbye all at once, before pulling back and walking away.

  He needed to make his choice.

  Dante Maroni was an idiot and she was an even bigger idiot for goading him.

  A week later, Amara opened the door to her little studio apartment, getting in and locking it behind her, throwing her wedges to the side.

  “Is he a good kisser?” the voice from the darkness of her living room area startled her.

  Amara shrieked, spinning on the spot to see the man she hadn’t seen in a week, the man who owned her every waking thought, sitting casually on her couch, sipping from the wine bottle she kept in her cabinet, Lulu curled around his feet.

  Lulu, slightly bigger than when Amara had found her and even more adorable with the softest cream fur and the prettiest green eyes. She was also a traitor, napping against the man she had no idea what to do with.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him quietly, turning on the lights in her small but cozy apartment, putting her clutch on the side table. She threw off her keys to the side, and padded barefoot to her bedroom, taking her earrings off, appearing casual even as her heart thundered in her chest. After a few days of waiting for Dante and him not showing up, Amara had gone out on another date with a guy from her Psychology of Art class. Had she half-hoped it would make him react? Yes, yes she had.