The Emperor (Dark Verse Book 3) Read online

  Beautiful Amara who had begun to heal but still couldn’t speak or walk. That would heal in time. It was her mind that was scaring him if he admitted.

  He had made it a point to visit her every day at least once, just to check up on her. At first, she hadn’t really responded to anything, lost inside her own head, but slowly, she had begun to give him small smiles even when her eyes miles away. She fought it, wherever her head was, he could tell. Sometimes, she spaced out in the middle of a sentence he was saying, before shaking herself and coming back. Sometimes, she started to breathe rapidly before he had to call her name and bring her to the present.

  The doctor had told him she would more than likely need therapy just to come to terms with her entire experience. Dante was beginning to admit she was right. But until she could talk, he had vowed to himself to be there for her. He felt responsible for her for some reason. Maybe it was the terror he had felt when Vin had called him. Maybe it was the panic he’d felt when he’d run into the garage to see her body so broken. Maybe it was the relief at the sign of life he’d felt when he picked her up in his arms and took her to the hospital. He didn’t know what or why it was, but he was coming to terms with the idea of not knowing. Sometimes, things didn’t really have a reason. Sometimes, they just were.

  He had actually started reading up on trauma and torture survivors to understand her psyche better, so he could help her in any way she needed to heal. He was just grateful she hadn’t been violated in any other way. When the doctor had recounted her injuries, Dante remembered holding his breath and nearly collapsing from relief. She was a strong little thing.

  “Do you even like flowers?” Dante asked, continuing their conversation, looking up at the sky, letting the sun warm him.

  She shrugged again in his peripheral vision, holding up two slender fingers. Two flowers.

  “Let me guess,” he looked at her in her purple dress and scarf and boots, trying to imagine what flowers she liked. “Orchids?”

  She just gave a small smile. The frustrating girl was deliberately being thick. Dante had gotten used to reading her responses and what they meant in these conversations he had with her.

  He rolled his eyes, looking down at her hands. The bandages had been removed a few days ago, the wounds airing out. In the bright sunlight, he could see the gruesome scars that went around her wrists. Black rage filled him as he saw it, the need to raise those fuckers from the grave just to kill them again acute inside him.

  He started to touch her hand but stopped himself. Carrying her was one thing, it was necessary to hold her then. But touching her skin like this in the open, where anyone could see was not something she needed.

  Taking a deep breath in, he fisted his hand and pulled it back, turning his head up to the sky, and continued their chat as nothing had happened.

  “Wildflowers?”

  A small smile while her eyes were in a nightmare.

  Days passed.

  He went to see her every day, just to keep an eye on her, or that’s what he told himself.

  He carried her out in the sun when it was out. He stayed in and watched movies with her when it wasn’t.

  He took at least two hours every day to spend with her, even though she didn’t talk to him. But she communicated. She communicated with her eyes and her soft smiles and her hands.

  Some days, she’d zone out and struggle. Some days, she’d give him her entire attention.

  Dante went to see her every day, and after a while, he realized she wanted him to.

  Weeks passed.

  He saw her every day, and then he skipped.

  For four days, he went out of town to see his brother.

  For the next three, he and Tristan chased down the lead for her attack.

  A week later he went to her.

  She glared at him, threw him a pillow, and cried a little. He sat down beside her, and she hit him in the chest. It was the first time she touched him voluntarily before retreating into her blankets.

  That was progress.

  Months passed.

  His hunt for Gilbert wasn’t panning out, but he kept at it. It was disastrous how many people were named Gilbert and without the last name, they were at a loss. The search for him also became a side project as he learned more of the business.

  She started homeschooling. She started therapy. She started healing.

  She hung out with Vin, occasionally with Tristan, and read romance books.

  Every day, he knew a little more about her.

  Every day, she saw a little more of him.

  Every day, her scars solidified a little more on her skin.

  But she didn’t talk to him.

  Her mother said she had started to whisper little sentences. Vin told him she’d started to whisper little questions. Even fucking Tristan had said she’d started to whisper little words to him.

  But not with Dante.

  That fucking bugged him.

  Years passed.

  She became his person.

  He would usually finish his day by going to her house and spending a few hours with her. She listened when he talked and communicated if she had questions. She made him watch movies and indulged him when he just wanted to be.

  Sometimes he would see her flinch in the middle of nothing and he wondered if her torture had ever become another kind of violation. But the doctors had said nothing and she said nothing and Dante didn’t know if he should assume just because of the shit in his head.

  His father never questioned him about her, but Dante kept him in the loop, saying he was keeping an eye on her. He knew he was being reckless. He knew he was being rebellious again. But he was a grown man and not a boy, and he could keep her safe.

  Vin came outright and asked him what his intentions were with her, while Dante demanded he confirm he was nothing but her best friend. He confirmed and Dante was relieved.

  The thing between them grew, feeling the sun and the water, feeling the nurture and the affection. They began to feel more like magnets than puzzle pieces, finding their way to each other, close but not close enough, as the tension between them built and built and built.

