Stolen: Dante’s Vow by Natasha Knight
Mara
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Dante barks when we’re back inside the warehouse. I back away from him as soon as he lets me go.
Matthaeus is here too. He rode with us to a place about an hour from where we got into the taxi. We changed cars, then drove back to the warehouse in case Petrov’s men followed us.
“Take it easy,” Matthaeus tells Dante.
“Just take care of the fucking locks,” Dante orders.
Matthaeus looks like he wants to say something but changes his mind, glances at me then disappears down the hall. I watch him go and some part of me wants to ask him to stay. To be a buffer between Dante and me.
“I asked you a fucking question!”
I startle, Dante’s tone commanding my attention. He pulls his baseball cap off and hurls it across the room, pushing a hand through his hair. Some of it flops over the right side of his face, partially obscuring the patch.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asks.
He's angry? I’m angrier. I breathe a sharp breath in and step toward him. “I was almost back! I almost made it!”
“For fuck’s sake.” He looks at me like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. With a shake of his head, he moves to where the bottle of whiskey sits on the coffee table. He lifts it and one of the empty glasses, pouring, then straightens and watches me as he drinks it in one swallow before pouring a second.
I’m so angry I charge at him, wrestle the bottle from him and smash it against the far wall. The sound is strangely satisfying. Making me feel in control, powerful. At least for a split second.
“You fucking jerk!” I slam my hands hard enough into his chest to almost budge him. “I was almost back! It’s not fair!”
He captures my wrists and holds my arms at my sides. “Fair? What the fuck are you talking about? Don’t you get it? You’re not going back. I’m taking you home. Don’t you want to go home?”
“Home?” Now it’s me who can’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “What home do you think you’re taking me to exactly? I have no home. Don’t you get it?” He loosens his grip and I slip my wrists free. Tears burn my eyes. “You’re just making it worse.” My voice breaks but I scrub my eyes and steel my spine. “I’m leaving!” I spin on my heel and walk toward the door.
“Leaving?” he snorts. “Like hell you are!” His steps are heavy behind me.
I close my hand over the doorknob, turn it, open it. In the same instant his big hand is flat against the door over my head, pushing it closed before I get it all the way open. He turns the key in the lock then pockets it before leaning down close to me. So close, I can feel the heat coming off him, smell his aftershave. It makes me shudder, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. And it puts my body on high alert.
Because when he’s this close, something happens to my insides.
“You’re not going anywhere without my say so,” he says and my breath catches. His voice is low, a vibration against my skin sending a chill down my spine. “Understand that.”
When I can breathe again, I slowly turn to face him. He’s so close that all I see is him. All I breathe is him, his big body in front of me, arms caging me in. My heart is racing, my stomach in knots as I force myself to look up at him. But I can’t keep eye contact. Can’t take how his gaze is drilling into me.
I turn away. Force myself to think. To not feel what it is I’m feeling. I need to steel myself against him.
“I’m going,” I say to his chest, my tone somehow firm in spite of my quaking insides. It’s not fear exactly, though. Fear has a different texture. A different smell.
He gives me a one-sided grin like he’s humoring me. I set my palms against his wall of a chest, trying to shove him away but it’s impossible to budge him.
I need to get out.
I slide my hands up to his shoulders feeling the contour of powerful muscle beneath and strangely, I find myself lingering, curious. I shift my gaze to his broad chest, to my hands small on the wide expanse of his shoulders. My heart pounds against my chest and I lick my lips before shifting my gaze back to his and I wonder if he can hear my heart beating.
But when his expression changes, the way he looks at me different, I catch myself.
What am I doing? I need to get out.
He clears his throat and nods and I swear he looks like he’s about to call me a good girl but that’s not what this is. I’m not his good girl. I’m not anyone’s good girl. I never was, not for any of them.
Instead, I grip his shoulders and jerk my knee up between his legs, ramming it into his groin.
