Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
Dylan
The room Declan has locked me in is nice.
That’s the worst part, somehow. If it were a dungeon or a basement or somewhere obviously terrible, I could hate it properly.
But instead it is a guest bedroom in an expensive house, with cream colored walls and a plush carpet and a window that looks out onto a manicured garden.
A gilded cage is still a cage.
I have been here for what feels like days, though it is probably only hours. Time moves strangely when you are trapped. I learned that in Dante’s torture chamber, back at the beginning, when minutes stretched into eternities and I lost all sense of when or where I was.
This is different, though. Dante’s lair was terrifying, but there was a strange clarity to it.
I knew what he wanted. I knew what the stakes were.
Here, with Declan, I have no idea what is going to happen next.
My brother has always been unpredictable, and unpredictable is far more frightening than methodical.
The door opens without warning. No knock, no announcement. Just Declan striding in like he owns the place, which I suppose he does.
“Comfortable?” he asks, and the sneer in his voice makes it clear he doesn’t actually care about the answer.
“What do you want, Declan?”
He throws himself into the armchair by the window, sprawling with the casual arrogance I remember from our childhood. He always took up space like that, making himself big, forcing everyone else to shrink around him.
“What do I want?” He laughs, but there is no humor in it. “What I want is for my life to stop falling apart. What I want is for people to stop betraying me at every turn. What I want is to find the bastard who stole my tiara and make them pay.”
I blink. “Someone stole the tiara? The one you stole in the first place?”
“It’s not stealing when you are taking what is rightfully yours.” Declan waves a hand dismissively. “The Ajellos had no claim to it. They were just middlemen, moving it from one buyer to another. I simply... intercepted.”
“And now someone has intercepted it from you.”
His face darkens. “Someone I trusted. Someone who was supposed to be watching my back. They vanished four days ago, and the tiara vanished with them.”
There is something almost satisfying about watching Declan’s world crumble. He has spent his entire life taking what he wants, stepping on anyone who gets in his way, and now it is all catching up to him. The tiara gone. The Italians hunting him. His own people turning against him.
“So why am I here?” I ask.
“So you keep your mouth shut. And for leverage.” Declan examines his fingernails as if we are discussing the weather. “The Ajellos want my head. But they might be willing to negotiate if I have something they want.”
My blood runs cold. “Why would they want me?”
He smirks. “Your Italian boyfriend would strike a deal to get you back.”
“He is not my boyfriend.”
The denial comes out automatically, a reflex born of years of hiding who I am. But Declan just laughs.
“Please. I saw your face when I mentioned him. You are practically gagging for it.” He leans forward, eyes glittering with malice. “Tell me, Dylan, what is it like? Spreading your legs for the man who tortured you? Does it make you feel special, being the monster’s pet?”
I want to hit him. Want to launch myself across the room and wipe that smirk off his face. But I stay where I am, hands clenched at my sides, refusing to give him the satisfaction.
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know enough. I know you are weak. I know you have always been weak.” He stands, pacing the room with restless energy.
“Do you know what Ma said when she found out you had been taken? She cried. Not because she was worried about you, but because of the shame. Her son, kidnapped by Italians. Her son, too pathetic to escape on his own. Her son, probably enjoying every minute of it because he is a twisted little deviant.”
The words hit like blows. I should be used to it by now. Should have built up a tolerance to Declan’s cruelty over the years. But somehow it still hurts. Somehow my family’s rejection still feels like a wound that will never fully heal.
“Ma and Pa made their choice a long time ago,” I say quietly. “They chose you. They chose the family business. They chose to pretend I didn’t exist rather than accept who I am.”
“Can you blame them?” Declan stops pacing and looks at me with something that might almost be pity, if he were capable of such an emotion.
“You were always an embarrassment, Dylan. Too soft, too sensitive, too bloody gay for your own good. They did you a favor, sending you away. At least in London, nobody knows who you are. They don’t know you’re not normal. ”
“I am normal.”
“You are a freak who let his torturer fuck him. That’s not normal by anyone’s standards.”
I have no response to that. Because maybe he is right. Maybe there is something fundamentally broken inside me, something that makes me crave the very things that should destroy me. Maybe falling for Dante is just the latest symptom of a sickness I have carried my whole life.
Or maybe my brother is wrong, and it’s not as crude as he’s making it sound.
Because it’s love. And love is never wrong.
