The Emperor (Dark Verse Book 3) Page 3

  “You,” his father sputtered, marching up to Tristan. “You did this? You disgraceful little bastard. I own you. Everything you do here, I control. You cannot-”

  Dante saw, adrenaline pouring in this system, as a young boy inches shorter than his father, stepped right into his face, nothing in his expression, and uttered his first words in public.

  “You ever try to leash me, I’ll fucking strangle you with it.”

  If angels could sing, that was the moment Dante heard the whole freaking choir.

  Someone in the crowd gasped but Dante kept his eyes on Tristan. He had been right to trust his gut when it came to him. The younger boy stared his father down for a second, before turning on his heel and walking away without another word, leaving behind a speechless, seething Lorenzo Maroni.

  Oh, this was going to be good.

  Tristan had just sealed his fate.

  Dante grinned. They were going to be buddies if it killed him.

  Amara had a problem and his name was Dante Maroni.

  It was official.

  It was done.

  And she was absolutely miserable. Why? Because while he knew vaguely of her existence, she was nowhere, absolutely nowhere on his radar. And she? She had a crush the size of Antarctica but hotter. Way hotter. And she tried to stop. Really stop. But her heart was like a rubber-band where he was concerned. The more she pulled away mentally, the harder she felt the tug to go back to her original place.

  It was all wrong. He was already eighteen-years-old, a fact that everyone in the entire city, the entire country, the entire underworld knew because him becoming an adult was a very big deal to a lot of people – some who wanted to back him, some who wanted to cut him. Dante already had enemies. How did Amara know all this already? She paid attention. It was amazing how much people tended to talk around the help without once realizing they were people with ears instead of moving furniture.

  Amara wasn’t really an employee of the Maronis, but she liked to help her ma out after school and on weekends. She used to spend that time with Vin but since he started training, his schedule and hers stopped matching. They did catch up every other day though. He had recently hit his growth spurt while Amara had barely moved an inch up.

  She looked up at him from her spot sitting against the tree, her novel open on her lap but her eyes on her friend as he sparred with an older Dante. They did this almost once a week because according to the rumor mill, two kids in training were incredible with knives – Vin and Tristan, the new boy whom she’d started to refer to with his name after the Incident. She still remembered the shock that had coursed through her when he had laid out Mr. Maroni without any fear. Ma had told her that night that the boy had a death wish. Amara didn’t disagree.

  However, the reason Dante trained every other week with the knives with Vin instead of Tristan was because Vin was more cheerful and less likely to seriously kill him out of annoyance. They liked to train outdoors, in a little clearing right in front of Tristan’s cottage by the lake. And every other week, Amara came with a book and her friend and planted herself quietly in front of a tree to watch the show.

  If Dante thought it odd, he never commented. In fact, he rarely said a word to her after that first time she’d bumped into him. But he didn’t ignore her either. She was just there. Some days, he’d give her a little nod and her heart would flutter like an overexcited hummingbird. Some days, he’d look at her and grin and her entire stomach would roll with butterflies. And some days, rare days, when he said a cordial ‘hey’, Amara would save his voice in her memory and squeal on the inside while planning their babies’ names.

  Ugh, she was hopeless.

  Her mother didn’t know what she did when she came to watch the boys. She thought Amara just went out in the sun to read during the summer break. Amara never corrected her. Not that her mother would stop her from going; she just wasn’t ready to share this with anyone yet. Whatever this was because it passed a simple crush a while ago. And she was ninety-nine percent sure he didn’t actually know her name.

  The clang of metal on metal broke her out of her reverie. With all her adolescent heart, she focused on the man of her infatuations, watching his tall, very tall form move swiftly as a shorter, younger Vin attacked him.

  Dante Maroni was a piece of art – a very fine, very exquisite piece of art. Every time she saw him, she wanted to do a chef’s kiss gesture to the sky. Yeah, he was that good. From his dark, untamed, slightly overlong hair that framed an absolutely stunning face – a face that got more and more chiseled as he grew older – to that jawline Amara traced with her fingers in her daydreams, to his deep chocolate eyes that she still found the prettiest, to his arms that flexed with muscles as he moved… yup, she was a goner. It was pathetic.

  Annoyed with herself, Amara looked down at the book she’d borrowed from the school library.

  ‘The very instant that I saw you did my heart fly to your service…’

  Okay, she needed to get some non-romantic poetry because Shakespeare wasn’t really helping. Unable to focus, Amara looked up again to see the boys wrapping up their session. They always did that with Dante giving Vin some pointers. Vin, her chubby best friend who wasn’t so chubby anymore, always listened seriously. Amara was pretty sure Vin had a man-crush on Dante. Who could blame him though?

  Although in all honesty, Amara didn’t even know if what she felt was even a crush anymore. A crush was supposed to die a natural death in a few months. At least that’s what she heard the girls at her school say. She wasn’t really close to them, or anyone at school. Outside kids treated the compound kids very weirdly. And all the other kids at the compound were either too younger or too older than she was. Only she and Vin were close in age, and that was why they’d just stuck together as soon as they could walk.