He grunts, hunching forward. It hurts, I see it on his face. Feel it in the tight barely controlled grip of his hands when they close over my shoulders, pinning me to the door as he manages the pain.
“Christ. Fuck,” he mutters, breathing hard. He draws one hand into a fist, and I think this is it. He’s going to hit me.
I let out a pathetic whimper, all my bravado gone. I curl into myself, tuck my chin, cover my ears with my hands and keep my arms tight to my torso to protect my stomach. But the hit doesn’t come. No slap. No punch to my temple or my belly. Just that fist slamming into the door above my head, rattling it in its hinges.
“I’m not going to hit you,” he says through clenched teeth, voice like sandpaper.
It’s a trick. He’s waiting until he can see my face. Watch me when he hurts me.
“Look at me,” he commands.
I hope it’s a slap. Fists hurt more than flat hands. But I can’t bring myself to look up. To just get it over with.
“I said look at me.”
I shake my head.
“I’m not going to hit you. I wouldn’t. Ever. Just look at me.”
I still don’t.
“Please, Mara.”
His tone twists something inside me and before I can stop myself, I shift my gaze. I look up at him, confused, off balance. Unsure what to do. I shouldn’t have hurt him, but I’m confused by my reaction to him. That feeling in my stomach when he’s close like this. When he’s looking at me like this. Confused that he won’t hit me. Won’t make me fight him. It’s what I know. It’s what I can do. I’ll lose. That’s a fact. I always lose. But fighting helps. Like I’m not just giving it to them. Like I’m not complicit in my captivity.
“Don’t fucking do that again, understand?” he says.
That’s it? Just that? I need him to fight me. Doesn’t he get it? This other thing, this other way he is, I can’t make sense of it. So, I curl my hands into claws and scratch down both sides of his face. I scream like some wild animal as I do, forcing him to hurt me back. Needing him to.
He curses under his breath and grips my hands, pulling them away. My fingernails are bloody and his grip is tighter than it’s been. Red lines form on his cheeks and I know they sting. Still, all he does is look at me like he pities me. Like I’m some pathetic thing to be pitied and I can’t stand it.
“Fight me!” I scream. “Fight me like a man!”
“I know the kind of men you’ve been around, but let me tell you something,” he starts, pulling my wrists behind my back. “Men don’t fight women. They don’t hit women.” He releases me and looks me over. “Go inside and get out of those wet things.”
That’s it? I turn around to try the door again, but it’s locked. He has the key which is why he’s not bothering to stop me.
“Let me out of here!”
“So you can go back to Petrov?”
“Yes!”
“That’s not happening. That’s never happening. He will never get his hands on you again. I’m taking you home.”
Home. God. There it is again.
“Don’t you remember your home?” he asks.
“I told you. I don’t have a home.”
“Yes, you do. With a grandmother who loves you. Who wants you back. With people who care about you.”
I shake my head, cover my ears to try to tune out his words. I can’t hear this. I don’t want to remember this. I can handle anything else. Beatings. Their hands on me. But this is too hard. Because this reminds me of everything and everyone I lost. The life that was stolen before I had a chance to live it.
“That was the last of my whiskey,” he says then, gesturing to the smashed remnants of the bottle.
“Punish me then.” I try because I need him to. I need him to hurt me because if he hurts me then I know where we stand. I understand that. In a way, I understand pain.
His forehead wrinkles and he studies me. I wonder what he sees. If he’s reading my mind.
“Do it,” I push.
“No.”
“Yes!” I grab hold of his patch and am about to yank it off in my rage when he catches my wrists. The next thing I know, he knocks my legs out from under me and hauls me over his shoulder. My wrists in one hand, the other arm wrapped around my thighs. He stalks down the hallway with me across his shoulders. I can hear a drill going but before I can see where it’s coming from, he opens another door and dumps me on a bed. Then he’s on top of me, his weight crushing my lungs making it impossible to breathe.
