1. Dante
1
DANTE
I look down at the girl beneath me with a scowl, withdraw then zip my pants up.
“What is it?” I call, infuriated at the incessant knocking on the door.
“Mr Accardi, your father has requested you meet him in his office immediately.”
“Fuck!” I smooth a hand down my tired face. I haven’t slept in 24 hours, and all I want to do is have a fuck, shower, and sleep the adrenaline off. But even that is too great an ask.
“Marco will drive you home,” I tell the girl, without stopping to give her a proper farewell, before making a hasty exit from the room. I won’t even remember her face in an hour. I’ve already forgotten her name.
I make my way through the house, down the hallway that crosses the adjoining wing, before I arrive at the other end of the house and push open the door to my father’s office.
“What’s so important it can’t wait til morning?” I ask, hands on my hips as I confront my father. His eyebrows shoot up in surprise at my irritation, before his expression morphs into a placating smile. He removes the cigar he has in his mouth and sets it on a nearby tray.
“Aaah!” he exclaims. “It would seem I interrupted something important like you riding a horse. Again .”
My expression softens toward my father’s humor and I shake my head and smile, understanding what my father has just done.
“You did it on purpose.”
“I don’t want you to waste your life on cheap one night stands, son. Even they are not fulfilling you. But no, that’s not why I called you here. And yes, what I wanted to talk to you about was important enough that it couldn’t wait until morning.”
I watch quietly as my father takes a seat behind his desk, inhales a steady breath, then looks up at me as though trying to read something in my eyes.
“It’s Maddog Murray… he’s in the hospital again.”
“What is it this time?”
In the past four years alone, Maddog Murray has gone into the hospital just as many times for various reasons, two of which were due to gunshot wounds.
My father shakes his head and picks his cigar up again, taking a puff then pushing it to the side of his mouth as he speaks.
“I believe he’s at the end of his days. My source tells me the priest hasn’t left his side.”
“And?”
“Maddog’s son. Once Maddog’s gone, he’s the only thing standing in the way of the waterfront.”
“He’ll never sell to us.”
“I know that. He won’t sell it and we won’t be buying it. We’re going to take it from him.”
I give my father a hard look as I contemplate his words. The waterfront has been a thorn in our side for years now, and old man Maddog has not budged when it comes to selling it, even when we'd offered way above market value. The waterfront property is crucial; the lifeline our growing empire requires to sustain growth. Without it, there is no room for expansion.
“Maddog has a son. One son. No one knows who he is or what he looks like, nor where he’s been hidden all these years. What I do know is that he’s barely an adult, so in no way capable of running his father’s empire once he passes. Taking it from him will be child’s play. But first, we have to find him.”
“You said yourself, no one knows who he is or what he looks like.”
“Aaah, yes.” My father fixes me with a mischievous smile. “But what I do know is the son will come to see his father in his final days.”
“You want me to take advantage of the kid as his father lays dying?”
My father lets out an exasperated sigh and tells me to put my moral compass away. “God knows you don’t really have one,” he adds. I hate that my father says this, especially knowing my past and how I’ve struggled to balance the light to my dark. I’m simmering when I speak again.
“And how do you propose I reach the boy when that hospital will be locked down like Fort Knox?”
“You’re not going anywhere near the hospital. I just want eyes on the boy so when the opportunity presents itself, you’re ready to take it.”
“I’ll send some men to check it out.”
“No, no, no, no, no. You do this alone.”
I give my father a cautious sideways glance. There’s no telling what he’s up to now. He never insists on me doing anything on my own.
“What’s really going on here?” I ask him. “You can send anyone to watch the Murrays until we have eyes on the boy. Why me?”
“We can’t afford any mistakes with this.”
I lower my eyes to the fireplace and watch as the flames lick at the wood, their bright hues dancing against my face. It’s times like this I miss having my brother around. In truth, I’m not cut out for this world. I was not built the way my father was, the way my brother had been. Sure, I’d had to learn, from the bottom up, but that didn’t mean I belonged in this world. That had been my brother Rollo’s dream. Before he’d been shot down in a hail of bullets at a gas station. That’s what had brought me home. My brother’s death and my father’s insistence that I had to come home and take my brother’s place, otherwise we’d lose everything. My father had guilted me into coming back. He had needed a right hand man he could trust, and that someone had been me. I’d had to give up my own dreams and aspirations to fill the massive shoes my brother had left behind.
“When?” I ask, looking up at my father.
“As soon as possible, Dante. You have to find the boy.”