  Vin nodded to Dante before walking to her, his dark hair cut much shorter now. Dropping down beside her, he took a sip of water from the bottle she handed him, both of them watching as Dante climbed the steps to Tristan’s cottage and walked in the door without knocking.

  “Damn,” Vin whistled beside her, finally able to whistle properly. “He’s got some big balls.”

  Ew. Amara did not want to think about Dante or his proverbial balls. Her love for him was very pure and sanitized at this point.

  “I didn’t need that picture in my head,” she made a disgusted face. They had studied male and female reproductive systems at school last year. While that had been very clinical, the extra workshop their entire grade had had over the last month on sexual diseases, prevention, and contraception had been a lot to process. Amara knew Plug A went into Slot B but she didn’t want to imagine anything related to that yet.

  Vin chuckled. “With the way you stare at him, that’s hard to believe.”

  That brought her up short. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice coming out high as her heartbeat picked up. Ugh, she needed to work on her pitch. Her music teacher at school kept telling her she had a great voice but her pitch was totally off.

  Vin shrugged. “You just look at him like he’s Zia’s best batch of cookies and you’ve been hungry for a month. Like he’s fresh out of the oven and you’re waiting for him to cool before eating.”

  Her stomach grumbled at that very vivid visual.

  Okay. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. No one was supposed to know.

  Amara swallowed. “Do you think he noticed?”

  “It’s kinda hard not to,” Vin pointed out, clearly amused. “You come here every time and it’s not to read your book.”

  Amara groaned. “Vinnie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Kill me, please.”

  Her friend chuckled. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. It’s not that bad. Plus, it’s a phase. You’ll grow out of it.”

  Amara shook her head. “I can’t help it. Trust me, I’ve tried. My eyes are traitors.”

  Vin huffed a laugh before drawing his knees up, his hands dangling over them. “A crush
is fine. Hell, it’s even natural. But don’t want more than that.”

  Amara turned to look at his profile as he stared at the cottage, feeling the sun on her skin. “Why?” she asked softly.

  “Because he’s Dante Maroni, ‘Mara,” Vin replied, equally soft. “We’re young right now and it doesn’t feel like anything. But he’s going to be a king. He’ll have enemies. Hell, he already does. He’ll be everything dark and you’re afraid of the dark, remember? You don’t belong in that world. You deserve better.”

  The lump in her throat was lodged there tightly. Even though Amara never imagined anything, she knew Vin was right. Dante Maroni was destined to rule the underworld. And she was the furniture people like him forgot about.

  Breathing out through her mouth, Amara rested her head on Vin’s shoulder, finding comfort in knowing he was someone who knew her, loved her as fully as she did.

  “Will you be dark too, Vinnie?” she asked him quietly, wondering about where his fate was taking him. If his training, his father’s life was anything to go by, it wasn’t a good place.

  “I don’t know,” he sighed. “But I’ll never be dark for you.”

  Amara smiled slightly. “I’ll love you anyway, you know.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Vin nodded. “Please don’t get mushy on me now.”

  Chuckling, Amara hit him lightly with her book, and they both watched as Dante Maroni came out of the cottage. He nodded to them, before climbing back up to his castle, a king in the making, while she stayed on the ground.

  The only good thing about becoming an adult was moving out of the main house and into his own wing. And although his brother at fifteen wasn’t allowed, Dante sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him behind.

  Not a lot of people outside of the compound knew about Damien. The reason for that was pretty simple – Damien was Lorenzo Maroni’s imperfect child. Somehow, he’d had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck during his birth, which cut off his supply of oxygen for a few precious seconds, a few seconds too many. That had cost Damien his ability to gauge the world. Dante was sure he was on some spectrum of autism, especially because his mind was too high-functioning for his age while his social skills weren’t good. It had never been properly diagnosed though, so he couldn’t be sure.

  Bloodhound Maroni could not accept that his younger son could have a mental condition that required some help. While he had the abundance of resources to get Damien help anytime, he turned a blind eye to his younger son. Even though he was a great kid, Dante knew he had issues expressing himself, certain behaviors that were not appropriate in the world but appropriate for him. Dante knew that Damien would never, ever find acceptance and love in the world he lived in, and he deserved both those things.

  Dante wasn’t even sure exactly what it was – trauma from his birth or the fact that he had been in the room when Dante found their mother pooled in her own blood or just one of those things. Some of that blood had been on a five-year-old Damien, and Dante at all of eight-years had stepped into the blood, scooped up his brother, and walked out of the room. Somehow, he had known his mother had been dead just by looking. Some days, he hated her so much for abandoning her children like a coward.

  Dante took a deep breath, his fingers itching to pull out a cigarette but he refrained. Flexing his fingers, he watched the building from behind his expensive shades, taking measure as his pink-haired girlfriend, Roni, clung to his arm.

  Morning Star Home for Lost Boys

  He had heard about this place through the grapevine. One of their soldiers had a nephew who had been diagnosed with a low-functioning spectrum of autism and he said this place had helped the boy. While Dante was old enough to take care of his brother as he had been for a long time, he wanted Damien to get the help he needed and deserved. More importantly, the compound was not a good place mentally for any of them. Dante had already started going out of the city for trips and business, and every time his mind kept going back to Damien and his safety. Even though it lodged a rock on his chest, this was for the best.