“Don’t do that. Don’t ever fucking do that. Am I fucking clear?”
“Why? Are you afraid I’ll see you for what you are?”
A moment passes between us, strange and fraught with an edge of danger and something else. Something dark. After the pause he releases my wrists to stretch my arms out to the sides.
“Am I fucking clear?” he asks, voice low. When I don’t answer right away, he continues. “I’m being patient with you, Mara.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
We’re so close, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I’m panting. Worn out. And he’s breathing heavy, gaze searching my face, falling on my mouth.
I lick my lips because for a moment, I think the strangest thing.
I think he’s going to kiss me.
The room goes dead silent, even the drilling has stopped. But after an eternity, he leans away.
I blink, remember myself as my face flushes with heat. Does he know what I was thinking? Did he read my mind again?
“Fuck,” he mutters, looking away, shaking his head as he releases my arms, starts to lift his weight from me.
But then everything changes.
Because that’s when I feel it. Feel him.
He must know the instant I do because he shifts his gaze away and clears his throat, climbing off the bed. He stands, scrubs his face and I sit up. Before he can turn away, I see it. The erection he wants to hide.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says almost hoarsely. “Christ. It’s the last fucking thing I want.”
I get to my feet. Watching as he adjusts himself before turning back to me. He knows I know. He must.
“You’re like him. Just like him.”
He’s quiet for a very long moment, studying me intently before he answers. “I’m not like him.”
“I felt you.”
His jaw clenches.
“You may say you don’t want to fight me, but you got hard doing it. So how are you different?” I ask, not looking away.
“Mara—”
I step toward him close enough that we’re almost touching. “Tell me how you’re different,” I hiss.
His jaw tightens, gaze hardens. “Tell me something first. What would he do now? Petrov.”
I press my lips together.
“Comfort you?”
I don’t bother to answer. He knows anyway.
“Tell me. Is that what he’d do? Because I don’t think so. I think he’d hurt you.”
“Stop.”
“And I don’t think he’d just use his hands. I’ve seen the marks, Mara.”
Shame washes through me. “I said stop.”
“And he wouldn’t stop there, would he? Wouldn’t stop at hitting you.”
“Shut up!” I scream, taking a step away only to have him take a matching one toward me.
“He’d touch you.”
I feel my face crumple and cover it with my hands, trying to rub away emotions I haven’t let myself feel in so long.
“Hurt you in every way.”
I turn to run away but he catches my arm and spins me to face him, backing me into the wall. He sets one big hand against my belly to keep me there.
“Understand one thing,” he starts, leaning his face down to mine. When I try to look away, he leans in closer. “I am not him. I am nothing like him. Don’t ever accuse me of being like him.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and wrap my arms around myself when I begin to tremble with a cold that’s so deep inside me I’m afraid I’ll never get warm again.
“Just let me go,” I try, my voice coming out weak.
“No,” he says and there’s that look again. The same one from yesterday. But I was wrong. It’s not pity. It’s more. And it’s harder to look at. “I won’t let you go, Mara. That’s the point.”
I search his face, shake my head.
He looks at me straight on and I can see the broken side of his face, the two deep crisscrossing gashes. I think he’s letting me look.
“Dante didn’t look like you,” I say. My words wound him. I see it. He turns his head a little, so I only see the good side again. “Why are you lying to me? Telling me you’re him?” A tear slides down my cheek.
He watches it fall as if transfixed, then wipes it away with the pad of his thumb.
“Why?” I ask again.
“I’m not lying to you, and you know it.” His voice is quieter. Darker. “They told you you were Elizabeth because they thought they’d taken Elizabeth. They were supposed to have taken her.”
More tears flow from my eyes.
“Then when they realized their mistake, they told you that you had to be Elizabeth.”
I bring my hands to my face to wipe away the tears that won’t stop falling. I shake my head. “It’s not true.” But it is true. I remember them arguing in the very beginning. When I wouldn’t stop crying. When they realized what I was saying was that I wasn’t Lizzie.