  She became his person.

  She became his.

  Did he possibly have a girlfriend?

  Amara didn’t know why it jolted her out of her reverie, but it did. As she watched him lead the beautiful woman across the floor in a dance, Amara realized she’d somehow fallen into the safety of the time he spent with her.

  Over the last year, Dante had become something like the sun. She waited every day to feel his warmth, if only just for a few minutes before the clouds returned. But as long as she had the sun, the clouds were bearable.

  She didn’t know what she felt for him anymore, everything inside her convoluted in the way he’d been weaved into her life. But she did know that he’d become important to her, very important. And watching him dance closely with a pretty woman? It kinda hurt.

  Okay, it really hurt.

  But it made sense. He was older and more mature and needed someone who could compliment that. And it wasn’t a traumatized seventeen-year-old girl in therapy who never spoke a word to him. While she had begun speaking to a few people, she didn’t to him. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to. She did. But god, she hated her new voice. And she really, really didn’t want him to hate it.

  Taking a deep breath, Amara walked the edge of the dance floor at the mansion, heading towards the kitchen where her mother was. There was a party at the big house for Mr. Maroni’s 50th birthday, and while Amara wasn’t supposed to attend, she had needed something out of her routine.

  The compound had started to suffocate her, to the point where she actually looked forward to her therapy sessions in the city. Yeah, she was going to therapy, had been going for a year. And she’d been homeschooling with the same tutors who came to teach Tristan, helping her with her education.

  But she honestly didn’t care anymore.

  She didn’t recognize herself a
nymore.

  Things she once cared about seemed pointless to her. She knew the people around her cared for her, and after a few weeks, she’d realized she couldn’t hurt them as she hurt. So, she had put a smile on her face and listened to them talk, and lived on, pretending something very, very wrong, very ugly hadn’t taken root inside her.

  She didn’t know how to push it out. She didn’t want to talk to people, didn’t like the sound of her own voice, didn’t like the look of her skin. She felt the scars under her feet every time she put on her shoes, felt the slight twinge in her back every time fabric slid across her flesh to cover it up. Worse, she saw the ugly, mottled skin on her wrists, vertical lines on the sides of her stomach, and that one surgical slit across her neck.

  Her torture had been written on her skin and stained on her mind. And she hated who she was at that point – lost, adrift, clueless.

  The ballet flats she wore as she made her way through the people reminded her she probably could never wear heels. Her sense of balance had been a little off since the incident. There wasn’t any physical reason for it, as her doctor had reminded her kindly. It was psychological. A lot of things were psychological with her.

  God, she hated her brain some days for not shielding her, not blacking out the entire memory, and leaving her with a clean slate. That would’ve been better. Some days, anger at herself made her want to do something drastic. Some days, the knife on the kitchen counter looked friendly. Some days, all she wanted was to let go, but only knowing how much the people around her would hurt stopped her every time. She took hot showers to clean her skin but the filth stayed buried in, no matter how hard she scrubbed.

  “Ma,” she called out to her mother, her new voice barely louder than a high whisper, and felt the eyes of the staff come to her. She ignored the awkward looks they gave her. Yeah, that was a new development – the staring, the whispers, the gossip. She had become a pariah. Boo-fucking-hoo.

  Her mother looked up from where she was talking to two waiters, a smile on her face.

  Amara swore her mother was a superhero at this point. She saved her, every single day, without even knowing. Just by giving her the same smile she used to give her before, loving her the same way she used to love her before. When everything around her had changed, her mother had been her constant through it all.

  “I’m heading home,” she told her ma, feeling the strain in her throat as she spoke. The doctor had told her it would get better over time as her cords healed completely, but this would be her voice now.

  At least, she’d never have to listen to her own screams again.

  “I’ll walk you out,” the feminine voice beside her had her looking up at another new development in her life. Her half-sister, Nerea.

  She had shown up one day out of the blue, with attitude for everyone else except Amara, and Amara really didn’t know how to deal with that. She already had too much on her plate without adding an older half-sibling she’d never known about.

  And she wanted to be alone.

  Giving Nerea a small smile, she shook her head. “It’s okay, enjoy the party.”

  God, her voice.

  “Are you sure?” Nerea asked, looking concerned. “I’d love to spend some time getting to connect with you.”

  “Me too,” Amara reassured her. “But another time?”

  Nerea nodded.

  Leaving the staff to their duties attending to the party and her half-sister standing there, Amara walked out the back door, exiting into the lawns. Wrapping her scarf around her, even though it wasn’t cold, she looked up at the clear sky, watching the stars twinkle, and headed to the lake.

  A few people milled outside, the noise from the party loud on the wind as Amara kept her head down and made her way down the hill.

  This was another development over the year. While she still had her social graces, she didn’t like being around many people anymore. They always stared and not because she had grown up to become beautiful. She didn’t feel beautiful. She felt ugly and rotten on the inside. Where they just saw a tall girl of seventeen with wild black hair framing a face with pretty features and dark green eyes, she saw a girl who didn’t know who she was under that skin.

