3. Dario
3
Dario
O nce upon a time, Thea was my everything. Looking back, I think I fell in love the very first moment I saw her, even though we were both kids.
Even when I thought she’d betrayed me, I never stopped loving her. Our dreams, the plans we’d made, all went up in smoke that night. My father had always known about my relationship with Thea. He facilitated many of our meetings, despite the huge risk, knowing Francesco would punish him if he found out.
Dad had always been a romantic at heart. He believed in true love. Soul mates. He and my mom were soul mates. If the cancer hadn’t taken her too soon, they’d probably have retired to a cabin by a lake in Canada by now.
Instead, he carried on working for Francesco, laundering his dirty money and ensuring the authorities didn’t find any tax irregularities because we all knew it wasn’t illegal activities that took a mob boss down: it was not paying enough tax.
I once asked him why he didn’t retire. His response was simple: he couldn’t. Francesco wouldn’t let him.
“So why did you and Mom always talk about retiring to Canada?” I said.
“Because we all need dreams, son. They give us a reason to carry on .”
Dad had warned me Torrance knew Thea was sneaking out to meet me in the old chapel. He said I needed to be careful, that if Torrance caught us together, he’d punish both of us.
I was foolish - and arrogant - enough to ignore his warning. All I cared about was helping Thea escape from her nightmare life. I thought being Fausto Peretti’s son would save me from the worst of Francesco’s excesses.
Instead, Torrance was waiting for me in the chapel when I arrived with flowers and a pocket full of condoms. After explaining Thea had made other plans, he showed me the video. At first, I thought it was a sick joke.
I’d laughed.
Thea wasn’t like that. My Thea was innocent. Sweet. She loved me. But then he laughed about how she’d been fucking around for years. Meeting other men. Screwing them all. He said she’d joked about me with the staff. Laughed that I was a pathetic little virgin, that she needed a real man to make her feel good.
In my anger, I’d thrown a punch at Torrance. Looking back, I was lucky he didn’t kill me that night. If I’d been anyone else, he would have. But my father was and still is the most important figure in Francesco’s operation. Second only to Torrance. If anything happened to me, Dad would have had nothing to lose.
I knew he had a ton of incriminating files stashed away in various safe deposit boxes. They were his insurance policy, he’d once told me. If Torrance ever hurt me, the information in those files would see Francesco di Luca locked away for several lifetimes, his entire operation blown to smithereens.
So instead of beating me to death, Torrance took the punch and carried on smirking. Then he handed me some paper and a pen and suggested I write a note to Thea.
It took a few goes before I could pull my thoughts into some kind of order.
We’d exchanged hundreds of love notes over the last year, so sending her a letter felt like the perfect way to tell her exactly how much I hated her for breaking my heart.
There wasn’t enough paper in the world for me to explain how much she’d hurt me, so in the end, all I said was, ‘we’re done’. Then I tore off the leather bracelet she’d made for me and shoved it in the envelope.
I’d dropped the flowers on the dusty floor and left. The next morning, I quit college and began working for Francesco, learning how to be a good little soldier.
Milo explained in laborious detail why the video wasn’t Thea.
“It’s a deep fake,” he explained in his typically emotionless way. I’d not spent a great deal of time with Milo, but there was definitely something odd about him. He didn’t seem to have the same emotional range as normal people. I’d seen him creeping around college, watching Thea like a deranged stalker.
Not that I could talk. I’d also spent way too much time watching her. Even if I wasn’t willing to admit I still had feelings for her. Big feelings. If I could cauterize my amygdala, I would. Emotions were horrible.
I didn’t want to feel anything, least of all guilt. But the more I thought about everything I’d done since that fateful night when Torrance showed me the stupid fucking fake video, the more I hated myself.
Torrance had taken her, and it was all my fault.
“I’m going to kill him,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” Kyril stated while throwing me a look that promised a lifetime of suffering. “I am.”
“How about you kill him together?” Milo said. “Does that work for you both?”
“I’m not working with that asshole,” I muttered. Kyril was violent and prone to outbursts of extreme rage. I knew this because I’d been on the receiving end of more than a few of his homicidal rampages. OK, so I deserved most of them, but still. It was fucking obvious he had impulse control issues. And if he was in charge of Operation Rescue Thea, we were fucked.
“I don’t want to work with you either, but looks like we’re both shit out of luck!”
Milo rubbed his eyes and grimaced. “Dario, you’re the expert on Francesco. Do you think Torrance will have taken her back home?”
“Yeah. He’s probably locked her up in the dungeon. It’s the most secure place he has for prisoners.”
“Dungeon?” Milo looked ill at the thought of Thea in a dungeon, and he was right to be concerned. Thea had let a few details slip back when we were teenagers. I knew Torrance had locked her up in the cells many times as a punishment. It was why she couldn’t sleep without a light.
“Yeah. If we want to get in and out of that place without dying, we’re going to need help.”
Kyril looked like he was about to call me a pathetic pussy, but just as he opened his mouth to sneer at my lack of confidence in his skills as a trained killer, we all heard a loud banging on the apartment door.
“Fuck,” Milo groaned. “Eden’s here.”
Oh, Thea’s little friend . I’d seen them together at a club some weeks back. I’d been drunk, bored with the company, and pissed off when I saw two assholes all over Thea. I may have said a few nasty things to her, but now wasn’t the time to haul myself over the coals.
Kyril unlocked the door and Eden stormed in wearing some jeans and a sweater. She took one look at me and her lip curled with disdain.
“Why’s he here?” she asked Kyril, making it clear I was less than shit on her shoes.
“We need him,” was Kyril’s succinct reply.
“When you no longer need him, let me know. I’ll have Declan deal with him.” She sniffed derisively.
“Dream on, Barbie Girl,” I scoffed, only mildly concerned about the threat of Declan Kelly hunting me down like a rabid dog.
She smirked at me. “Declan owes Thea, so I’d be very worried if I were you, Judas!”
I rolled my eyes but bit back a retort. She had every right to hate me. Hell, I hated myself too.
“What do you mean Declan owes Thea?” Milo asked curiously.
“She saved my life, so Declan said if she ever needed his help, he’d have her back. I called him and explained what’s happened. I told him he had to help us rescue her.”
“There is no ‘us’, Eden,” Kyril said. “You’re not getting involved in this.”
“Fuck you, Kyril. You need me.”
“Go play with your Barbies, principessa .” This pint-sized pixie had probably never shot anyone in her life, so why she thought she’d be useful was beyond me. Declan’s help might come in handy, though. I didn’t fancy our chances of flying under the radar if we took a commercial flight to Italy, whereas Declan undoubtedly had a private jet and plenty of soldiers at his beck and call.
Eden ignored my jibe and turned to Kyril and Milo. “Declan was in the country, so he’s gassing up the plane and will send a car to collect us in a couple of hours.”
“Look, as much as we appreciate assistance from the Irish mafia, there is no ‘us’. Thea would never forgive me if anything happened to you.”
“Since you lot are on her shit list already, I don’t much care what you think. And besides, without me, there is no Declan, so suck it up, buttercup.”