Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
Dylan
The flat is too quiet.
The tea Dante left outside the door has long since been finished. The McVities dark chocolate digestives he gave me are now just a wrapper. His gifts were small gestures that felt meaningful at the time but now just feel like evidence of everything we can’t seem to say to each other.
I should get up. Should do something productive with my day. But what is the point? I am trapped here. A prisoner in a soulless flat with a comfortable bed and a man who buys me baking supplies but cannot bring himself to knock on a door.
The front door crashes open.
The sound is so violent, so unexpected, that for a moment I think I have imagined it. But then there are footsteps, heavy and fast, and voices I don’t recognize, and my body is moving before my brain catches up.
I scramble out of bed, heart pounding, looking wildly around for somewhere to hide, something to use as a weapon. But there is nothing. The bedroom door doesn’t have a lock. And even if it did, what good would it do against the men I can hear tearing through the flat?
The bedroom door bursts open. Kicked with brute force even though it wasn’t locked.
Three men. Big, rough-looking, with the kind of faces that have seen violence and enjoyed it. Behind them, stepping through the wreckage of the doorframe like he owns the place, is a face I know all too well.
Declan.
My twin brother looks exactly the same as he did three years ago.
Same sharp jaw, same cold eyes, same cruel twist to his mouth.
He is wearing an expensive coat and shoes that exude status, and he surveys Dante’s bedroom with the casual disdain of someone who considers himself above his surroundings.
“Well, isn’t this place just charming,” he says, and his voice sends ice down my spine.
I can’t speak. Can’t move. I am fifteen years old again, trapped and terrified and completely at his mercy.
“Grab him,” Declan orders, and the men move forward.
I try to fight. I throw a punch that connects with someone’s jaw, kick out at another man’s knee, even manage to sink my teeth into a hand that gets too close to my face. But there are three of them and one of me, and they are professionals while I am a baker who faints at the sight of blood.
Within seconds, my arms are pinned behind my back and I am being dragged toward the door.
“Declan.” My voice comes out hoarse, broken. “Declan, what are you doing? Why are you here?”
My brother looks at me with an expression I can’t quite read. Disgust, certainly. But something else underneath. Something that might almost be satisfaction.
“Rescuing you, obviously.” He says the word as if it tastes bad. “Can’t have people saying Declan O’Shea let his twin brother get tortured and kept as some mobster’s pet. Makes me look weak.”
“I don’t need rescuing.”
The words are out before I can stop them. Declan’s eyebrows rise, and his mouth curves into something that is not quite a smile.
“Is that so? Because from where I am standing, brother, it looks like you have been living in a butcher’s flat, wearing his clothes, sleeping in his bed.
” His gaze rakes over me, taking in Dante’s too-large shirt, the borrowed pajama bottoms. “Ma and Pa keep whining about the family name. About what it means that their son has been held captive by the Italians for weeks. Do you have any idea how embarrassing this has been for me?”
For him. Of course. Everything is always about Declan.
“How did you even find me?”
“I have my sources.” He waves a hand dismissively. “I assumed whoever had you would make demands. Ransom, information, something. But there has been nothing. No contact at all. Which made me wonder...”
He steps closer, and I flinch back instinctively. The men holding me tighten their grip.
“What exactly has been going on here, Dylan? Have you been telling him about me?”
“No! Of course not!”
“So then, just what have you been doing with your Italian captor all this time?”
“Nothing. I haven’t been doing anything. He just...” I trail off, because how do I explain it? How do I explain any of it?
Declan studies my face. Whatever he sees there makes his expression darken.
“Sweet Jesus. You really are pathetic.” He shakes his head. “Although knowing you, you twisted little freak, you probably enjoyed it. All that pain and fear and helplessness. Probably got you off, didn’t it?”
My face flushes. I cannot help it. The heat rises to my cheeks like a beacon, broadcasting everything I am trying to hide.
Declan laughs. It is an ugly sound, cruel and mocking, and it cuts right through me.
“Shut up.”
“Did he hurt you, Dylan? Did he make you scream?” Declan’s voice drops to something almost intimate, and it makes my skin crawl. “Did you beg him to stop, or did you beg him for more?”
“Shut up!”
I am shaking now. From rage or shame or fear, I can’t tell anymore. Maybe all three.
Declan’s laughter fades, replaced by an expression of pure revulsion.
“You disgust me,” he says quietly. “You have always disgusted me. Ever since we were children, I knew there was something wrong with you. Something broken. And now look at you. Bending over and taking it from your own torturer like a proper little faggot.”