  Who was she?

  Coming to a stop by the lake, she looked up at the sky, hoping for an answer she knew wasn’t coming.

  Someone came to stand by her side.

  Amara turned her face, slightly surprised to see Tristan standing there, looking up at the stars too. This was another new development. For some reason, after the incident, he’d just become more present in her life. He never spoke to her, not much, but he was always there in the periphery, lingering, letting her know he was there.

  And he never stared at her.

  Amara looked at him, wondering how he did it. She had heard of his screams over the years from the staff. Sheknew he had scars of his own, and she wondered how he lived like this with all the memories in his head.

  “How do you do it?” she voiced the question to him, hating the way her sound didn’t even come out properly. “How do you forget?”

  He was silent for a beat, his eyes on the stars. “You don’t.”

  Amara swallowed, looking back up at the sky.

  “You need to find something or someone to live for,” he spoke quietly beside her, his tone the same gentle one he always used with her. “Something or someone who makes you want to push through all the shit the world will throw at you.”

  Amara paused for a beat, considering his words. “You have someone you live for?”

  “Yeah.”

  With that, Tristan turned and left her alone, mulling over his advice. He was right. That’s what she was missing – something to live for, something that was just hers.

  Inhaling the crisp, fresh air of the night, she shook off her morose thoughts and headed back towards the staff quarters which were mostly empty since everyone was at the party.

  Dante’s dark house made her pause.

  Even though he had become a constant in her life, she had never actually been inside his house. The closest had been years ago when she’d brought him cookies early in the morning and he had answered the door in all his shirtless glory. God, she’d been a fool for him then.

  She was still a fool for him, just a more traumatized fool.

  Curious, Amara looked around her to see no one was around and climbed the steps to his door. Her hand went on the knob and for the first time in a long time, she felt a thrill shoot up her spine. Checking one final time to see if anyone saw her, she turned the knob and sneaked into the darkened house, quietly shutting the door behind her.

  She probably shouldn’t be invading his privacy like she was, but her curiosity overrode her common sense. There was just one light turned on in the kitchen area, and Amara looked around, seeing the space in its entirety.

  The kitchen was about the size of her living room, with wooden panels and granite countertops, the island some kind of stone with four stools on one side. There was also a small dining table for four people off to the side before the backdoor. Though clean, the place looked cozy, lived in.

  Inquisitive, she walked deeper into the house guided by the single light, coming to a stop at the stairs. Pausing briefly, telling herself everyone was at the party, Amara ascended quietly, her eyes exploring on the way. There were two rooms on the floor, both with their doors shut, and knowing one of them was his bedroom, Amara stayed clear, not wanting to invade his privacy to that extent.

  A small set of stairs to the side went higher up to an open space she couldn’t see.

  She climbed up, letting her eyes adjust to the dark the higher she went.

  It smelled different in there – like wet earth and wax. It was quite pleasant actually.

  Running her hands up the wall, she came to a switch and flicked the light on, turning to face the room.

  And froze.

  Sculptures, dozens of them, littered the area.

  Amara felt her eyes widen as the s
urprise hit her, her gaze taking in everything in the room. There was a workbench with tools, and a window, and nothing but sculptures. So many sculptures – some finished, some half-done, some with a plastic sheet over them. There was everything from small vases to busts to two full-blown statues, all varying in degrees of skill.

  Dazed, she walked forward towards one of the busts, a woman with a half-finished face, taking in the rough textures over the skin that had yet to be polished. She raised her hand to touch it, to feel what it felt like when suddenly, she became aware that she wasn’t alone.

  Spinning on spot, her eyes flew to the entrance to see Dante Maroni leaning casually against the doorjamb with his hands in his pant pockets, still dressed in the beautiful tux he’d worn for the party, his hair swiped back from his face, pushing his cheekbones and jawline into sharp relief, his dark eyes on her.

  Amara swallowed, her heart pounding as a flush covered her face. She almost opened her mouth to speak before biting her tongue, remembering she couldn’t let him hear her voice. Eyes to the floor, she rushed towards the exit, hoping to simply get out. She expected him to step to the side so she could pass, as he had done countless times before.

  He didn’t. He stayed exactly as he was, forcing her to stop or barrel into him.

  Amara felt her blood rushing to her ears, her chest starting to heave as her breathing escalated.

  “Look at me,” came the soft command from above her.

  Amara closed her eyes for a second, before giving him her eyes, to find him watching her with an intensity that had become harder and harder to ignore as the weeks went by. He looked at her like that more often, like a condemned soul being offered salvation, like a blind man seeing the sun. That look always flared in his eyes before he caged it in. Usually, he was charming and easy-going with everyone else that she saw him interacting with, but with her, there was that intensity she never saw him have with anyone else either. Just with her. And every time she felt his eyes on her, she knew the look she’d find in them.