Love doesn’t follow rules. It shows up in the strangest places, between the most unlikely people, and all you can do is hold on and hope it doesn’t tear you apart.
Declan’s phone buzzes. He checks it, and his expression shifts. Darker. More paranoid.
“I have to deal with something,” he says, heading for the door. “Try not to do anything stupid while I am gone. Not that you are capable of anything else.”
The door closes behind him. I hear the lock click into place.
I am alone again. Alone with my thoughts and my fears and the growing certainty that I am running out of time.
Declan is falling apart. I can see it in his eyes, in the way his hands are shaking slightly.
He is cornered, desperate, and desperate men do desperate things.
If he decides I am more trouble than I am worth, or if his negotiations with the Italians fall through, there is no telling what he might do.
I need to get out of here. I need to find a way to escape before Declan’s paranoia turns into something worse.
But how? The window is locked, and even if I could open it, we are on the second floor. The door is solid wood with a deadbolt that only opens from the outside. I have no weapons, no tools, no way to contact anyone.
I am completely helpless. Just like I was in Dante’s torture chamber. Just like I have been my entire life, always at the mercy of people stronger and crueler than me.
No. I shake my head, rejecting the thought. I am not the same person I was when Dante first took me. I have survived torture and illness and falling in love with a monster. I have baked perfect macarons in a murderer’s kitchen.
I am stronger than Declan thinks. Stronger than I ever gave myself credit for.
I just need to figure out how to use that strength.
I move to the window and look out at the garden below. There are guards, two of them, walking the perimeter. But they seem bored, distracted, more focused on their phones than on actually watching for threats. Sloppy. Declan is paying for quantity over quality.
I start cataloguing details. The guard rotation. The layout of the garden. The trees that might provide cover, the walls that might be climbable. Information that might be useless, or might save my life.
And underneath it all, a constant refrain that I cannot silence no matter how hard I try.
Dante.
Is he looking for me? Does he even know I am gone?
The last time I saw him, he was walking out the door without a word. Leaving me alone after my panic attack because he didn’t know how to help. Because my trauma is his fault, and there is no easy way to comfort someone you have broken.
Maybe he is relieved. Maybe he sees this as the universe solving his problem for him. No more complicated feelings. No more captive who doesn’t want to leave. No more Dylan.
But even as I think it, I know it’s not true.
I saw the way he looked at me that night, when we were tangled together in his bed.
I felt the way his hands trembled when he touched me, like he couldn’t quite believe I was real.
I heard the words he didn’t say, the ones that hung in the air between us like promises waiting to be made.
He cares about me. Maybe even loves me, in whatever way a man like Dante is capable of love.
And that means he will come for me. I have to believe that. I have to hold on to that hope, even when everything else feels hopeless.
Hold on, I tell myself. Just hold on.
He will come.
The afternoon fades into evening. No one brings me food or water. No one checks on me. I am left alone with the fading light and my spiraling thoughts.
Declan returns once, briefly, to rant about someone named Murphy who has apparently betrayed him. He paces the room, gesturing wildly, barely seeming to remember I am there. It is like watching a man unravel in real time.
“Everyone wants something,” he mutters. “Everyone has an angle. You cannot trust anyone in this business. The moment you show weakness, they pounce.”
“Maybe that’s because you treat people like they are disposable,” I say before I can stop myself. Because Vinnie’s screams are echoing in the back of my mind.
Declan stops pacing. Turns to look at me with an expression that makes my stomach drop.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.” I swallow hard. “I didn’t say anything.”
He crosses the room in three quick strides and grabs my jaw, forcing me to look at him. His grip is painful, his fingers digging into my skin.
“You think you’re better than me?” His voice is soft, dangerous. “You think because you bake little cakes and play house with your Italian boyfriend, you’re somehow above all this?”
“No. I just...”
“You are nothing, Dylan. You have always been nothing. The only reason you’re still alive is because I might be able to use you. The moment that changes, you are done. Do you understand me?”
I nod, as much as I can with his hand on my face.
“Good.” He releases me with a shove that sends me stumbling backward. “Remember your place.”
He leaves. The lock clicks. And I am alone again, my jaw aching, my heart pounding, more afraid than I have been since that first night in Dante’s chair.
But underneath the fear, something else is continuing to grow. Something hard and cold and determined.
I am going to survive this. I am going to get out of here, one way or another. And when I do, I am never going to let anyone make me feel this small again.
Declan thinks I am nothing. He is wrong.
And someday soon, I am going to prove it.