The Emperor (Dark Verse Book 3)

by RuNyx

  “Dante,” the quiet, almost terrified whisper had him turning his neck to look at wide, green eyes. Following her gaze, he looked at the blood on her fingers, not understanding why that would scare her. Not until he saw her look down between her legs.

  She was bleeding, and it wasn’t a drop this time.

  His heart began to pound as she stared up at him, her eyes shimmering with tears.

  No.

  The baby.

  Fuck, no.

  “Hang in there for me, Amara,” he gripped the side of her face with his free hand, smearing blood onto her skin, his voice coming out rough to his own ears. “We’re almost out, okay? I know this is stressful but you fucking hang in here with me.”

  “Y…yes,” she stuttered, wiping her fingers on his shirt that she was wearing, exhaling out deeply. “Just get us out of here, Dante. We’ll be fine.”

  They had to be.

  He couldn’t lose their baby, not just minutes after knowing about him or her. But he knew he needed to get them out soon before they were in danger. If he opened the door, it would alert the men and while he could take a lot of them out with the knife, there was still a risk of someone getting to Amara. If he took the gun and quickly shot out a few and coupled it with the knife, it minimized the risk.

  “Give me the gun, and shield your body with mine,” he instructed her. “If they somehow get me, get out of here. No matter what, Amara. Get yourself out.”

  He saw the first tear fall, saw that she wanted to tell him no, but she understood. If she got out, she could get their child to safety and contact Tristan. She nodded through her tears.

  He pressed his forehead to hers for a second, saying the words he’d told her countless times over the years. “You’re the beat to my heart, Amara.”

  “And you’re mine,” she replied, her voice barely audible, her words tattooed on his skin.

  Urgency infusing his bloodstream, Dante pulled away, embracing the adrenaline, and opened the door a fraction, enough to slip out. He snuck up behind the guy closest to him, cut his jugular open, and muffled his mouth, laying him down.

  One guy looked over and Dante aimed, shooting him between the eyes, immediately taking a shot at another guy’s head, another’s knee, and another’s spleen. Two of the men ducked behind cars once the shots rang out.

  Dante hid behind a pillar, leaving Amara with the gun again, indicating her to stay in place behind the pillar. She nodded and he slinked out, staying low, walking around the edges of the big garage to where he’d seen the men duck behind a blue Ford. Keeping his body alert but loose, he padded over the side, the knife gripped in his hand like an extension of his limb and came behind the car just to see one guy. A bullet zapped through his side, barely a graze but burning like a fucker, but Dante barely let it stop him, slashing the guy open, feeling the blood on his torso.

  He straightened to find the last guy, only to feel him at his back.

  He turned, throwing the knife at him as the guy fired. Falling to the floor and rolling to evade, the wound on his side burning, he heard another shot ring out and his stomach tightened.

  Straightening, he saw the last guy on the floor, a knife in his chest and a bullet in his head, and looked up to see Amara standing behind him, shaking like a leaf with the gun in her hand.

  She had just shot the guy to save his ass. She had protected him. His terrified Amara.

  Fuck.

  He strode to her just as her knees gave out, her cheeks wet with tears. Taking the gun from her juddering hands, he picked her up and put her over his shoulder in a fireman carry, uncaring of all the blood except the one between her legs, and walked to the Ford.

  Opening the door, he put her in the passenger seat, watching as the adrenaline and stress sent her body into shock, and sprinted around, hotwiring the car. Reversing out, going over one of the bodies, he turned to look at Amara, to see her staring blankly out the windshield.

  “Amara,” he called her, watching as her eyes came to him.

  “How’re you holding up baby?” he asked her, keeping his voice soft and his eyes on the road, déjà-vu hitting him as he took the same route to the hospital that he’d taken fifteen years ago.

  “You have so much blood on you,” she remarked, her voice slightly strained.

  “I look hot in blood, don’t I?” he joked, slightly relieved as she cracked a smile. “Although if it comes to liquid, I prefer the chocolate syrup you covered me in that one time and then went 69.”

