RuNyx is a New York Times, USA Today and international bestselling author of romance. Her stories range across subgenres from dark contemporary to gothic to historical to fantasy and more, and are currently being translated into over 10 languages. Her pen name has a very special meaning to her. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, traveling, meditating, daydreaming, and most of all, procrastinating.
PENGUIN BOOK S
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Penguin Random House UK , One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London SW 11 7BW penguin.co.uk global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes freedom of expression and supports a vibrant culture. Thank you for purchasing an authorised edition of this book and for respecting intellectual property laws by not reproducing, scanning or distributing any part of it by any means without permission. You are supporting authors and enabling Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for everyone. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive 2019/790, Penguin Random House expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.
Set in 9.92/14.06pt Adobe Caslon Pro Typeset by Six Red Marbles UK, Thetford, Norfolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
The authorised representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH 68
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN : 978–1–911–74637–9
Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
To every survivor, whether you carry your scars on your flesh or in your soul, whether you’ve seen the worst of humankind or fought the worst of fates, you’re still here. This is for you.
A uthor ’ s N ote
This is the third book of the Dark Verse series and while it deals with a single couple and their relationship over a long span of years, there are characters and events mentioned from the previous two books. If you have not read The Predator and The Reaper, I highly recommend doing so for a complete reading experience.
If you’ve read the first two books, I feel I should mention that this one gets much darker. This book contains explicit, graphic scenes of violence and sexual nature.
There are also a few trigger warnings I feel would be fair to warn you about in case you are sensitive to these subjects—panic attack, post-traumatic stress disorder, sexual assault against a minor, violence against a minor, murder, mentions of rape and torture, mentions of human slavery and trafficking.
If any of these subject matters make you uncomfortable, please take heed. Your mental health is of utmost importance and if any of these affect you adversely, I urge you to pause. If you do continue to read the book, I sincerely hope you enjoy the journey. Thank you.
P l Aylist
Prisoner - Raphael Lake ft. Aaron Levy
The Night We Met - Lord Huron
Back to You - Selena Gomez
i hate u, I love u - gnash ft. Olivia O’Brian
Far From Home (The Raven) - Sam Tinnesz
The Beginning of the End - Klergy ft. Valerie Broussard
Say Something - A Great Big World ft. Christina Aguilara
Little Do You Know - Alex & Sierra
A Thousand Years - Christina Perri
The Scientist - Coldplay
Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
Cry for Me - Camila Cabello
Set Fire to the Third Bar - Snow Patrol ft. Martha Wainwright
Satellite/Stealing Time - Above & Beyond
A Drop in the Ocean - Ron Pope
Back in Time - VV Brown
In the Air Tonight - Natalie Taylor
Shadow Preachers - Zella Day
My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark - Fall Out Boy
Next to Me - Imagine Dragons
Love’s to Blame - Joel & Luke
Movement - Hozier
Graveyard - Halsey
i love you - Billie Eilish
Skin - Rag ‘n’ Bone Man
Go to War - Nothing More
Already Gone - Sleeping at Last Cross Your Mind - Sabrina Claudio
Control - Halsey
Dogs of War - Blues Saraceno
New Divide - Linkin Park
Here Without You - 3 Doors Down
Survivor - 2WEI ft. Edda Hayes
Bad - Royal Deluxe
Wolves - Sam Tinnesz ft. Silverberg
Hurts Like Hell - Fleurie
Fire on Fire - Sam Smith
Distance - Christina Perri
Helium - Sia
Carry You - Jeffrey James
Between - Courier
When It’s All Over - RAIGN
Don’t Deserve You - Plumb
Holding On and Letting Go - Ross Copperman
Kryptonite - 3 Doors Down
Easier - Mansionair
Rescue Me - OneRepublic
In Need - Gert Taberner
Stay - Gracie Abrams
Boomerang - Imagine Dragons
Eclipse (All Yours) - Metric
Please Don’t Say You Love Me - Alessia Mamino
Say You Love Me - Jessie Ware
Poison and Wine - The Civil Wars
Here She Comes Again - Royksopp
Vertigo - Raphael Lake ft. Ben Fisher
Starboy - The Weeknd ft. Daft Punk
exile - Taylor Swift ft. Bon Iver
Find My Way Back - Cody Fry
Fuck it I Love You - Lana Del Rey
Fall for You - Secondhand Serenade
I Just Want You - Castle OST
Legend - The Score
One Last Night - Vaults
Rolling in the Deep (Acapella) - Adele
Shattered - Trading Yesterday
Summertime Sadness - Lana Del Rey
Rise - John Dreamer
I Should Go - Levi Kris
PREFACE
The house was old. The morning was cold. And the stories, told.
