Stolen: Dante’s Vow by Natasha Knight
Dante
Matthaeus has the TV on but the volume off and he’s cleaning a pistol. He’s got it all taken apart, parts lined up in military precision on the coffee table. He looks up at me when I walk in, expression unchanging.
I’ve known Matthaeus for five years. At first, he pissed me off. Fucking standing in the way of anything I wanted to do that wasn’t okayed by my many doctors during my recovery. He was the one who’d draw the short straw every time and sit with me when Cristiano thought I needed to be on fucking suicide watch. I never intended on suicide. That would have been the most selfish thing I could have done. I needed to get her back. That was why I’d survived that night. That was the only reason. The fact that my brother thought I could have some normal sort of life while she was out there was typical, actually. Like he’s the only one of our family who should suffer. Like he should carry my pain along with his.
This responsibility, though, this guilt, it belongs to me. Whether he can accept it or not.
He became the head of our family the day his father and our older brother, Michael, were killed. I was young and while he lay in a coma, I waited for him. I didn’t suspect for a minute it was my uncle making sure he remained as he was. I just trusted him blindly. He was all I’d had then.
Fuck. Bastard.
But I won’t wallow. David’s dead now. He paid. Not enough, but he paid.
I’m convinced the only reason David kept him alive was because of me. At least at first. He adapted his plans then. Always knew how to make the best of any situation. Once Cristiano finally woke from the coma, he turned him into his own personal killing machine.
I shake my head, take off my coat and hang it on the hook. It takes three times before I manage it as I sway on my feet.
“Don’t fucking send men after me,” I tell Matthaeus. I’m sure he knows me well enough to know that I’d see our guys in the car outside the bar. “I don’t need fucking babysitting.”
“Not smart to be out there getting drunk when Petrov’s got his soldiers searching the city for you,” Matthaeus says, shifting his attention back to the gun.
“I got the lecture from Charlie already. Where is she?”
“Asleep.”
“Did you sedate her?”
“No.”
“Good.” We both knew I didn’t want him to.
I walk into the kitchen and get a beer out of the fridge. Cracking it open I drink a long swallow. My gaze is down the hall. I want to be there. In the bedroom. With her.
“Tests came back clean. No STD’s. She’s not pregnant and hormone levels indicate birth control.”
“Good.” This is something, at least. Matthaeus swabbed her and took blood that first night while she was passed out.
I set the beer down without finishing it and, without another word to Matthaeus, head toward my bedroom. I see her before I step inside. She’s passed out on the chair in front of the window, wrapped up in the thick duvet, her head at what’s got to be an uncomfortable angle. I look at her for a long minute in the light coming in from the window, streetlamps reflected off snow.
Something’s different. I move toward her, peer closer. She’s cut her hair. It’s just at her shoulders now. I reach out to touch it, feel the soft waves fall through my fingers.
She moves, mutters something, but stays asleep. The blanket shifts a little. She’s wearing one of my sweaters. It’s big on her and her shoulder is exposed. I touch the star-shaped birthmark. It’s smaller than it used to be. She’s grown into it.
I push the hair back from her face.
She’s a woman now. I don’t know what I thought when I started this quest. She was fifteen when we learned she was still alive. Still a girl. Now, although I sometimes see glimpses of that girl, looking at her like this, eyes closed, face soft, her lips full and slightly parted, what I see is the woman she’s become. This beautiful, broken creature. A stranger but not.
And I find myself remembering how she felt beneath me.
No, not a girl anymore.
Her body, the softness, the curves, those of a woman. But still too young for the things she’s seen. For the things she’s experienced.
I move closer and slip one arm around her shoulders, the other behind her knees. She smells like me. My shampoo. My soap. My aftershave.
She startles, her eyes fluttering open, her back going stiff. One hand comes to my chest, and she pushes readying to fight, eyes suddenly wide with panic.
“Waiting up for me?” I ask, and she realizes where she is.
Her body relaxes. She blinks, shifts her gaze away. She’s stubborn. Good. It’s probably one of the things that’s kept her alive so long. Kept the fight from going out of her.
I hold her tighter, carry her to my bed. The blanket drops to the floor. My sweater has ridden up, so I catch a glimpse of her panties. Just white cotton. Plain. But not. Not at all. Not on her.
