37. Truth
Chapter thirty-seven
Truth
(Alessio)
Dante stands at the dresser, methodically removing his rings—a ritual I've watched him perform countless times since reuniting. Each one carries its own weight, its own story. He pauses at a gold band set with a beautiful emerald stone, turning it in the moonlight before setting it down.
"She loved this ring,” he says softly, almost to himself. "Never took it off, even after everything he did."
I know which 'she' he means. Know the weight this particular ring carries. "Your mother's?" I ask carefully.
Dante nods, still focused on the band. "Wore it to church that Sunday." His fingers tremble slightly as he sets it down. "Last thing she ever wore."
The words hang between us, delicate as smoke. I've loved this man through decades of separation, but there are still doors in his heart marked 'keep out.'
"What happened that day?" I keep my voice gentle. "During the original port wars?"
Dante's jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. He picks up the half-empty whisky bottle from the dresser, takes a big swig. "She shouldn't have died." His voice catches. "She had nothing to do with any of it."
A long silence follows. I step closer, letting my shoulder brush his, needing to be near him. He doesn’t move away.
"Do you miss her?"
“Sometimes.” Moonlight catches in his eyes like broken glass. "She would've loved Danica..." He trails off, reaching for the champagne bottle.
The pain in his voice makes my chest ache. I start to speak, but he continues, words spilling out like blood from an old wound as darkness wraps us in her protective cocoon.
"Sunday Mass." Dante’s voice sounds young suddenly. Small. "Luca was seven. I was ten. She always..." He takes a shaking breath. "She always held our hands. Even though I said I was too old."
The whisky bottle trembles in his fingers. I resist the urge to take it, to hold him.
"One moment, she was there, smiling down at us. Next..." His laugh holds no humor. “Bullet was meant for him. But the asshole used his own wife like a human shield…Fucking coward.”
Dante stops, lost in memory. I watch his face, see the moment replay behind his eyes.
Twenty-five years of loving this man, and I never knew he carried this particular horror. Never knew he was there that day.
My heart splinters watching pain reshape his features—my proud, fierce Don reduced to that ten-year-old boy again. I want to pull him close, to shelter him from memories that can't be undone. But I know some wounds need space to bleed.
Dante speaks slowly, eyes glued to the ring like I’m not there.
"She didn't make a sound. Just..." Dante's voice trembles. "A tiny breath. Like she was trying to say goodbye. Then nothing. Nothing ever again."
His shoulders begin to shake beside me, and I finally reach for him, pressing my chest against his back to try and ground him in the present, in the warmth of my body. Anything but that memory.
Part of me regrets asking what happened. Regrets causing him this pain. But there is no putting the cork back into the bottle now. Everything is spilling out, one way or another.
"Her eyes were still open." Dante’s words come out strangled. "So green. Like the forest after rain. But they weren't...she wasn't..." his voice splinters. "She was gone. Just...gone."
The first sob tears free like it's being ripped from his chest. I squeeze him as tightly as I can, feeling decades of grief shudder through his body. The fierce Don, the proud warrior, reduced to that helpless child again.
"They left us there." Each word is a battle but Dante is forcing himself through it.
"In some car. All night. They just left us there.
Luca wouldn't stop crying. I tried to be brave, tried to...
" His breath hitches. "Emilio found us the next morning.
But him? Our father? He never came for us.
Too busy plotting revenge. Making it about him. Always about fucking him."
His fingers find the gold band again, trembling as they trace its worn surface. "Sometimes I think...if I'd been bigger, stronger...if I'd seen the car coming..."
"You were a child, amore." My voice breaks.
"A child who grew up to be just like him." The bitterness drips from his voice.
"No." I turn him to face me, needing him to see the truth in my eyes. "Nothing like him. Your father was an animal.”
"I wish he died that day." The words finally break free, decades of silence shattering like glass. "Why couldn't he have just fucking died instead?" His voice raises slightly, and behind us, Danica stirs but doesn't wake.
“Oh, my love.” I hold him tighter as fresh tears fall.
“I’ve never said that out loud before.” His voice is barely a whisper. “Always felt so guilty, but...God, I wished it was him.”
“Who could blame you? The man was a cunt. Unfit to raise children.” I think of Don Fera Senior's legacy, how my father would spit at the mere mention of his name, how the old guard still speaks of his cruelty in hushed tones.