But never loud enough to reach ears that could help.
The man stood by the tree, a tree he’d been using to watch the home for over two weeks. The lone house surrounded by land and mist was eerie enough in itself. Woods at the back, river a mile away, the nearest road two miles, it was truly a home of nightmares. From the outside, it looked like a home he’d once known—with thin, dilapidated walls that never silenced the screams, the rot on the inside enveloped in the stone.
He saw the young boy at the window, early in the morning, his curious eyes trying to find something in the thick fog. He knew that if discovered, the boy would take a severe punishment. But the kid was brave, or maybe desperate. The man didn’t know.
He should probably feel bad about using him. He didn’t.
The man flicked on the lighter in his hand and raised it to signal the boy. He saw the little eyes notice his arm, quickly looking back to check if anyone was coming. Satisfied, the boy nodded twice. Two very slow, precise nods, just in case the man missed it. The man lowered his arm, getting the answer he’d come for.
Brave little shit had been more help than he’d hoped.
He watched as the kid went back to the room, away from the window, and hoped he didn’t die. That none of them died before they were found. That’d be such a waste.
Getting the answer he’d been rooting for, the man stepped back into the fog he’d come from, disappearing from sight.
They weren’t ready.
None of them.
PART 1 breeze
“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.”
Dante Alighieri,
Inferno
Chapter 1 AMARA
10 years
They were kissing.
Amara watched with wide eyes from behind the tree as Mr. Maroni’s son and the pretty girl with pink hair stood with their mouths joined. She had pink hair. Amara has never seen anyone with pink hair.
Tilting her little head to the side, she tried to see exactly what they were doing. She’d seen the heroes and heroines kiss in movies, but never in real life. Since her father wasn’t with them, she hadn’t seen him kiss her ma either.
Wait, were they eating each other’s lips?
Ew.
Nose wrinkling, Amara swiped her tongue over her lips just to test how it felt. Wet. Icky. Making a face, she kept watching, trying to understand with her tiny mind exactly why they were enjoying it so much. It wasn’t like she’d come to spy on them. Not at all. She’d
just been walking in the woods (which she absolutely should not have been doing alone) when she’d come across a little shack. Curious, she had walked over to see it, and hidden behind a tree after seeing Mr. Maroni’s son and the girl.
The outside girl.
Amara was young but she knew the rules well enough to know that outsiders weren’t allowed on the compound. That was a new word she’d just learned last week—compound. Caum-paau-nd. That’s what they all lived on. She was allowed because her ma worked at the big house on top of the hill. But this outside girl? She really wasn’t supposed to be there. She could warn them. But why? Maybe they had permission. She was with Mr. Maroni’s son, after all.
And they were kissing again. Weren’t they getting tired? It looked so boring after the first few seconds.
Done with the show, Amara decided to go back home since it was already pretty late. The sun was almost set, the sky about to get dark, and the woods could get scary without light. And she was not supposed to roam on the compound after six ’o’clock; she’d get in trouble.
With that thought in mind, she started to run on her little feet back where the woods ended and the buildings began. The sky darkened and Amara panted, getting scared. She didn’t like the dark. She shouldn’t have stayed out so late. Her small body started to shake as she reached the edge of the woods, and tripping over her own feet, she went down hard.
Ouch, it hurt.
Amara looked down at her knee below the hem of her skirt, bruised and throbbing, and winced. Ma said her pain threshold was low. That meant she felt more pain when she got hurt. Threshold was a new word for her too. Thresh-hold, she repeated in her head, seeing a drop of blood well up on the skin of her knee. Feeling sick, she looked up at the dark sky to not see the blood.
“Who’s there?” the voice of a man came from a distance, reminding her she had to hurry back home. She wasn’t supposed to be out on the grounds after dark, especially not on these parts of the compound.
