Chapter 14
Frederica noticed Dario's absence the way she noticed everything. It was peripheral, an automatic awareness, because survival had always depended on knowing exactly where the most dangerous person in the room was. Training. That was all it was.
You aren't worried about him, she told herself firmly.
"You should go check on Dario," Athena said, sidling in to stand beside her.
Frederica hesitated before replying, "I don't know if he actually wants company or to be left alone."
"What the fuck do you care? Just go and talk to him, and if he tells you to go, you can say you tried." Athena bumped her shoulder against hers. "Go on, you are pouting, and it's pathetic to watch."
"Fuck you, Edgeworth."
Athena smirked. "Nah, I'm not your type."
"I don't have a type," Frederica teased back, the nonsense lifting some of the weight from her chest.
"Sure you do. He's big and argumentative, and you call him when you get put in jail instead of me," Athena shot back.
"Fuck." Frederica scowled. "Is it that obvious?"
"To me it is, but only because it's the type I like too," Athena replied, and sent a heated look in Kon's direction.
"I thought it would get boring being with Kon after a while without our rivalry to keep us on our toes, but it hasn't.
It's just gotten better. Sometimes you have to stop being a chicken shit and go after what you want.
" Athena patted her on the shoulder. "Go on.
I'll cover for you if anyone asks where you went. Unless you are a chicken shit."
"You can be a real asshole," Frederica said, and Athena's laughter followed her all the way into the garden.
The terrace on the side of the house was dark, except for the harbor lights below. Dario was at the railing with his back to her, watching the sea and stars.
"Are you stalking me?" he asked, without turning around.
Frederica snorted and moved to the railing beside him. "You wish. You just happen to be in my favorite quiet spot, so move your big ass over."
Below them, the harbor was a string of lights on dark water. She could hear muffled voices inside the house behind them, talking and arguing.
"The others are still going at him," she commented.
"I know."
"Leo wants to know everything about your father. Rodrigo, too, but he's managing it better."
"I know that as well," he replied with a tired sigh. "It's why I'm out here. I can't intervene. They need to be able to make up their own minds about shit."
The Dario she had seen in the past was always moving: the grin, the gesture, the easy claim he had on every room he walked into. This version of him, she was less sure how to read.
"You handled everything well today. They can sort it out from here," she said, because it was true, and it seemed like the kind of thing he needed to hear.
"I'm the one who set all of this up, and I still nearly lost my nerve getting him through that door."
"You didn't, though."
Frederica leaned on the railing, mirroring his posture without meaning to. The night was warm, the way Rhodes nights were, even heading into the winter months, and from down the hillside came the soothing crash of the sea.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked, and immediately wanted to take it back. It wasn't the kind of question she asked anyone because she usually didn't give a shit enough to want to know.
Dario turned to look at her, which meant now she was stuck with it.
"I've spent a long time being angry about the way my father died.
The randomness of it, and that he was in the wrong place for the wrong reason.
" Dario looked back at the water. "But it wasn't random.
He was there because of Gabriella and the Sorrentinos.
He was also willing to do whatever that spell was with Serapis.
It was something enormous and dangerous, and he didn't tell us. He chose the secret."
Frederica didn't say anything. She had a policy about other people's grief, which was to stay out of it unless invited. She had also found that the trick with Dario was that silence usually made him keep talking.
"My father wasn't a small man," he said eventually, voice softening.
"He was enormous in the way that matters.
Rodrigo got his ruthlessness. Leo got his face and his magic.
I thought I got his…" He stopped and grimaced.
"His talent for a room. That was what Gabriella always said.
That I was 'useful' in the same way because I could trick people into liking me, where none of the others could. "
"And Serapis told you that you had the same talent, but only phrased it better." Frederica leaned her arms against the railing. "So what's eating you up about it?"
"Serapis could be telling me what I want to hear."
"He could be, but he's not."
Dario looked at her. "How do you know?"
"Because he didn't say it like it was a gift. He said it like he was handing you work." She shrugged. "That's how my father talks about the parts of this life that are actually worth doing. Not like prizes. Like… responsibilities."
Something in Dario's face shifted, and she looked away and back at the house behind them. Through the lit windows, she could see the vague shapes of people moving, the warm yellow light spilling across the tiles.
"It's hard to think about how I got pieces of my father and Gabriella and somehow fell short of both of them. I could never measure up in Gabriella's eyes, and I really don't know what my father would think about the way I turned out either," Dario admitted after a long moment.
Frederica bumped her shoulder against his.
"You know you aren't the only one who feels like that.
When I was small, my father would walk into a room at a party or a job, something like that, and everyone in the room would just…
reorganize around him. Not because he's loud.
Tore is never loud. But because of some quality he has that I couldn't figure out.