  The distraction was working, her mind like clay in his hands, gullible to his suggestions, molding in the direction he wanted it to go.

  “We had fun that night,” she remembered, her eyes softening on him.

  Oh yeah, that had been an incredible night. “We can try it again later.”

  She stayed silent for a long second as they sped by. “We’re losing the baby, Dante.”

  His grip tightened on the steering wheel as he pushed the car to the limit, his chest caving in at her words. “Don’t say that, Amara.”

  “I’m bleeding too much,” her tone resigned, defeated, and it cut him.

  “Yeah, and you will be fine,” he grit out. “Don’t you dare give up. Not now. Not after all this.”

  “I’m so tired, Dante,” she whispered, and something in her voice made his gut clench.

  “I know, baby.”

  “I just want to sleep.”

  No, this wasn’t good. “Just stay awake a little longer, yeah? Keep me company. We’re almost there.”

  “You know,” she began. “I used to have nightmares in the beginning about that place. That someone would drag me there again, and I wanted to die before it ever happened.”

  Fuck, he wanted to murder every asshole who had been involved all over again.

  “But I never understood why they took me,” she mused, her fingers playing with the hem of the bloodied shirt. “I was no one. And yet, they kept asking me questions like I knew so much.”

  He let her talk, glad that she was staying awake.

  “They asked me if they should tell you your little girlfriend was there,” she huffed a laugh. “I wasn’t anything to you then.”

  She was wrong. “You were always something to me. I just didn’t know what it was.”

  “I don’t even know when my feelings for you changed,” she continued, adjusting in her seat. “I used to dream you would be my first kiss, you know. But it was a dream. You were so far away.”

  “I’m not anymore,” he pointed out, and she turned her head to look at him, her green eyes somber.

  “You saved me from my nightmares then, and you saved me from them now,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

  Hit by the emotion in her voice, Dante kept his eyes on the road, taking her bloody hand and kissing it. “You’re mine, Amara. Mine to cherish, mine to protect, mine to love. We may not be husband and wife to the world but I have been married to you in my heart for eight years. And no matter what comes at us, we will get through it together. We build our empire together. No more running. Promise me.”

  “Even if we lose the baby and I can’t give you any more?”

  He tightened his grip on her hand. “Even then.”

  Swallowing, she pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “No more running.”

  With that, he swerved into the hospital emergency parking and prayed for both his woman and his child to be safe.

  They lost a baby.

  They didn’t lose another.

  It was in the hospital, lying on white sheets while Dante got his side stitched, refusing to leave her when the middle-aged female doctor had come in with the news.

  She’d been eight-week pregnant with twins, and one of them had latched onto her strong enough to make it through the ordeal while the other hadn’t made it.

  She was still pregnant but she had lost a baby.

  She didn’t know what to feel.

  The doctor said it was a phenomenon called the ‘vanishing twin syndrome
’ that wasn’t as rare as people believed. It was odd, the sense of loss interlinked with the sense of euphoria she was feeling. Looking at Dante, she saw the same reflected back at her, the emotion intense on his face, his eyes on her stomach as the doctor checked her with a stethoscope.

  “It’s too early to know the gender,” the doctor told them. “But the ultrasound showed this little one doing well. However, I have to urge you to be careful throughout the whole pregnancy. The miscarriage puts you at high risk.”

  Amara nodded, still processing the grief and the relief.

  “Anything specific we should be doing, doctor?” Dante asked from her side, his hand holding hers, his gaze determined.

  “For now, I would suggest refraining from any strenuous physical or mental exertion,” the doctor said. “We’ll keep monitoring as we go.”

  Dante nodded. “And sex?”

  Amara felt her face flush as the doctor smiled. “It should be okay. Just be careful not to put any pressure on her stomach or be too wild.”