Standing up, her injured knee wobbly, Amara hurried over to the building where she lived with her mother. As she went downhill towards her home, feeling the throb in her leg, Amara hated the Maroni grounds. Why did it have to be so big, and on a mountain? Hills were hard to climb and get down on.
“Sneaking out again, ‘Mara?” a boy’s voice from behind her startled her.
Almost falling on her behind again, Amara barely balanced and stopped in her tracks to greet Vin. He was her best friend, her only friend actually. And for some reason, he could never say her name right. She had always been ‘Mara to him.
“Vinnie! What are you doing sneaking around?” she demanded. Vin was just one year older than her—a fact he never forgot to remind her of—and he was wandering even though he wasn’t supposed to either.
Vin came beside her, an inch shorter than she was. She liked to tease him about that until he reminded her he was going to grow tall in a few years and she’d stay the same. Ugh, he annoyed her.
“I was training,” he said quietly, starting the walk downhill, taking her arm to help her. Okay, he was less annoying when he was being nice.
“What do you do in training?” she asked for the hundredth time, genuinely curious. He had begun ‘training’—whatever that was— a week ago, the day after his eleventh birthday. She knew it had something to do with the big guns she saw the guards carrying, but nothing more. And Vin didn’t tell her what he did, no matter how many times she asked him.
He shrugged, glancing at the dark training building to the right,
where he’d come from. Amara saw the building in the distance, seeing another boy limping down the hill but in the opposite direction, towards the lake. The new boy. Even though he’d been staying there for as long as she could remember, everyone still called him the ‘new boy’. She’d never met him, but from the way everyone talked about him, she knew he was dangerous.
“Have you talked to the new boy?” she couldn’t contain herself from asking.
“He’s been here five years, ‘Mara,” Vin reminded her. “He’s not new anymore.”
“I know,” she stepped over a stone. They were almost home now. “That’s just what everyone calls him.”
The light from the building showed Vin’s dark, floppy hair and dark eyes, his front tooth slightly crooked as he spoke. “He doesn’t talk to anyone. The kids don’t train with him.”
“He’s a kid too,” climbing the steps, Amara pointed out.
Vin shook his head, the hair on his forehead swaying. “He’s not like any of us. Stay away from him, okay?”
Amara looked at the lake in the distance. She’d never been to that part of the compound. Thinking of the angry boy who lived there, she didn’t even want to go. On the landing of the huge building where she and Vin lived—she on the ground floor and Vin on the third— she stopped him, excited to share her little finding from the day.
“I found a little shed in the woods today,” she told him, trying to keep her voice low so nobody would hear.
Vin, who had been looking up at the stars, looked at her with wide eyes. “You went to the woods alone? Are you crazy?”
“Shh,” she looked around, scared someone older would hear him. If the news got to her ma, she’d be grounded. She hated being grounded. After a second, when no one came, she relaxed slightly.
“The woods are dangerous,” Vin reminded her softly. That’s
something every single adult around them had told every kid. Don’t go into the woods.
Amara rolled her eyes. “I didn’t go in deep.”
“But-”
“Oof,” Amara exclaimed in annoyance, punching his arm to shut him up. “I wasn’t the only one there. Mr. Maroni’s son was there too. With a girl,” she whispered, remembering the thrill of going into the woods, only to stumble upon the two teenagers.
Vin blinked, his eyes widening in excitement. “With a girl? An outsider?”
Amara nodded, grinning. Vin whistled. Or tried to. He practiced every day.
“They were kissing,” Amara informed him, her voice dropping even lower. “Kissing! Can you imagine? He was kissing an outside girl!”
Vin tugged at his collar, looking at the entrance door, looking uncomfortable. “That’s cool.”
Amara grinned. “Are you blushing?”
His chubby face flushed even more. “Of course not.”
Laughing, she nudged his side with her elbow and hobbled to the door. Ma always told her to never make people uncomfortable. Though Vin was her best friend, he was uncomfortable, so she stopped.
“Don’t go there alone again, okay?” he told her, entering the building behind her.
She went straight to her door and smiled at him. “Good night, Vinnie.”