And why the fuck am I thinking this? Am I looking at her like this?
When I meet her eyes, I find them on me. She saw me looking. I clear my throat and tug the blanket up to cover her.
She takes it, adjusts it.
“You smell like a bar,” she says.
“Perceptive,” I tell her as I walk toward the bathroom. I need to piss. I see the hole on the door where the doorknob used to be. Fucking Matthaeus. He’s nothing if not thorough. “So, were you?” I call into the room.
“Was I what?”
“Waiting up for me.”
“No,” she calls back, her tone defensive.
“Little liar.” I chuckle.
I lift the toilet seat and piss, flush, then wash my hands, unable to avoid looking at my face in the mirror as I do.
Dante didn’t look like you.
The shadow of my smile vanishes. No, he did not. But Dante, the boy is gone. Long gone. He was gone before Cristiano ever woke up. He died the day I walked into my house and found my family massacred. The only thing that saved me at all was finding Cristiano still breathing, still fighting for his life.
I bend to splash water on my face not wanting to see this man’s face. A monster’s face. I’m not sure how she can stand to look at me. I switch off the bathroom light and stalk back across the room to find her sitting up watching me.
“What?” I ask, moving toward the bed.
“Are you drunk?”
I slip the holster off my shoulder, keep the gun inside and set it on the makeshift nightstand.
“Not drunk enough.” I am about to take off the patch. I do when I sleep. But I think better of it. I reach back to pull my shirt over my head and drop it on the floor. It stinks of this too-long day. I then undo my jeans.
“What are you doing?” she asks, pulling the duvet closer.
I pause, look at her. “Not playing twenty questions.” I push my jeans off. She gasps but I catch her looking before she makes a show of turning away.
“Don’t worry, I won’t take the briefs off, and I won’t touch you.”
She turns back to me as I pull the blanket up and get into the bed. “You’re sleeping here?”
“It’s my bed.”
She pushes the blanket away and swings one leg out, but I catch her wrist.
“You’ll stay.”
“I’ll sleep somewhere else, thank you.”
“It wasn’t a question and I’m fucking tired so lie down and go to sleep and don’t make me fucking chase you around the apartment.”
“Why?”
I lie down on my back but keep her wrist in my hand. It’s tiny. I stare up at the ceiling “Because I didn’t child-proof it.”
“What does that mean?”
I turn my head to look at her. “You cut your hair.”
She reaches up with her free hand and touches it. I see her hesitate.
“I like it,” I say. “Now lie down and go to sleep. You’re safe from me.”
“What do you mean you didn’t child-proof it? I’m not a child.”
I let my gaze drop to her chest where the too big sweater exposes skin, the soft swell of one breast. “No, you’re not. But after today’s escapades and until I can trust you, you’ll be supervised by myself or Matthaeus.”
She seems to accept this and lies down. I still don’t let go of her wrist.
“Why did you come for me?” she asks after so long I wonder if she hasn’t fallen asleep.
“I told you that. You just don’t want to believe it.”
“He’s going to kill you when he finds you.”
I look over to find her staring up at the ceiling, her profile outlined by the cool light reflecting off the fallen snow.
“Is that what you’re scared of?” I ask her. “Or just plain scared?”
She doesn’t shift her gaze and doesn’t answer right away. I watch a tear slide down over her temple. “Both.”
I already knew the answer, knew there could only be one answer, it does something to me. Twists something inside me.
Over the last five years, I’ve felt hate mostly. Apart from those closest to me, I trust no one. I’ve come to expect the worst from people. But this, that nod, her lying beside me so small and scared, it fucking does something to me that somehow hurts more than any of the rest of it.
I get up on one elbow and turn to her. “Hey.”
Nothing. She still doesn’t look at me, but I can see she’s crying quiet tears.
“I can tell you that you don’t have to be scared anymore but I don’t think that will make a difference.”
She wipes the back of her hand over the tip of her nose.
“I’m here now, Mara. And I may not be the boy you remember, but I am the man you’ll come to know. The man who will destroy your demons.”
She turns her face a little, eyes wide and I see her wanting to believe.
“I’m never going to let anyone hurt you again. Ever. I swear it on my life.”