Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Tatiana
I can’t stop thinking about what’s happening in my late father’s offices, which has just become Dante’s, while I’m pacing the floor of my husband’s bedroom.
I haven’t told Jazz about our meeting with Leander because I don’t want to involve her in Dante’s crimes more than I already have.
Thankfully, she didn’t ask me about last night.
I just said Dante wanted to give us a moment alone after the wedding and left it at that.
Noah is still worn out after all the excitement of yesterday, so I’ve put him down for a nap after lunch.
I prepared a light meal for us, which I couldn’t eat.
He didn’t stop asking me when we were going to the shelter to adopt a dog.
I told him he had to wait for Dante because we had to do it together as a family.
Jazz is preparing dinner for us and Dante’s men.
Knowing how much she hates cooking, I appreciate her effort all the more.
The men don’t expect meals when they’re working shifts at the house.
They either eat before or after but never while they’re on duty.
I have a suspicion Jazz is as nervous as I am and just needs to keep busy.
After the wedding, there’s a sense of impending doom in the air that seems to be contagious.
When Dante arrives shortly after, he’s freshly showered. His hair is still damp, and he’s changed his clothes.
My heart thuds in my chest at what that signifies.
He closes the door and takes off his jacket on his way to the walk-in closet, barely sparing me a glance.
I go after him. “Where did you shower?”
“At the condo.”
Right. Because he couldn’t come home covered in blood where Noah or Jazz could see him.
“Dante.”
He takes his time to fold the jacket over the back of a chair before he faces me.
My throat is so dry it’s difficult to speak. “What did you do?”
He watches me with that expressionless mask that makes it impossible to read him. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Swallowing, I nod.
He continues in an emotionless tone. “I cut out his tongue, and then I stabbed out his eyes.”
A shudder runs through me. I can’t think about the acts of violence for fear of emptying my stomach.
I know who Dante is and what he does. I always did, and I never shied away from the facts.
Having been born into this life, I know better than anyone there’s no escaping it.
I’ve embraced the kind of man he is from the word go, but it’s never easy to think of him in those terrible situations.
As for Leander, I understand why Dante wants to make him suffer, but I don’t wish the slow torture upon anyone.
Dante unbuttons his shirt. “The idiot thought I was bluffing.”
I go closer, my heart trembling as much as my hands. “Did you have to go that far?”
He pulls the shirt tails out of his pants. “For what he said and how he looked at you?” His reply is sure and definitive, as if there’s no doubt about it in his mind. “Yes.”
“Yet you were after the same thing.”
Raising a brow, he pulls his arms from the sleeves and drops the shirt on a chair. “Were we?”
“You both wanted my shares.”
He stares down at me with that piercing, amber stare. “For different reasons.”
“Does that make it right?”
He only continues to look at me.
I take in the hard ridges of his muscles and the wide expanse of his chest… the ink that covers his skin. He told me the story once, what those pictures mean. They pay homage to his heritage and his history. Because family is everything. Those were his words.
Will he add Noah to that history now? Will he make space for me on his skin?
Do I deserve a place in his future if I never had a place in his heart?
Or am I simply the chess piece he needed, the queen he could use for his checkmate move?
Am I just the baggage he has to deal with now that I’ve served my purpose just as my mom was the baggage my father had to tag along?
My father never cared about my mom’s feelings.
He only cared about his own because he was selfish that way.
In public, he treated her like a stranger.
But she was tied to him by law, a price her father had paid for an alliance, and my father considered her his in every way.
In that regard, Dante and my father are the same.
When it comes to using me to achieve their goals, Dante and Leander aren’t that much different either.
I’m so damn tired of being their pawn. I’m still bruised inside about the fact that Dante intentionally made me pregnant.
In the greater scheme of things, I was just a tiny part of the bigger plan.
I gave him everything, and he threw it all away without giving me or my feelings a second thought.
I only want to be free to live my life like I deserve to do.
I don’t want to be someone’s baggage or someone’s property.
I want to be someone’s everything. He gave me a taste of how it is to be the center of someone’s world, to be adored and respected, and even though that was just a lie he fed me, he showed me how good an equal relationship could be, and now I want that.
