Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DANTE
Istartle awake to a shadowy figure moving across Rev’s dark bedroom.
Jumping to my feet, I flick open the knife I set on his nightstand as my heart slams against my ribs.
“It’s okay, kitten. It’s just me,” Rev says quietly. He moves closer, leaning in to kiss my cheek. “You’re safe here. You can go back to sleep.”
Frazzled, I ask, “What time is it?”
“After midnight.”
When my eyes finally adjust to the darkness, I notice he’s wearing jeans and a dark sweater, not the boxers he fell asleep in when he draped his body over mine in his bed.
My eyes narrow. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He’s silent for a moment. “I’d rather not say.”
I flick my knife open again. “Then I’ll force it out of you.”
“Kinky.” But there’s no fire in his response like usual.
Suspicion rolls through me that he’s been hunting without me. That he was going to let me sleep through revenge on Papi’s murderer. That he’s been distracting me with sex while his mercenaries have been picking off SIXX.
Rev sighs. “A team is following Mauricio. It’s the first time he’s left the Bergamore Hotel.”
I storm past him to grab my clothes from his bathroom. “Why the fuck aren’t we with them?”
He’s silent the entire time I get dressed, and my stomach ties into knots.
“I don’t want you to be disappointed,” he says quietly.
“Well, I don’t care what you want.”
Dropping his head on an exhale, he runs a hand through his hair. It’s fluffy after the shower we took together and without product to smooth it back.
My breaths come in shorter, angry little puffs. “You promised me.”
“I did.” He nods.
“Then you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to make this choice for me.”
His gaze falls back on me, eyes frigidly cold.
“I will uphold my promise, Dante, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
If I had just an ounce less of decency, just an ounce, I’d lock you up here until SIXX were all gone.
I wouldn’t care what you want. I would selfishly keep you to myself. I would keep you safe.”
“And I’d hate you for it,” I reply weakly.
“I know, kitten. I know. Get dressed. I’ll take you to Mauricio.”
Rev failed to mention we were going to a street fight, but I didn’t ask either. So I can’t really blame him for my internal freak out when we enter a gritty, unfinished, cinderblock venue in West Bank.
The interior is just as rugged, hewn from suburban decay, covered in graffiti, and teeming with people.
What if Laz is here? What if he’s been lying about picking up extra shifts at work? Is this what Rev meant by being disappointed?
What if he knew Laz was going to be here and planned on keeping me away?
With shaky fingers, I type out a message to my brother.
are you at work?
Shoving my phone back into my pocket, I push out a heavy breath and stalk Rev through the lively crowd.
He takes a quick detour down a hallway near the bathrooms, tugging me with him.
As he pins me to the cold wall, my hands naturally move to his hips.
My breath hitches at the feel of a hard gun tucked beneath his shirt along his lower back.
His eyes circuit my face long enough to have me squirming.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask.
“What, like I want to kiss you?”
I shove at him, but he comes right back with a stern expression.
“We don’t have to be here,” Rev says.
“Don’t fucking start again.”
He stares me down, eyes blizzard cold. I meet them with my own hellfire.
Fucking try me.
Shoulders slumping with an exhale, Rev pulls out a comm piece to give me. I waste no time fitting it in my ear. Voices flood the line from Sinro’s mercenaries.
“Dante’s online,” Rev speaks to the group.
“Here we go with more couples shit,” someone complains.
“Hi, Dante!” Ez chimes in.
“We get it, Rev. Dante’s off the market,” Forest says sarcastically.
A spark of curiosity has me wondering if Forest is into guys. I caught Gage checking him out one night he walked into Club Saturn to collect me.
Single? Gage had mouthed at me, to which I rolled my eyes and dragged Forest out the door.
I’m not sure who’s saying what on the comm now, but it’s a bit of a relief to have something to focus on besides the rowdy audience as Rev leads me into a cleared space where two fighters are already swinging fists.
To think there are this many people in the city who approve of watching amateur fighters getting bloodied up makes me a little sick.
But Laz…well, I know he thrives in this environment. God, if he’s here, I’m going to lose it, I swear.
“Target just entered box 301.” A voice cuts through the chatter on the comm.
My eyes immediately scan the upper ring of the venue. I catch Mauricio shaking hands with a dark-haired man in a smart beige suit. There’s another larger man standing with them, but he’s not wearing a suit, and his posture is much less polished.
“Got eyes on them,” Rev confirms.
My heart thumps faster at the thought that I could be looking at Papi’s murderer. But it’s nearly impossible to confirm when all I have to go off is a black demon mask.
“Looks like people of importance to me,” Forest comments.
And yeah, from watching others filter in and out to offer them drinks and appetizers, it does appear like Mauricio and these two other men hold some position of power.
When the crowd gasps collectively as one of the fighters goes down hard, Mauricio cringes but laughs it off with his company. The one not dressed in a suit hands him his drink to hold, then he sheds his clothes down to a pair of green fighting shorts.
He’s ripped. Definitely a trained fighter.
The venue erupts into wild shouts as the half-naked man leaps from the balcony into the normal seats and swaggers down the steps toward the center ring. I’m able to get a better look at him. Blond hair. Strong build. A nice face.
Dread trickles through me.
It’s Chris, the man who gave me his number at work, offering meaningless sex.
“I recognize him,” I say shakily.
“Knew I should have cut him into pieces,” Rev mutters. “Alaric, what’s the name of our suspect with Heterochromia?”
“Cristián. The other man in the photo sent over is on my list, too. He’s some millionaire philanthropist who lives in East Bank. All three of your box men were impacted by the Los Segadores raid,” Alaric confirms.