He shook his head, heading towards the stairs, already knowing her well enough to know she would sneak out again. Amara watched his back under the lights in the hallway, seeing the bruise on his leg under his shorts turning a nasty color, but he wasn’t limping. She didn’t know what they were doing to train him, but she didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Angry at the thought of something hurting her friend, she opened
the door to her apartment and entered the dim living room. It was late and her mother was most likely already asleep, tired from all the work she did during the day.
Her ma was the head housekeeper at the big mansion. She had joined as a cook in the kitchen and over the years gotten promoted. Now, she overlooked the entire kitchen and cleaning staff and the gardeners. And there were lots of them because the grounds were so big. It was one of the highest positions for the staff, which was why she had such a lovely apartment with three big bedrooms, even though it was just her and her mother. Her father had left them years ago. She remembered him sometimes, but she had always loved her mother more. As long as she had her ma, she was happy.
Making her way to the bathroom next to the living room where the first-aid kit was kept, Amara turned on the light.
“And where were you, young lady?”
Amara looked up at her ma, only a few inches taller than herself, her pleated hair falling over one shoulder. People said she looked like her—same dark green eyes, same inky black hair, same sunkissed skin.
“I was walking with Vin,” Amara told her the half-truth, knowing her mother trusted Vin.
Ma shook her head, sighing, before her eyes fell to her knee. “Oh Mumu, what happened?” she asked, reverting to the little nickname she loved.
“I just fell, Ma,” she sat on the closed toilet seat, already knowing her mother would clean the little wound. As she thought, her mother quickly took out the box and got on her knees, putting Amara’s feet on her lap.
“Does it hurt, Mumu?” her ma asked her quietly. It did hurt. Amara shook her head. After her father left them, she had become
her mother’s whole world. Any pain of hers, any happiness of hers, anything she felt, Ma felt. She was her other best friend.
“Ma?” Amara broke the silence as her mother put ointment on her wound, wondering if she should voice her question.
“Hmm?” her mother started putting the box away.
“You know Mr. Maroni’s son?” she asked finally, feeling her face heat oddly.
Her mother’s green eyes, so like her own, came to her. “Little Damien?”
Amara shook her head. “No, the older one.”
“Dante?”
Amara nodded, her heart thumping. Hopping down from the seat, she walked out to her bedroom as her mother followed, turning down the lights behind her. Amara walked to her closet and picked out her nightdress. She didn’t like to wear shorts or pants. Even for school, she preferred skirts and flowing dresses.
“Of course I know him,” her mother said. “Why?”
She sat on her bed as Amara stripped to her underwear with the pretty blue flowers and put on the simple cotton nightdress.
“I just saw him today, that’s all,” Amara tried to be casual as she climbed on her bed and sat in front of her mother. “You never speak of him.”
Feeling her mother’s hands in her long hair, Amara tilted her head back as the nightly braiding started. Braiding the hair at night, her mother always told her, made it more beautiful and healthy in the morning. For as long as she could remember, her mother had been braiding her hair every night, and every morning they were wavy and pretty.
“He’s a good boy, that one,” her mother told her, her hands moving.
Amara had seen him from a distance for as long as she’d lived. He had always been there, but she had never focused on how soft his hair
looked or how tall he already was. She felt a little flutter in her belly and rubbed it to shoo it away.
“How old is he?” she asked, tugging at the hem of her nightdress.
“Fifteen,” her mother replied. “Poor boy lost his ma so young. He’s taken care of his brother since then. And Mr. Maroni is . . . a very strict man.”
Amara stared at the chest of drawers across from her, imagining how not having a mother must feel to him. Not very nice, she supposed. Kids should always have mothers like she did. Well, she could share hers.
“You should make him some sweets, Ma,” Amara commented, feeling the wisdom in her idea. “Cookies. The chocolate ones. Yes, he’d like that I think.”
Finished with the hair, her mother moved off the bed, letting Amara climb in. Pulling the covers over her, tucking them around her just as she liked, her mother smiled softly. It put a little dimple on her cheek that Amara wished she had. Vin told her she’d get one if she poked her finger into her cheek. So far, it hadn’t worked.
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Mumu,” she stroked her cheek softly. “I’ll do that tomorrow.”
Amara smiled, taking a hold of her ma’s right hand. It was rough and slender and not too big. She loved it. “Make me some too.”
Chuckling, her mother dropped a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t ever lose your heart, my baby.”