Still can't really," she said without planning to, which was becoming a habit around him that she needed to stop.
"It is presence," Dario replied, interrupting her gently.
"Yeah, that's it. Presence," she agreed.
"I used to watch him do that and think: I need to learn how he does it.
My mother has it too. She's beautiful in a way that is so interesting it draws the eye and holds it, because nothing about her is fake.
She can get anything out of anyone, or kill them, with such style that they want to thank her for the privilege.
Between the two of them, I thought I had to pick a version to become.
" She paused and cleared her throat. "I don't have the charm needed to be a good thief.
I'm not a honeytrap. I'm not particularly soft or warm or the kind of person strangers trust immediately. "
"No, you aren't," Dario said in a tone that made it sound like a compliment.
"I'm aware." She kept her eyes on the house. "What I am is very good at certain things that don't overlap much with either of my parents, which means I spent a long time feeling like the slightly less successful sequel."
"Frederica," he whispered.
"It's not a wound," she said preemptively. "It's just a fact."
"Didn't say it was, but you know what I do hear?" Dario asked, his voice still too soft.
Frederica screwed up her nose. "I'd rather you didn't say it."
"You decided on what you were before anyone else got the chance to try and compare you."
She glared at him. "That's not what I said at all."
"It's what you meant." Dario wasn't looking at her, which somehow made it worse than if he had been. "This 'not-enough' story? You wrote it yourself and handed it out before anyone asked you for it. Just so you know, it isn't how other people see you."
Frederica had the familiar urge to start a fight because fighting Dario was something she knew how to do.
It had rules and an established rhythm she could navigate.
It wasn't this sensation of someone reaching past her guard without her permission.
Dario finally turned to look at her, and she squirmed on the inside.
"Stop it," she warned him, bracing herself.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're staring at me…like that."
Dario didn't look away. The heat in his eyes wasn't subtle, and he wasn't trying to hide it.
"I told you," she said, and her voice came out flatter than she intended. "Cut it out. I know what you're doing, and it doesn't work on me."
"What am I doing?" he demanded.
"The look. The whole, sexy eyes thing…" She gestured at him. "I'm not one of your marks, Dario. If you're feeling whatever you're feeling, that's between you and your feelings. Don't use it to get under my skin."
Dario looked completely confused for a few seconds before growling. "God fucking damn it." He closed the gap between them and kissed her.
It wasn't tender. It was frustrated and hungry. She had no control as her hands grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him closer before she was taking from him just as hard, and angry for entirely different reasons.
She was tall, but he still had to wrap an arm around her and pull her up onto her tiptoes to reach him.
The front of her body lit up as she rubbed against so much muscle and strength.
She made a hungry sound, overwhelmed with the feeling of it.
Warmth, stubble, soft, wet, a nip of teeth…
and then his mouth was gone, and she was left rattled and hot and breathing too hard.
Dario stepped back, and reality crashed in. She could hear the harbor. She could hear the voices in the garden. Her hands were still in his shirt.
"Shit. That was a mistake," she said and let him go quickly.
Dario looked at her for a long beat before something passed across his face, and his mask reassembled itself.
"Maybe, but I've never seen someone who needed to be kissed as badly as you," he said, clearing his throat. He took another step back, putting space between them. "Don't look so worried, Spartana. It was the heat of the moment. Won't happen again."
Frederica wasn't sure if that made her feel better or worse. Fuck.
"For the record," he added, "I'm not playing games with you. I told you that before, and I meant it. If I look at you a certain way, it's because that's what I'm feeling, and you're just going to have to deal with it."
He picked up his wine glass from where he had set it on the railing's edge. "I'm not going to chase you or beg you either. I don't do that, and I sure as shit don't go where I'm not wanted."
Frederica stood at the railing and said nothing because, if she did, she would probably regret it.
"Tomorrow, we have a heist to plan and execute," Dario said, heading back around the house toward the light and the voices. "You should get some sleep. We might not get much of it until this shit is over."
She listened to his footsteps fade and stayed where she was, her hands gripping the cold railing as his words rattled in her head.
This 'not-enough' story? You wrote it yourself and handed it out before anyone asked you for it.
He hadn't said it like a platitude but a straight-up fact.
Like something that had been in the room the whole time she hadn't been aware of, and he was simply pointing at it.
The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to break something.
In the garden around the corner, she could hear Tore saying something, warm and unhurried, and a beat later, Despina's laugh.
She didn't move until both sounds faded, waiting until she could creep upstairs to her room without anyone bothering her. If either of her parents saw her, they would be able to read the look in her eyes, see her kiss reddened lips, and know something had happened.
Maybe if she told no one, Frederica could forget that she now knew exactly what Dario tasted like…and how much she had liked it.