  “This place is creepy,” Roni muttered, her delicate fingers curling over his bicep. She wasn’t entirely wrong. Even though the place was a well-kept stone mansion with manicured lawns, it looked like something out of a thriller movie. Or maybe it was just the fog coming in with the approaching winter.

  “Let’s go,” Dante shook off the feeling, pushing open the wrought iron gate with one palm, the cold of the metal sending a little shiver down his spine.

  With the other hand, he guided his girlfriend of three years over the threshold. Roni was a little thing, like a pixie almost. Barely came to his neck, hair colored a bright pink and cut short, full of life. She was an outsider who knew about him and his family, and somehow she didn’t care. Maybe it was the rebel in her, thrilling at the idea of him. Dante knew that’s what it was for him.

  He had spent so many nights sneaking out to see her, sneaking her into the compound. One time one of his father’s men had caught them and he’d given him a finger, laughing the incident off. Had it been immature? Yes. Had he cared? Not really. He cared about Roni, felt affection for her, definitely loved having sex with her, but he wasn’t in love. Roni was a way of rebelling against his father, and she knew it too, having accompanied him more than once as he’d sneaked her into the compound. Theirs was a relationship of mutual rebellion.

  Walking down the small path towards the main entrance, Dante looked around with sharp eyes, noticing a few kids in the windows, all of different ages, peering down at them – some with curiosity, others with mild hostility. Dante wondered the kind of picture he must make to them – tall, ripped, dressed in an all-black expensive turtleneck, leather jacket, and jeans, hair carelessly around his face, with a pink-haired pixie on his side.

  He smirked at the mental image as the door opened and an elderly woman greeted them, already expecting them, and took them on the tour.

  One of the best parts about having his wing on the compound was privacy. Zia always came to the house once a week with staff to stack groceries and clean everything up, mostly when he was out training or in the city learning the business. Apart from that, he lived alone, and he liked it that way.

  He’d set up the top floor of his house as his art room, just like his mother had done in the main house. The view from there was pretty fucking spectacular. He had a direct view of the lake, Tristan’s cottage, and the sprawling hills covered with the woods beyond that. This early in the morning, when the sky was a fiery shade swallowing the black night, he loved to come to the room.

  Setting his steaming mug of coffee on the work table, Dante looked at the pieces he had made over the last few years. The earliest pieces were pottery, practice pieces until his technique was refined. He started to play with masks after that; people’s faces that he had seen, those that had somehow caught his attention. Most were pretty terrible and he wanted to smash them, but seeing them was an exercise in improvement. And Dante was determined to improve.

  Sitting down on the bench, he got out the new box of clay he had bought from a supply store in the city and started to wet it as the audiobook for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince played in the background. He enjoyed working at the early hours of the morning to the sound of words and the natural light of the sun filling his studio, in nothing but his boxers.

  And he fucking loved Harry Potter. He hadn’t read it for the longest time but finally gave in, and now he was hooked. One of the things he liked most about the series was how human it was, even in a magical world. Like Harry and Hermione’s friendship, for example. It actually reminded him a lot of the relationship he saw between young Vin and Zia’s daughter. For years, he’s seen her accompany Vin whenever they trained in the open, and he was envious of that friendship.

  He wanted a friend like that for himself. Even though he was surrounded by people, Dante didn’t have one person who was his. His brother, though he loved him to pieces, wasn’t his friend. Neither was Roni. And even thoug
h he’d been working on Tristan for years, neither was he. Tristan tolerated him at best, was indifferent to him at worst – although after breaking his nose, he had mellowed down a little where he was concerned. His last name didn’t allow him any friends on the compound. Kings, as his father constantly reminded him, didn’t have friends. They had enemies.

  Fuck, he sounded like a sorry little bitch.

  Shaking his head, Dante put a pile of wet clay before him, before kneading it with his hands, focusing on the stretch of the mass between his fingers. It was still too tight, and gauging when it got loose enough to mold was one of the most important things.

  A knock on his backdoor had him pausing. There weren’t many people who would come to his door that early in the morning unless it was an emergency. Getting up swiftly from the bench, Dante washed his hands and grabbed a pair of jeans before making his way down.

  Descending the stairs, he pushed his hair back from his face, cut through the spacious kitchen, and opened the backdoor, freezing at the sight of Zia’s daughter standing there in the chill.

  Her eyes roamed over the exposed expanse of his chest, down his stomach, before she flushed and looked him in the eyes. Dante stifled a huff of amusement at her reaction. He knew the girl had a crush on him. She had a habit of staring at him whenever he was in the vicinity. It was flattering but it only amused him. She was too young, and he already had a girlfriend.

  He liked to tease her though. Sometimes, when he caught her staring, he’d give her a wink and she’d blush and look away. Sometimes, when he caught her sitting with a book, he’d just ask her the name because he knew she loved reading romance and that made her blush. Or sometimes, she’d laugh with Vin and he’d just watch her, thinking how she’d grow up to be a stunner, he had no doubt, especially with her eyes.