Chapter 17
DANTE
Iwoke to the sound of… nothing.
Nothing I could put my finger on, but something in this endless dark felt different than before.
The constant, far-off dripping of water still echoed, as did the muted clinking of chains as prisoners shifted in their shallow holes. The grunting as someone stroked themselves, the moan of pain from a fresh injury. The death rattle of someone who wouldn’t survive to see dawn.
I held my breath, searching the darkness, heart stalled in my chest.
What had woken me?
The back of my neck prickled—an old instinct that kept me alive through five decades inside this place and before that, as Don Marcello’s eldest son and heir—then I swung my legs over the edge of the rock hollow I called a bed.
The hairs along my arms lifted. My blood, slow with hunger, turned sharp as a blade.
Someone was inside the Fossa.
Someone who didn’t belong.
Had Giovanni come to finish me off? By my reckoning, I still had another day left, but the dough-faced bastard was treacherous to the core.
My body screamed as I limped to the cell door, dragging my bad leg, pain lancing through my ribs, my shoulders, my spine.
Courtesy of the Overseer. After Giovanni’s departure, I’d survived my next fight, then he’d taken his time, methodical as any expert in his field, breaking and crushing virtually every inch of bone with clinical, ancient patience.
The Overseer never raged.
Emotions didn’t play into his tortures.
He simply enjoyed causing pain, the way decent people enjoyed a good meal.
I sank to the floor and pulled in a shallow breath. Air scraped down my throat, tasting of piss, old blood, and rot until my dried-out lungs felt like I’d swallowed the pit itself. My tongue was thick, my mouth parched, the ache of starvation a gnawing hunger in my belly.
More than anything, my broken leg throbbed.
Not a clean snap, but a splintered fracture that had the bone grinding every time I moved a fraction of an inch. I could feel the jagged edges moving under skin that was already black and swollen.
This would never heal, not in the time I had left.
Certainly not for the fight that awaited me in just a few hours. At dawn, the Overseer would pair me with someone equally weak and broken because he’d want to draw this final contest out, so he’d make sure we were evenly matched. But he’d give the other prisoner an advantage... a weapon perhaps.
And instructions not to end me quickly.
If I survived that fight, there would be another. And another.
And then…
Heat surged through my veins, as if I was filled with fire. I squeezed my hands into fists, fighting the urge to just let go and burn this entire place to the ground. No. Lose yourself, and you’ll become nothing but what they made you.
You are Dante Dominico, and you are not a monster.
The heat ebbed away, and I closed my eyes and let the truth settle into my bones.
I was going to die down here.
If not today in the ring, then tonight.
If not in the ring, then by the Overseer’s hand. Then I’d be dropped into a hole out in the desert where no one—not Emberline, not Gabriel or Nico—would ever know what happened to me.
I should feel relief. I’d been fighting my entire life. First, my father, then every single day since they’d thrown me in this hole. I’d fought while I was starving, bleeding, half-blind with exhaustion. I’d fought males twice my size and things that shouldn’t have been alive at all.
But if this was the end… I stared at the ceiling and knew one thing for sure.
I wasn’t ready to die.
I wanted to see Venice again. Kiss Emberline, hold her in my arms. Embrace my pain-in-the-ass brother one last time.
The Fossa would be the last thing I knew, and the Overseer’s face the last thing I saw on this earth. I closed my eyes, managed one jagged inhale—and froze.
Something sweet cut through the filth.
Not the cold mineral stink of stone. Not the iron bite of fresh blood.
A citrusy, floral scent. Tinged with lavender.
Female. My fucking female.
My heart stuttered so hard, I couldn’t move from my spot on the filthy cell floor, staring out into the dark corridor with hope pounding in my heart like a battle drum. I told myself I was hallucinating. That pain had finally twisted my mind, dangling an impossible dream in front of a dying male.
This couldn’t be real.
But on another bitter whisper of foul wind, the scent came again, stronger this time, and my entire body went taut. Lemons and lavender. Unmistakable. Impossible. Terrifying.
My throat constricted. My fangs ached with a primal, instinctive need that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with claiming what was mine.
“No,” I rasped, trying to climb to my feet, fingers clawing at the wall behind me for support. My wife was not here. Emberline was alive, safe in Venice, over a thousand miles away from here, protected by an oath my brother swore, and the Fossa was a secret buried so deep in the sand…
She could not be here.
The scent grew sharper. The air inside the Fossa tightened, the prison quieted to a dense, dark silence. No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening.
I squeezed my eyes closed, finally on my feet, useless leg hanging, shoulder braced against the wall for support. My hands dug into the wall, dragging myself closer to the bars, pain exploding through every inch of my ruined flesh, white-hot, blinding.
The chain locked around my ankle clinked softly, and bones shifted. Something warm slid down my shin. I didn’t stop until my hands curled around the bars, until the cold bite of iron singed my palms.
I shoved my face through the space in the bars, breathing in hard, desperate gasps.
Oh gods. All I smelled was her. She was here… she’d come to fucking save me.
“What have you done?” I moaned to the silent darkness, as if the Fates could hear me. But they couldn’t save us, not from this. No, the Overseer would wrap his hands around Emberline’s throat and squeeze, and I would have to watch her die and gods… oh gods, I couldn’t bear it.
“Stay away,” I hissed, voice breaking as the faint sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor. “Stay the fuck away—”
Three sets of boots. Two of them sure-footed. One uneven. I caught two more scents besides hers—Gabriel and Nico.
My hands tightened on the bars until the iron groaned. I had been willing to die here. Willing to die, knowing they would all live, but now… I tried to think. Tried to plan.
But all I knew was panic as her scent spilled into the corridor like a wave of sunshine.
Then she was in front of me, horror dawning in her dark eyes as she scanned my body, her mouth pinched together in a trembling line. Gabriel and Nico were right behind her, and all I saw were lambs stepping into the slaughterhouse.
“Emberline,” I whispered, and my voice cracked on her name. “What have you done?”