“You can say that again.” Dante lowers his head. “He only had a few more years to live. But he made damn sure to leave us enough trauma to last lifetimes.”
I stay quiet, giving him space to continue. Just holding him, stroking his hair lovingly.
"The first week after the funeral, he locked us in our rooms. Said he couldn't stand to look at us—we reminded him too much of her. Luca was just a little boy, crying for his mother, and that bastard..." Dante’s hands clench into fists. "He said crying was for women. Said our mother made us soft."
He stares out the window into the night. “When he finally let us out, everything had changed. No more school. No more friends. Just training. Combat. Weapons. Business. If we failed..." He stops, swallows hard. "The basement had a post. For discipline.”
My stomach turns, remembering the scars I'd traced on his back earlier. I'd always assumed they were from rival families, from battles won and lost. Oh, Dante.
"Luca was so small. Too small for the training, but he didn't care.
Said pain builds character. Said our mother's death was a sign—we needed to be harder, stronger.
No mercy." A bitter laugh escapes him. "You know what he did on the anniversary of her death?
Made us practice shooting. Said we needed to learn that bullets don't care about sentiments. "
I hold him tighter, feeling tremors run through his body.
"The worst part?" His voice drops to a whisper. "Some nights, he'd drink and cry over her photos. Call her name. But in the morning...in the morning, he'd beat us for leaving water rings on her picture frames. Like we didn't have the right to miss her too."
I don't want to ask more, not with each memory like shrapnel working its way to the surface. But some wounds need to be reopened to heal properly. Some burdens need to be shared to become lighter. "And after his death?"
“You know how that went.” Dante laughs, but it sounds harsh.
"Nineteen years old, trying to run an empire I never wanted.
The other Dons circling like hyenas, waiting for the boy-king to fail.
" His fingers trace the heavy ring that was once his father's.
"And fail I did. Everything I touched turned to blood.
Every decision I made was wrong. I couldn't even protect Luca, not really.
Just became a different kind of monster. "
"Don't." I catch his face between my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes.
In the moonlight, I can almost see that nineteen-year-old boy drowning in expectations too heavy to bear.
"You were a teenager. A teenager trying to hold together a kingdom built on bones and bullets.
No one should carry that weight so young. "
"I had no choice." His voice cracks. "The other families would have torn us apart. Would have killed Luca just to prove a point. So I became what they feared—worse than my father ever was."
The confession hangs in the air between us, heavy with decades of guilt.
I remember those years, the stories that reached Vegas about the young Don Fera.
How he colored the streets red. How he made examples of anyone who questioned his authority.
I never connected those tales to this man in my arms, this beautiful, broken soul I loved from the moment we met as young boys.
It’s not fair. He didn’t choose this life.
The contrast between our paths hits me like an unexpected brick wall on a highway.
While Dante was drowning in blood and obligation, I was free—dancing in clubs, falling in love, creating art.
My biggest concern was which party to attend.
I was spare parts, the second-born; they never tried to mold me into a weapon.
Even now, Vegas plays by different rules. I stepped into power prepared, supported. Dante? He was thrown into fire before his voice had settled, before he knew who he was beyond his father's son.
“You did what you had to, amore mio,” I whisper against his temple and feel him crumble.
I hold him tighter and let him cry for the boy he was, for the mother he lost, for the childhood that was stolen by a bullet meant for someone else.
Hold him like I couldn't when we were younger, when family obligations and feuds kept us apart. Hold him as the moon tracks across the sky and our skin grows cold with dew. Until the past settles back into its usual place between his shoulders.
Finally, the broken Knight’s breathing steadies.
He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and I see both the boy he was and the man he's become.
Don Dante Fera, feared and respected throughout the criminal world.
My first love. Danica's husband. A man still carrying the weight of a ten-year-old boy who couldn't save his mother.
When he finally speaks again, his voice is steadier, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "She would have loved you too, you know. Would have accepted us…”
There are no words for moments like this. Instead, I press a kiss to his shoulder and feel him lean back, trusting me with his weight. With his truth.
We stay there, wrapped in moonlight and memory, until the sky begins to lighten with dawn's first blush.
Behind us, our sleepy Queen stirs in her sleep, murmuring something soft and content.
Tomorrow, we'll return to being what the world needs us to be—Dons, lovers, leaders. But for now, in this suspended moment between night and day, we're just two boys who grew up too fast, holding each other against the dark.
And maybe that's enough.
Maybe that's everything.