Amara didn’t really understand what that meant. How could someone lose their heart? Wouldn’t they die? It was such a strange thing to say. But she just smiled as her mother left the room, feeling happy and safe and loved.
Staring up at the ceiling, she blinked, remembering the kiss she’d seen. It had looked icky, but maybe doing it was more fun. Maybe that was why they had just kept kissing. Why would people kiss if it was boring, right? She must have been missing something.
The room was quiet, only the little melody of her nightlight beside her. Amara settled in and closed her eyes, deciding to read more about kissing to understand why people enjoyed it. Then, maybe one day, when she grew up and looked beautiful, she could ask Mr. Maroni’s son to give her one. He was very handsome. Maybe, he’d be nice and kiss her, after she became pretty enough to match his handsomeness. His name was handsome too. Could names be handsome? In that quiet of the room, in that dark of the night, Amara giggled at the thought and tasted his name for the first time on her lips. Yes, she decided. He would be her first kiss.
Chapter 2
DANTE
16 years
Fuck, he hated this little fucker.
Dante cracked his jaw, keeping his eyes on the fourteenyear-old kid with the biggest chip on his shoulder. Deliberately keeping a little smirk on his face that hurt his bruised cheek, Dante pulled back his fist and punched the boy on his side.
He barely grunted, twisting around in a neat little move that his shorter body wouldn’t have been capable of without intensive training, and his elbow connected to Dante’s back in a hard move. Fuck.
That one really hurt, but Dante chuckled. “C’mon, little man,” he said, deliberately goading him. God, was it too much to ask for a reaction? He’d been working on his little project to chip away at this guy’s defenses for over a year, and all he’d gotten were blank looks and dead blue eyes. Annoying as it was, Dante liked him, especially
because it screwed with his old man. Anything that screwed with Bloodhound Maroni was fucking golden in his books.
The punch to his jaw came out of nowhere, followed by a quick punch to his nose.
Motherfucker.
Dante heard the crunch before he felt the searing pain of his skull being blown. Grabbing his nose, feeling the blood gush out, Dante felt a laugh bubble out of him, blinking the stars from his eyes. Jesus, the guy was good. Served him right for needling him.
Taking out the handkerchief he always kept in his pocket, a habit his beautiful mother had drilled into him, even in the frayed jeans that would have his mother probably roll over in her grave, he held it over his nose to stem the bleeding.
“You know I’m not going anywhere, right?” Dante mumbled through the fabric over his mouth, and finally, after a year of drilling, the younger guy spoke.
“Piss off.”
Gold.
He’d hit gold.
Dante grinned behind the handkerchief. “Nice to meet you too, Tristan. You’re my little buddy now.”
Tristan narrowed his blue eyes slightly, before walking out of the training center. Or torture center, as Dante referred to it. Bloodhound Maroni had built an entire structure on his property devoted to training his soldiers and their children—training in self-defense, weapons, and torture, both to give and take it. The building had three levels— the ground floor devoted to hand-to-hand combat and weapons training, the first floor devoted to pain-tolerance training, and a basement devoted to interrogations. And though anyone underage wasn’t allowed there since usually, it held outside enemies, Dante had been down there multiple times. The perks of being a Maroni.
Satisfied with the progress he’d made with Tristan, even though it was barely a centimeter, Dante walked out of the training center, nodding to the two guards posted outside whose only job was to make sure nobody who wasn’t supposed to be there got in. They nodded back with respect.
Dante walked across the well-manicured lawns, uphill towards the mansion. It was such a monstrosity atop the lush green hill, but Dante loved it. His great-great-grandfather had been the one to build it. He’d been a merchant of glass, a well-respected member of the community, and a loner. That was the reason he’d bought the entire hill a little away from town, for his wife and family to live under one roof. Slowly, as the years had passed, more structures had been added to the property. But Dante loved that mansion, for the history and love it had been made with. Only if half the pit of vipers living in it now could somehow jump off the damn hill.
As he walked, the men patrolling the ground gave him respectful nods. As expected. He was the oldest son of Lorenzo ‘Bloodhound’ Maroni, the grandson of Antonio ‘The Iceman’ Maroni, who had been the founder of the Tenebrae Outfit and one of the most notorious leaders of the underworld. Dante was the heir to the empire. He was expected to continue the legacy in his blood, and he fucking hated it. He was his mother’s son more than his father’s. And he couldn’t understand how someone like his mother had ever been with someone like his father. He didn’t know how they met because she had never mentioned it. And Dante remembered everything about her.