  Dante stood up, still shirtless but completely clean, a bandage on his side, wearing scrub pants he’d taken from a male nurse. He’d drawn a line at donning a gown and the female nurse hadn’t minded too much, not with the way her eyes had been drinking in his torso. It had made Amara both laugh and sympathize with the woman. She knew how it felt.

  “Oh my god, are you okay?!”

  The feminine voice from the door had Amara turning to see Morana standing there, her hair in a loopy bun, wearing black leggings and a yellow billowy top, her rectangular glasses on her nose, her hazel eyes wide with concern, and a very rigid Tristan looming behind her.

  Lips turning up in a smile at seeing two of her favorite people, she waved them in as the doctor left.

  Morana rushed to perch herself on the space by her bed, her eyes going to Dante’s shirtless chest that he deliberately flexed because he knew it would rile Tristan up.

  On cue, Tristan glared at him. “Don’t you have a shirt?”

  Dante grinned. “Actually, no, I don’t Tristan.”

  Tristan sighed, and Amara chuckled as Morana leaned forward to hug her.

  “I’m here for anything you need, okay?” she whispered in Amara’s ear.

  Amara squeezed her back, her heart full, glad every single day that she’d trusted this girl, both for her sake and Tristan’s.

  Tristan leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek, something he had never done before, and focused his blue eyes on her. “Don’t disappear again like that.”

  Those five words were enough to let her know that he’d been worried. Over the years, while he had never spoken much to her, he had been there for her time and time again, keeping that promise he’d made to her in the garage. Amara blinked back her tears, nodding.

  “Did you find anything?” Dante’s voice broke their moment, his demeanor grave.

  Morana pushed up her glasses and exchanged a look with Tristan.

  “We did,” she answered. “I flagged two calls right after you left for Los Fortis. One was made by Vin, and one by Nerea.”

  Dante tightened his fingers around Amara’s. “Did Vin check out?”

  Morana hesitated. “I think so. I mean he was in Shadow Port at the time so I kept an eye on him. He didn’t do anything except make a call, but he’s been cagey. I don’t know.”

  Amara felt her head begin to shake before Morana had stopped speaking. “I don’t care how cagey he’s being, Vinnie would never, and I mean never, do anything like that.”

  “He was there, Amara,” Tristan spoke quietly from the side. “When you were taken, he was there.”

  “And you didn’t see him fight to save me,” Amara countered, her voice straining. “It’s not him. He might be shady with other people but he would never, ever hurt me.”

  “I believe that,” Dante supported her claim. “I’ve known him for a long time, especially with Amara. He would lay his life for her.”

  Morana nodded. “I trust your judgments on this. And anyways, Nerea was being cagier than Vin.”

  Amara felt her heart drop. While she wasn’t particularly close to Nerea, she was still her half-sister. Amara had come to care for the woman.

  “What did she do?” Dante asked.

  “What didn’t she do?” Morana scoffed, leaning back against Tristan’s thighs, and started counting off her fingers. “She made a shady call to an unknown number that I tried to track but it kept bouncing. Then, she left the compound and bought herself a ticket to Los Fortis, and had a meeting with a one-eyed man whom I had a hard time identifying because the missing eye, you know, but he’s-”

  “Alpha,” Amara spoke, surprised.

  “-Alessandro Villanova, also known as Alpha.”

  Dante and Tristan exchanged a hard look at the name.

  Dante focused his dark gaze on her, the heaviness in them not of her lover’s but the leader of the Outfit. “How do you know him?”

  Amara looked at the seriousness on his face. “He came to see me after I moved to the city. Said the city was his and he monitored anyone coming from certain places, like Shadow Port. I got flagged because of my fake passport.”

  “Where did you get a fake passport?”

  Amara felt her heart sink. “Nerea.”

  Dante nodded, turning to Tristan. “Call for a meeting of the Outfit leaders. It’s time.”

  The other man nodded, brushing his hand over Morana’s arm. She looked up at him, and Amara marveled at the way they communicated silently. They’d always been able to do that, just look and have entire conversations nobody in the room was privy to. That was some serious telekinetic shit. Had she not had an amazing man of her own, she would have been envious of that connection.