But that’s the problem. We’ve always wanted different things.
Dante takes a sweater from the shelf and pulls it on.
I step closer still, like Icarus attracted to the very sun that will melt my wings. “Did you get what you wanted?”
Did he get his closure? Does he feel at peace? Can he finally move on?
Those beautiful eyes with their golden flames don’t give me an inch. Nothing. No, not nothing. He tries not to show it, to hide his reaction behind his neutral expression, but the wariness that sparks in their depths is like a lighthouse flashing a warning to ships in dark, treacherous waters.
The faint unease that’s been growing inside me since the exchange at my late father’s office turns into full-blown panic. At the time, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but now, Leander’s words come back to me.
Not everything.
Considering the situation, Leander had been far too smug. I know my brother. He’s a terrible loser, and back there in that boardroom? He didn’t act like a loser. No, he behaved like someone who knew the fight wasn’t over. Because he knew something. He knew there was something else Dante wanted.
Dante hasn’t played open cards with me. If I suspected it from the start, then why does the notion of being betrayed again hurt so much? Why does it feel as if I’m standing at the edge of a precipice, about to be pushed over?
A sick feeling settles in the pit of my stomach. My pulse kicks up, keeping time in my temples. “What else do you want, Dante?”
He only continues to stare at me, the wariness in his gaze sharpening.
Oh, my God.
I knew it.
“Just say it.” The volume of my voice rises more in fear of his reply than in anger. “What the hell do you want?”
He pins me with that almost empty gaze, his words as dead as his eyes. “The necklace.”
The answer hits me like a punch in the face, stealing my air.
And there it is—the naked truth.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. I grapple for oxygen while he just stands there and watches me drown in the nasty, ugly verity.
My body is like one big oversensitive receptor, every nerve-ending crackling with awareness. My senses are hyper-alert. Everything seems brighter, louder, and clearer, yet my lips are numb, shaping words that sound as if they’re coming from someone else. “Is that why you were after me?”
His jaw bunches. “It’s imperative that I find the necklace.”
A hysterical laugh escapes me. I’ve been an idiot. Again.
He wraps his fingers around my upper arm. “I stole that necklace. Lee was the mastermind behind the heist. Your father took it from us, from Lee.”
I lean back, straining in his hold. “So now you’re going to tell me it belongs to you.” Because he stole it. Just like everything else.
He gives me a gentle shake. “You’re not safe as long as you’re hiding it. Leander didn’t send those men after you just because he wanted to marry you to Stein.”
The betrayal is vicious. Tears burn at the back of my eyes. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.
Lifting my chin, I meet his urgency with defiance. “What makes you think I know where this necklace is?”
He lets me go. The action is so unlike him that it scares me. Dante never lets go unless he’s gotten what he wanted.
A second passes before he says in a cautious tone, “Your mother admitted she’d given it to you.”
His answer is like a slap in the face. “What?”
My mother gave me that necklace on the night she told me to run. And then, straight after, she got into that car with my father, the car Dante blew up.
The blood drops from my head to my feet, leaving me dizzy. I get that feeling I sometimes get when I think I’m seeing my mom’s face somewhere in a crowed space, as if I’m looking at a ghost. “That’s not possible.”
He doesn’t answer, which only makes my fear skyrocket.
My question is breathless. “When?”
Regret passes through his eyes. His tone is quiet. Too quiet. “She was alive when I got to the car wreck. She died a few minutes later before help could arrive.” He doesn’t shy away from driving the stake in deeper. “She died in my arms. I did what I could to make her comfortable.”
On the outside, I’m frozen, but on the inside, I’m shaking so hard I think I’ll fall apart piece by piece with no possibility of ever glueing them back together.
“Why?” My voice is nothing but a whisper. “Why would she tell you that?”
“Because I told her why I wanted the necklace.”
Incapable of forming a single word, I can only look at him as shock ravishes me.
“I’m sorry, Tatiana.”
Those pitiful words do something to me. They unleash the ugly grief that’s tearing into my chest and shredding me alive, turning my helpless sorrow into uncontrollable anger.
Pulling back my arm, I slap him hard enough to make his face fly sideways.