‘You’re my most precious art, my little hell-raiser, my Dante.’
That’s what she’d called him. Her protector in the hell she had tried to survive, the one who would brave this hell and come out. Yes, he knew why she’d named him ‘Dante’. It was after the poet who
went through the seven circles of hell and got out. Dante would be lucky if he survived the first.
She’d been a painter, his mother, with the wild, curly brown hair, sad brown eyes, and soft, wide smile. Streaks of paint on her cheek, a poem in her throat, she would recite poetry or even hum songs while he would play with the clay she bought him, and his little toddler brother would be doing whatever toddlers did. She had nurtured the artist inside him, occasionally coming to guide his small hands as he molded the soft clay.
She’d taken a room for herself on the top floor of the mansion. The sunsets were the prettiest from there, she’d said. As a child, he had loved spending hours with her as she worked with her paints and he made little sculptures of clay for her.
It was also the room he’d found her in, her wrists slit open as red pooled around her, her canvas fallen to the side on the floor, soaking in her blood, her last masterpiece.
Shaking off his thoughts, Dante climbed up the low steps to the back of the mansion, walking to the side with a view of the lake, and removed his white handkerchief, now stained crimson. The green went as far as the eyes could see, only obliterated by the occasional structure. God, he loved this fucking hill even though he wished half the people got off it.
Moving his facial muscles, he tested the severity of his injuries. Little bastard got him good. It hurt, but he’d live.
Something barreled into him from the side, hitting him right where Tristan had elbowed him. Gritting his teeth, he spared a glance to the kid who’d slammed into him, now flat on her butt.
“Watch where you’re going, squirt,” he told her absently, calling her what he called his younger brother. Fuck, he needed a cigarette. He wasn’t a smoker per se, but he liked the occasional puff. Taking one out from his pocket, he flicked open his metal lighter and took
a deep drag. Smoke coiled inside his lungs, giving him a momentary reprieve from any other sensation. That was until he heard a feminine cough from his side.
Chuckling, he looked at the girl properly, seeing her back on her feet, in a simple blue dress, her black hair in a ponytail, and her large green eyes on him. He’d seen those eyes somewhere.
“Are you supposed to be in this area?” he asked, taking a little drag of the cigarette, watching her cute nose wrinkle.
“I’m hiding from my friend,” she told him, her eyes drifting to the ground. “I think I should go now. Bye.”
Surprised at the abrupt change, Dante threw his smoke to the ground. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up, squirt.”
She whirled around, her ponytail hitting his chest, her eyes blazing with more fire than her little body was capable of. “Stop calling me that!”
Amused, Dante bowed his head slightly as he would to a lady. “My apologies, queen.”
She liked that, he could tell.
“How old are you?” he asked, curious, trying to place her.
“How old are you?” she fired back.
Dante grinned. “Sixteen.”
“I’m eleven,” she declared proudly. “It was my birthday last month. I told my ma to send some of my birthday cake to you.”
Dante suddenly realized who she was—their housekeeper’s daughter. They had the same green eyes. He didn’t know their housekeeper’s name, but he had started calling her Zia after she’d started feeding him home-made cookies. While he didn’t talk much to Zia, he lived for those sweet treats. His mother hadn’t cooked much either, so Zia’s desserts were something he’d started to cherish. He looked forward to having them all the time. And she was such a nice woman. Dante liked her.
The young girl, her daughter, was too far from the staff quarters. She’d be in too much trouble if his father, or worse his uncle, saw her there.
“You should go,” he nodded to where she’d come from, not wanting her or her mother in the crosshairs of anyone at the mansion. The girl blinked once, before giving him a little smile, almost shy. “You have really pretty eyes,” she told him. Before he could respond, she turned away and ran down the hill, back to the staff wing.
‘You have the prettiest eyes, Dante. Be careful with them.’
His mother’s words came back to him, the only person before this girl to have told him so. His memory filled with her beautiful but sad brown eyes. Running his hand through his hair, he bent down, picking up the half-smoked cigarette, put it to his lips, and lighted it again. Exhaling through his broken nose hurt like a bitch, but he welcomed the pain, looking down towards the lake and the cottage beside it.