  “Okie dokes,” Morana turned to Amara, a smile on her face, “The big guy wants to go and I have to help him with some stuff, so I’ll see you soon. We’re staying in Tenebrae for a week before flying out so let’s do dinner one night? Hopefully, not as tense as last time.”

  Amara hesitated, looking at Dante. Though he had found her, she didn’t know what was going to happen now. Logistically, was she staying on the compound with him or what?

  “We’ll do a dinner Saturday night at the mansion,” Dante stated. “Just the four of us.”

  Amara felt a breath she’d been holding whoosh out of her, as suddenly something hit her. “Lulu? Oh god, is she okay?”

  “She’s at the compound,” Dante told her.

  “Who’s Lulu?” Morana asked at the same time.

  “My cat.”

  “You have a cat?” Morana blinked. “That’s adorable. Can we get a cat?” she looked up at Tristan.

  “No.”

  Amara laughed at the expression on his face and the huff Morana gave, before they left.

  “She’s good for him,” Dante noted, his eyes coming back to her, his lips tilted up.

  “She makes him alive,” Amara told him, stroking his hand with hers. “You didn’t tell them about the baby.”

  His fingers brushed over her scars, his eyes going to her still-flat stomach. “I don’t want to share her yet.”

  Her heart fluttered. “We don’t know the gender yet.”

  He just shrugged, bending to press his face to her gown, right over the baby. “She’s a fighter, a survivor like her momma. Aren’t you, princess?”

  Amara melted as he spoke in low, soft tones to her stomach. “Is it odd that I feel sad for the one we lost, even if I’m happy we have one?”

  He shook his head. “You just feel as you feel, Amara. A part of me is broken for the baby we lost, but it’s the most beautiful feeling to know one of them survived, that she clung through that hell and came out with us. Sometimes, mourning and celebration are two sides of the same coin.”

  She nodded. He was right. If they focused on the loss, it would be unfair to their child who had made it. They could be happy. They deserved to be happy. After everything they had been through, together and on their own, they deserved this litt
le slice of joy.

  “You ready to come home?”

  Home.

  She was finally going home.

  Eyes wet, Amara nodded, and he kissed her hand, the man who had slain demons and men alike to bring her back.

  She had missed this place – the rolling green hills, the winding roads, the giant mansion that dominated the view as the car climbed up. It felt odd, coming to the grounds knowing they belonged solely to the man driving her up, the king of the castle himself, and not to the man whose reign of terror and power had permeated the air. As an adult, it looked different than it had as a teenager – the hills were prettier, the roads were narrower, and the mansion less scary.

  “My father’s stuff at the house is being stored up in the attic,” Dante said from beside her, dressed in a dark suit that he had one of his men bring over, along with a beautiful floral dress for her in blues and greens. Hair slicked back from his face, highlighting that impeccable bone structure she secretly hoped their child inherited, the dangerous scruff shrouding his jaw, eyes hidden behind dark shades, Dante looked formidable.

  “Are you moved in?” she asked, tugging at the neckline of the dress, her boobs sensitive without a bra.

  Dante’s neck turned to see the movement, before he turned back, nodding at the guards to open the gates. The huge metal gates swung open and he drove into the compound. “I was more focused on finding you than moving. Although I did get the process started during my father’s funeral, it’ll take a few days more for it to be entirely complete.”

  Pulling up in front of the mansion, Dante got out, walked around to her side, and opened her door, giving her a hand. She took it, alighting from the vehicle, and looked up at him.

  He cupped her face, brushing his thumb over her exposed neck scar. “Go see your mother,” he said softly. “She’s waiting for you at my old place. I’ll get some stuff done here.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, a zap of excitement going through her at the thought of meeting her mother.

  His lips tilted up before he swooped in, crushing their mouths together, the kiss deep and wet and over in seconds.