A rapid fire of communication floods the comm, and I have to question how I ever thought I could handle SIXX on my own.
Chris—no, Cristián—sizes up his opponent with a sinister grin. Even though the other fight knocked his opponent out cold, he glances up at Mauricio’s box with a look of sheer terror.
God, what would have happened if I went on that date?
I shudder, and Rev slides his hand into mine, giving it a squeeze.
“What do we do?” I ask.
“We hope Cristián gets his ass beat in the ring. Then I drag him somewhere less public.”
Swallowing, I say, “Laz does this.”
Rev brings my hand to his mouth and kisses my knuckles. It’s a surprisingly sweet gesture, but it doesn’t lessen my worry as I watch Cristián land three unnaturally quick blows to the other man’s jaw. The crowd screams their excitement, and the sickness in my gut grows.
The fight is gruesome. Cristián drops the other man and pummels him into the ground, splattering blood onto the concrete floor. The other fighter’s hands bat around blindly to protect himself as both of his eyes swell.
Jesus. Is this what my brother submits himself to in order to pay our bills? Why isn’t anyone stopping it? Why are people allowed to do shit like this to hurt others?
Cristián grips the battered fighter by his hair and slams a knee into his face. I hiss as his head cracks back onto the concrete. Breath held, I wait on edge for someone to call the fight.
“It’s done, right?” I whisper.
Please tell me it’s over.
As Cristián lifts his head to the crowd, he brings a finger to his mouth in a shushing gesture.
My blood runs cold.
I’m lurched back to the night of my father’s death, peeking through the gap in the closet door as the man in the black demon mask raises a gloved finger to his mouth to silence me.
The cheering of the crowd fades and warbles in my ears. And then rage builds so fiercely inside me, it nearly splits me apart.
It’s him. It’s Papi’s murderer. It’s fucking Chris.
I don’t remember pulling Rev’s gun, but somehow it ends up in my hand, aimed at the sadistic fuck who ruined my life. My hands shake too much to fire off a solid shot. I expect Rev to take advantage of my hesitation to disarm me. Only, he doesn’t.
Because Rev gives me fucking choices.
“Dante,” he says firmly.
Cristián’s gaze runs over the crowd. He pauses, and then his eyes return to me. My stomach churns as his head tilts to the side. Recognition must hit him because he gives a wide smile that brings a chill to my bones.
He’s not even concerned by the fact that I’m pointing a gun at him.
White-hot fury tumbles through me. I want to kill him, but I don’t want it to be quick. I want him to suffer just as long as I’ve suffered. Just as long as Papi suffered, knowing this was the monster chasing him down all those years.
“Dante.” My name is spoken again, not in command but in warning. Rev’s reminding me that there are innocent people surrounding us. Not to mention his team. People he cares about. People I unfortunately care about, too.
If Ezra or Forest or Cain were hurt because I made a rash choice, I would never recover from it.
“Fuck!” I shout, adjusting my grip on the gun like that’s going to spur me into action. I’ve waited almost a year for this moment. I have my father’s murderer staring down the barrel, and I can’t do shit about it.
“It’s him, Rev. It’s him.”
Voices sound off in my comm, but only bits and pieces slip through my haze of fury. Encouragement from Ezra that Sinro’s here for me. Orders from Cain to get me out of the building. Promises from Forest to make SIXX hurt.
Even a question from Rorik, asking if I want him to step into the ring.
“No!” I exclaim. “No one fights him. I don’t want to see that.”
Rev places his hand on my wrist gently. “Kitten, I’m going to take my gun back now.”
He disarms me before anyone can freak out about the gun I pulled. Something inside me screams to take it back, but my attention is still locked on Cristián.
I could step into the ring.
I’m not sure there’s a better way to honor Papi’s memory than to win in a fight against his murderer. To show Cristián he hasn’t ended the álvarez bloodline.
Seeming to pick up on my line of thinking, Rev throws me over a shoulder and hauls me away from the crowd. I debate sticking my knife somewhere in him just to get him to drop me, but then the violent thought knots my stomach.
I punch at his kidney instead. As he grunts, I push upright enough to hook an arm around his neck and squeeze. It’s an awkward angle. Probably not enough to actually choke him out, but it gets him to divert into the public bathroom to deal with me.
He flicks the lock and plops me onto one of the porcelain sinks. Huffing with rage, I whip out my knife, pressing it to his throat.
“Try me, baby boy.” His eyes are wild, and a lock of hair dangles over his forehead.
My breath catches at the sight of blood rolling down his neck and soaking into the fabric of his sweater.
“You promised me,” I say weakly, eyes swimming with furious tears.
“I know. Not here.” His hand comes up to stroke my cheek. “We don’t know how many of these people are SIXX. Some of them are just here spectating. SIXX could use that as an advantage against us. I’m not willing to put lives at risk.”
I’d argue that they could all be SIXX, but then I think about my brother and his big fucking heart and his motivation to earn a buck just to keep me warm and fed.
When my knife falls away, my forehead drops onto his shoulder. “I hate this.”
He wraps his arms around me. “We know who he is now. Alaric will dig up every detail on him.”
“And the others in the box?”
“The others, too, baby boy. If any of them make a move, our teams will bring them in.”
His hand smooths over my hair until I’m no longer trembling. When I sniffle, he leans back to examine my face. “You gonna fight me more, or are you ready to go home?”
I take in this beautiful, deadly man who should terrify me. Red flags have been waving since the night we met. He’s never tried to hide them, though.
It’s so fucked. These feelings are fucked. This situation is fucked.
I swallow. “Home is…”
“With me.”