He’d never thought he’d find anyone on this planet who hated his father more than him—until Tristan. Though just fourteen, the younger boy would one day pull the trigger on the old man, and Dante would happily give him the gun. He just had to bide his time, until he was ready, until the world was ready.
“You have to make a run to the city tomorrow.”
Speak of the devil.
Dante ignored him.
Suddenly, his father came before him, his voice agitated, “What’s all this blood? Did someone hit you?”
Dante didn’t turn as his father’s voice thundered through the grounds on the last word. The power play had begun. His father would flex his muscles, remind everyone who had authority there,
just in case anyone could forget the suffocating fact, and everyone would go to their stations a little more fearful of Lorenzo Maroni.
Flicking the ashes to the ground, Dante stayed silent, continuing to smoke.
“Don’t you dare ignore me, boy. Did someone hit you?”
“It’s nothing,” Dante stated. But it was useless. His father wasn’t hearing him.
He shouted, calling to Al, his right-hand man, commanding everyone on the compound to gather on the ground.
Dante gritted his teeth, trying to watch the gorgeous sunset as minutes passed and people nervously gathered, silent but stinking of fear. That’s how his father ruled—fear. And the only way to piss him off was to not react to it.
Finally throwing the cigarette on the ground, Dante crushed it under his shoe, his eyes glancing over the crowd. He spotted Zia holding her daughter, the young girl with the green eyes who had just told him he had pretty eyes. She was watching not his father but him. He gave her a little wink, watching her flush and quickly look away, and he wanted to laugh in the middle of the shitshow. Moving his eyes over the group, he saw Tristan standing at the far side, slightly removed from everyone else, a blank expression on his face. If he thought Dante was going to rat him out, he had another thought coming.
“Who hit my son?” his father barked. He paused for dramatic effect, his eyes going over the gathering. When no one responded and looked adequately fearful, his father continued his tirade. “Who dare hit my heir? A Maroni! Tell me now or you will be punished. Tell me who did this. Attacking a Maroni on this compound is the biggest insult to me.”
Nervous glances were exchanged. Hushed whispers rolled over. The sun slowly set.
“You stand on my land, and insult my blood,” his father went on. “Tell me now, or the consequences will be severe for everyone.”
A movement from the side drew everyone’s eyes. Dante watched, surprised, as Tristan stepped out from the gathering, his eyes steady on Bloodhound.
“You,” his father sputtered, marching up to Tristan. “You did this? You disgraceful little bastard. I own you. Everything you do here, I control. You cannot-”
Dante saw, adrenaline pouring in his system, as a young boy inches shorter than his father, stepped right into his face, nothing in his expression, and uttered his first words in public.
“You ever try to leash me, I’ll fucking strangle you with it.”
If angels could sing, that was the moment Dante heard the whole freaking choir.
Someone in the crowd gasped but Dante kept his eyes on Tristan. He had been right to trust his gut when it came to him. The younger boy stared his father down for a second, before turning on his heel and walking away without another word, leaving behind a speechless, seething Lorenzo Maroni.
Oh, this was going to be good.
Tristan had just sealed his fate.
Dante grinned. They were going to be buddies if it killed him.
Chapter 3 AMARA
13 years
Amara had a problem and his name was Dante Maroni. It was official. It was done. And she was absolutely miserable. Why? Because while he knew vaguely of her existence, she was nowhere, absolutely nowhere on his radar. And she? She had a crush the size of Antarctica but hotter. Way hotter. And she tried to stop. Really stop. But her heart was like a rubber-band where he was concerned. The more she pulled away mentally, the harder she felt the tug to go back to her original place. It was all wrong. He was already eighteen-years-old, a fact that everyone in the entire city, the entire country, the entire underworld knew because him becoming an adult was a very big deal to a lot of people—some who wanted to back him, some who wanted to cut him. Dante already had enemies. How did Amara know all this already? She paid attention. It was amazing how much people tended
to talk around the help without once realizing they were people with ears instead of moving furniture.
Amara wasn’t really an employee of the Maronis, but she liked to help her ma out after school and on weekends. She used to spend that time with Vin but since he started training, his schedule and hers stopped matching. They did catch up every other day though. He had recently hit his growth spurt while Amara had barely moved an inch up.