I don’t want to remember this. I can’t.
He reaches out, brushes my hair back and when I meet his gaze something strange passes between us. His fingers make contact with my face as he wipes away more tears and there are those sensations like before. Strangely, I find myself wanting his touch. His hands on me. Something I’ve never wanted before. Something I never thought I could want. And when he pulls me to his chest, I don’t fight him. I just let him hold me for a long, long time, feel him kiss the top of my head, strong arms keeping me to him.
“I won’t hurt you, Mara. And I won’t let anyone else hurt you again.”
I want to wrap my arms around him. Let him carry me, give in to him. Give myself over because he is so much stronger than me. Maybe he can take the weight, the mess of the last fifteen years.
But he pulls away too quickly and I’m left feeling cold again. I wrap my arms around myself once more.
Alone.
Always alone.
And besides you can’t just give away fifteen years. Hand it over like it’s a coat you take off.
“I was off the island that night,” he says, drawing me out of myself. It sounds like a confession. Like something heavy inside him. “I’d snuck out for a girl. But that was all planned. So that bastard could murder my family. We thought you’d died. We just assumed they’d gotten rid of your body. It took Cristiano years to get better. And he was different after. Until Scarlett, at least.” I watch as he tells his story. “It was Noah who recognized you from a picture in Lizzie’s room. He remembered you.”
“Noah?”
He nods.
In the rags of my memory is a little boy named Noah. But that was a very, very long time ago. I remember that he was kind to me.
“That’s not possible,” I say.
He cups my face with both hands, uses his thumbs to wipe my tears. He’s gentle, so gentle, this giant of a man, this killer. But I can’t believe him. Doesn’t he know that?
“I never even looked for you. God. I never even looked.”
His pain is palpable.
I pull out of his grasp, turn my gaze away. I don’t want to see it and I don’t want to feel what I’m feeling. I can’t do this.
“Stop,” I tell him.
“And then you were so close, in the same fucking house.” He’s angry at that last part, his emotions shifting so erratically, so violently.
“I said stop. I don’t want to hear any more.”
“But that bastard had already taken you and after the explosion,” he stops, looks away from me, shakes his head. “It took me five more years to find you, but I never stopped looking once I knew. I swear.” That last part is like a confession and a plea in one. I look up at him, at the agony on his face.
“I said I don’t want to hear it,” I say because I have to.
“You’re not going back to him, Mara. You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore.”
I close my eyes. “You have no idea what you’re saying. You don’t know how powerful he is.”
And I can’t do this. I can’t listen to this. I can’t start feeling again. It’s easier if I just don’t feel. I can manage it then. And the pain, sometimes the punishments help. It’s stupid, I know.
He’s still talking but I try to tune him out. I sing Flora’s song in my head. I close my eyes and sing. His thumb comes to my lips. I must be mouthing the words.
“Your grandmother—"
My eyelids fly open, and I slam both hands flat into his chest. “Stop it! My grandmother is dead! They’re all dead. And I don’t want to hear about how they died, and I lived all because somebody made a stupid mistake! I don’t want to hear any of it!”
I swing one arm up to his face, almost get my hand around the eyepatch but he catches me. He drags both arms over my head, holding them against the wall, leaning in so close I smell the scent that was on his pillow.
“I said not to do that,” he says, tone low, voice like gravel.
“Why not? Are you afraid I’ll see what I already know? You forget that I watched you kill that man at the penthouse. You liked it. I saw that, too.”
“He deserved to die. They all did.”
“Only monsters enjoy the feel of blood on their hands.”
He snorts, one side of his mouth curves momentarily upward. “I never said I wasn’t one. But I’m not your monster.”
That makes me pause. I need to think. “Why are you doing this? What do you want with me?”
“I want you safe. I want you home.”
“I already told you I have no home and I will never be safe.”
“You’re safe with me.”