“I am not...” But I can’t finish the sentence. Can’t deny it. Because he is right, isn’t he? I have slept with Dante. Despite everything, because of everything, I made love to the man who kidnapped me and hurt me and then somehow became the most important person in my world.
“Get him out of here,” Declan orders. “I can’t stand looking at him anymore.”
The men start dragging me toward the front door. I struggle, but it is useless. They are too strong, too well-trained.
“Declan, please.” I hate how desperate I sound. “Please, just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll disappear, you will never have to see me again.”
“Oh, you will disappear all right.” He follows us out of the flat, stepping over the broken front door without a second glance. “You know too much. About me, about my business, about things that could get me killed if they got out.”
“I don’t know anything!”
“You know about me, your family. And the world now knows about you.” Declan’s voice is cold. “You know about the tiara. You know the Italians want me dead. So no, brother, I am not just letting you walk away.”
We are outside now, heading toward a battered van with the words ‘Croydon Plumbing’ painted on the side. The industrial estate is silent. No neighbors poking their heads out, no witnesses to what is happening. Of course not. This is why Dante chose this location.
“What about Dante?” I ask, because I can’t help it. Because even now, even being dragged away against my will, he is all I can think about.
Declan snorts. “What about him?”
“He will come looking for me,” I say, even though I don’t know if it’s true.
“Let him.” There is something dark in Declan’s voice, something almost eager. “Maybe I will finally get a chance to deal with the Ajello assholes who have been making my life hell for weeks.”
We reach the van.
“Get in,” Declan orders.
The men shove me into the back. One of them climbs in beside me while the other two take the front. Declan slides in on my other side, trapping me between them.
The van pulls away, and I watch Dante’s building disappear through the rear window. My chest aches with something that might be loss.
The last time I was near him, he was walking out the door to go do whatever it is he does when he’s not babysitting me or murdering someone in his torture chamber.
He didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t check on me first. And now I am being taken away, and he will come back to an empty flat, and he will probably think I ran.
Maybe he won’t care at all. Maybe he will be relieved to have the problem solved for him. No more complicated feelings. No more broken captive having panic attacks in his bathroom. No more loose ends. No more Dylan.
The thought hurts more than I ever would have imagined. A sharp, visceral pain tearing at my insides.
“Stop sniveling,” Declan says beside me. “It’s pathetic.”
I wasn’t aware I was making any sound, but I touch my face and my fingers come away wet. I’m crying. Of course I am. Because I am weak and broken and everything Declan has always said I am.
The van winds through streets I don’t recognize. London blurs past the windows, gray and indifferent, millions of people going about their lives while I am being taken to God knows where by my own brother.
Declan is on his phone now, speaking in low tones to someone about security and arrangements and making sure “the package” is secure. The package. That is what I am to him. Not his brother, not family, just a problem to be managed.
I think about Dante. About this morning, before everything went wrong. Waking up in his arms after the most incredible night of my life. The way he looked at me, soft and unguarded in a way I had never seen before. The breakfast we shared, awkward yet somehow still strangely tender.
The way I told him I didn’t regret sleeping with him, but it wasn’t going to happen again. The quiet devastation in his eyes that he tried to hide.
And then the shower. The cold water. The way my mind shattered into a thousand pieces and sent me back to that torture chamber, back to the worst moments of my life.
Dante didn’t know what to do. I saw it in his face. The helplessness, the guilt.
He left towels and a blanket and walked away because he thought his presence would make things worse.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I needed space. But right now, all I can think about is that the last time I saw him, he was walking out the door without a word, knowing he had broken me, and that I had stated our one night together was nothing more than sex.
And now I might never get the chance to tell him what he means to me.
I love him. The thought crystallizes in my mind with perfect, devastating clarity. I love Dante, torturer, monster, the man who bought me cookbooks and watched me bake and kissed me like I was the most precious thing in the whole wide world.
And now I might never see him again.
The car turns down a narrow street and pulls up in front of a house that looks expensive and tasteless in equal measure. New money trying too hard to look like old money. Exactly Declan’s style.
“Home sweet home,” my brother says with a smirk. “Don’t worry, brother. I’m sure you will be very comfortable here.”
The men drag me out of the van and up the front steps. The door opens before we reach it, revealing more hired muscle waiting inside.
As I am pulled across the threshold, I take one last look at the street behind me. Somewhere out there, Dante is going to come back to an empty flat and broken doors. Somewhere out there, he is going to realize I am gone.
Find me, I think, hoping somehow the universe will carry the message to him. Please find me.
The door closes behind me, and I am swallowed by the darkness of my brother’s house.