She looked up at him from her spot sitting against the tree, her novel open on her lap but her eyes on her friend as he sparred with an older Dante. They did this almost once a week because according to the rumor mill, two kids in training were incredible with knives—Vin and Tristan, the new boy whom she’d started to refer to with his name after the Incident. She still remembered the shock that had coursed through her when he had laid out Mr. Maroni without any fear. Ma had told her that night that the boy had a death wish. Amara didn’t disagree.
However, the reason Dante trained every other week with the knives with Vin instead of Tristan was because Vin was more cheerful and less likely to seriously kill him out of annoyance. They liked to train outdoors, in a little clearing right in front of Tristan’s cottage by the lake. And every other week, Amara came with a book and her friend and planted herself quietly in front of a tree to watch the show.
If Dante thought it odd, he never commented. In fact, he rarely said a word to her after that first time she’d bumped into him. But he didn’t ignore her either. She was just there. Some days, he’d give her a little nod and her heart would flutter like an overexcited hummingbird. Some days, he’d look at her and grin and her entire stomach would roll with butterflies. And some days, rare days, when he said a cordial ‘hey’, Amara would save his voice in her memory and squeal on the inside while planning their babies’ names.
Ugh, she was hopeless.
Her mother didn’t know what she did when she came to watch the boys. She thought Amara just went out in the sun to read during the summer break. Amara never corrected her. Not that her mother would stop her from going; she just wasn’t ready to share this with anyone yet. Whatever this was because it passed a simple crush a while ago. And she was ninety-nine percent sure he didn’t actually know her name.
The clang of metal on metal broke her out of her reverie. With all her adolescent heart, she focused on the man of her infatuations, watching his tall, very tall form move swiftly as a shorter, younger Vin attacked him.
Dante Maroni was a piece of art—a very fine, very exquisite piece of art. Every time she saw him, she wanted to do a chef’s kiss gesture to the sky. Yeah, he was that good. From his dark, untamed, slightly overlong hair that framed an absolutely stunning face—a face that got more and more chiseled as he grew older—to that jawline Amara traced with her fingers in her daydreams, to his deep chocolate eyes that she still found the prettiest, to his arms that flexed with muscles as he moved . . . yup, she was a goner. It was pathetic.
Annoyed with herself, Amara looked down at the book she’d borrowed from the school library.
‘The very instant that I saw you did my heart fly to your service . . .’
Okay, she needed to get some non-romantic poetry because Shakespeare wasn’t really helping. Unable to focus, Amara looked up again to see the boys wrapping up their session. They always did that with Dante giving Vin some pointers. Vin, her chubby best friend who wasn’t so chubby anymore, always listened seriously. Amara was
pretty sure Vin had a man-crush on Dante. Who could blame him though?
Although in all honesty, Amara didn’t even know if what she felt was even a crush anymore. A crush was supposed to die a natural death in a few months. At least that’s what she heard the girls at her school say. She wasn’t really close to them, or anyone at school. Outside kids treated the compound kids very weirdly. And all the other kids at the compound were either too younger or too older than she was. Only she and Vin were close in age, and that was why they’d just stuck together as soon as they could walk.
Vin nodded to Dante before walking to her, his dark hair cut much shorter now. Dropping down beside her, he took a sip of water from the bottle she handed him, both of them watching as Dante climbed the steps to Tristan’s cottage and walked in the door without knocking.
“Damn,” Vin whistled beside her, finally able to whistle properly. “He’s got some big balls.”
Ew. Amara did not want to think about Dante or his proverbial balls. Her love for him was very pure and sanitized at this point.
“I didn’t need that picture in my head,” she made a disgusted face. They had studied male and female reproductive systems at school last year. While that had been very clinical, the extra workshop their entire grade had had over the last month on sexual diseases, prevention, and contraception had been a lot to process. Amara knew Plug A went into Slot B but she didn’t want to imagine anything related to that yet.
Vin chuckled. “With the way you stare at him, that’s hard to believe.”
That brought her up short. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice coming out high as her heartbeat picked up. Ugh, she needed to work on her pitch. Her music teacher at school kept telling her she had a great voice but her pitch was totally off.