I twist, tug at my arms but it’s useless. He just stands there like it’s costing him no effort at all to keep me in place.
“Just let me go.”
“I’ll let you go when I’m ready. When you’ve heard me.”
“What if I don’t want to hear you?”
“Well, that’s too bad, sweetheart.”
There it is again. Sweetheart. I blink, open my mouth to say something but I can’t remember what.
“You used to make me little hearts cut out of pink paper and leave them on my pillow. Always pink with you. My brothers would laugh so fucking hard.”
“I hate pink,” I lie. I don’t feel either way about pink. I shake my head. I need to stop this. For fifteen years I have been learning to store the few memories I had away. And I do remember. I remember the boy, Dante. I’ve always remembered him even when all the other faces faded, his somehow remained. Even over my own grandmother’s. But I learned to keep those memories locked up in a box until they were all but forgotten. Until there was no lost life to cry over. Until there was no one to miss so much it made it impossible to breathe.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask again, eyes warm with quiet, never-ending tears.
“Why am I making you remember?”
I don’t answer.
“It hurts. I know. It’s why you want me to stop but you have to face it now.”
“No, that’s not why. Let go.” I twist and turn but he doesn’t give, not an inch.
“You suffered the most out of everyone.”
“You don’t know me.” I realize then there’s only one way to make him stop. I have to wound him like I did moments ago but harder.
“You’re strong, Mara. A survivor.”
“I’m not that.” I know what I am. Weak. A coward. I don’t know what he reads in my expression or my body language, but he lets me slip my wrists from his grasp, keeping his hands on the wall. He leans into them to keep me caged as he looks down at me.
“But you need to stop and face the past. It’s the only way to have a future.”
“A future?” Doesn’t he understand that for someone like me, there is no future? No hope?
“And I’ll be with you. It hurts. I know. Fuck, do I know. That’s why you want me to stop, but—”
“No, you’re wrong. That’s not why I want you to stop,” I say, cutting him off, my voice clear, not choked. Because I need to end this now. I need to make him stop now before it gets too far, and I can’t stop it anymore. Before I can’t put the lid back on Pandora’s box. So, I change tactic. “You want me to tell you I believe that you’re Dante? What if I did? What would it matter?”
His eyes narrow as he takes in this change.
“You need me to tell you it’s okay? Is that it?” I force myself to keep going. To not give in to the weakness that has me hugging my arms to myself. “You want me to say that I’m okay now that you’ve rescued me? That you’re my hero?”
“I’m not a hero. I know that,” he says through gritted teeth. I’ve hit a nerve. I see it. Guilt. That’s his Achilles’ heel.
“Tell me, is that what you want? Why you came for me now? Fifteen. Years.Later. Fifteen years too late?” I don’t have to work at pretending the anger I feel. The rage. I just have to direct it at him. No matter how much I know it’s wrong.
“Mara,” he sounds calm, but that calm is fading. He has anger inside him too. A rage as violent as mine.
“Do you know what my life was?” It’s hard to speak around the lump in my throat, but I keep going. Pushing him, poking at that rage, nudging it to the surface. “Do you have a single fucking clue?”
He exhales, blinks away momentarily like he can’t quite look at me. The breath he draws in is tight.
“Do you think I can ever go back after all that happened? Go home? What would I go back to? A life I don’t remember? One I never got a chance to live? One where I watched my best friend murdered because they thought she was me?” My voice breaks.
He steps away, runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck, Mara. That wasn’t your fault. You know that, don’t you? Please tell me you fucking know that.”
I step toward him, steel my spine, and stand up straighter. “You want to know how I know you can’t be him? Can’t be the boy with the bright green eyes who was a hero to me back when there weren’t any monsters to slay?”
His lips draw into a tight line, and I know if I say what I’m about to say, I will cut him deeply.
But I can’t not say it.
I can’t stop.
“Because Dante would never have let what happened to me happen.”