Since we’re momentarily placing down our weapons and guards, I boldly ask, “What happened between you and your father? Your family?”
He looks away from his handiwork, and those dark-brown eyes seem to be twinkling like always when I ask any question about him.
There’s so much I don’t know about this intelligent, frightening man. I know his body well, but not what motivates him, and that is a terrifying thought.
He goes back to stitching.
“My father was an asshole. He was less of one before my mother died. She softened him—made him more like a man than a monster. But when she died in a targeted car accident, he spiraled and favored a bottle. Being honest, I don’t remember much of my mother. She was more focused on Milia, while my father trained Lorenzo and me from a young age to serve the Armani family.
"I guess our family was already divided because of that expectation. At first, my brother and I grudgingly accepted our expected subordination. We weren’t around others our age, so we had nothing else to compare it to. But at the time, we didn’t see what it actually entailed. Not until we were in our teens. For as far back as I can remember, we were taught hand-to-hand combat and how to use weapons. My particular favorite was blades, obviously.” I shudder at the fondness in his voice on the last sentence.
“When Milia died, my father just snapped. She was all he had left of my mother. So, I suppose to some degree he had love for both of them, but that was never extended to Lorenzo and me. He only ever viewed us as soldiers who had to be broken in. We boys were no more than assets to be traded when the time came. Milia was his little princess. She had this energy about her that brightened up a room. Even Lorenzo and I treated her as the most precious thing—she was spoiled in every way.” He smiles, reminiscing, and it breaks my heart hearing about his loss and the ease with which he talks about it.
He angles the scissors in an attempt to cut the thread, but I say, “Let me.” I can at least do that much. I know he can do it himself in half the time, but he lets me, as if enjoying that I’m involving myself with his recovery.
I hand him Borris, whose little nose is immediately affronted by the smell of alcohol and iodine, and jumps off his lap.
Dante's gaze never leaves mine. He’s not even looking at what I'm doing.
“What happened to your little sister?” I ask. He seems hesitant to reply, so I quickly add, “It’s not like I’m painting at the moment anyway. You’ve come all this way to distract me, so you might as well make it worthwhile.”
He kicks up a half smile, and his gaze goes unfocused.
“My father went out on a ‘business run,’ so Lorenzo and I were looking after Milia. We were just playing, I think some kind of tag game, but she got too close to the cliff, and before Lorenzo or I could even reach out for her, she’d already slipped off the edge. One second she was there, and the next she was gone.”
My heart stops as I cut the thread and look back to him. There’s no emotion on his face. Nothing. Just blank. And yet I can’t help myself as I rub my palm over the stubble on his jawline. His eyebrows dip slightly, as if he's confused by the gentle caress.
I might not be the most affectionate person, but my heart bleeds, still sensitive to my own losses, both old and new. No matter how nonchalant I tried to seem in my late teens and early twenties about my father’s death, it never took away the hurt completely. I would imagine it's that way for most people, even for someone as messed up as Dante.
His hand comes up to cover mine, his eyes unwavering as he searches mine. Everything stops as I silently offer him my condolences and support. He was barely a teenager when she passed.
He curls my fingers and presses a gentle kiss on my knuckles. Then he brings me in to sit on his lap. I move with him, giving him space, time, and my warmth to help him fall into ease with his memories. Even if he were indifferent to them, I know he wouldn’t carry that photo around with him. They meant something to him.
“When we climbed down the cliff, she was dead. We had to carry her body back up. Well, Lorenzo did. I was… useless at that time. When we brought her body back to my father, something in him broke. He started beating the shit out of Lorenzo, and the one thing I knew I could do was draw my father’s attention to me.” He kisses my shoulder gently. “I’d always been a smartass, and although I was numb, trying to understand what had just happened and how it would change everything going forward, I knew Lorenzo would blame himself for the incident, so in a weird way, I tried to move my father’s scathing attention from him and onto me.
"It worked. For years, actually. He hated us both, and I came to hate my father so much it birthed this stubborn, twisted game inside of me. I would never break—not by his hand. So, when he became inseparable from alcohol, washing away his own memories of our loss and family, he’d often seek me to take out all that rage. Like a bleeding, scared animal constantly snapping its fangs.”
I don’t think he's aware he's doing it, but his fingertips are running gently up and down my arm, as ifhe'ssoothingme.
I barely move, allowing myself to be the object of his comfort and confidence. I wonder how many people he’s spoken to about this. My heart breaks further as he tells me every detail, and for all his flaws, it’s remarkable he came out sane—okay, somewhat sane—at all.
He's no saint, but he was once just a boy, doing his best to survive in a harsh world. Instead of finding an out, he decided to become the strongest in that upbringing, and I realize now that Dante will never leave the world of crime and killing he's living in. It’s as much a part of him as the air he breathes.
“Luca was in town one weekend, visiting during a time when my father was beating the shit out of me. He made my father swear to never raise a hand against us again. Granted, I’m prettysure I might’ve caused that argument. But where Lorenzo and I differed was that he grew quieter after the incident, stepping away from not only our father but from me as well.” His voice takes on a lethal edge, and I realize with startling clarity that it’s not that Dante hates his brother, he feels abandoned.
“I looked up to him once, but after Milia died, we all changed, so I began to believe that I deserved those beatings, that I had to be to blame for ever letting that happen to her. But I swore that one day I would kill my father, gleefully. I wanted him to be my first. He was nothing more than a feral animal that needed to be put down.”
My heart falters, terrified of how anyone can think of killing their own father. There's such disdain in his voice even now, and yet he's stroking my arm so gently with the same breath.
“But Lorenzo beat me to it. One day, my father was out of control and continued beating me long past the point he usually would, and to be honest, he might not have stopped. But I was so stubborn. I knew that no matter what, I would survive, and each scar became like a personal victory. But the moment Lorenzo killed him, it was like I had no purpose. I had been building up for it for so long, waiting out my time to set Lorenzo and me free, waiting until we were an age where we could take over my father’s place to serve the Armanis. But he took that from me. He killed our father and started the ball rolling all by himself. We weren’t brothers anymore. He just initiated what he thought was best for both of us, and placed us on separate paths.
"He, of course, left me to my own devices, at first. It pissed me off when he left me behind, so I’d do things to antagonize him. I always wondered what it would take for him to return, how badly I’d have to lash out for him to come back. I could’ve gone to him, but that wasn’t the game we started playing.
"So, I lashed out in a big way one night. He couldn’t not notice because he had to come clean it up. His greatest faultwas ever thinking that Luca and I weren’t in communication, but perhaps my little killing spree that night went overboard, because Lorenzo flew from Manhattan immediately. The next thing I knew, he was encouraging me to begin studies as a surgeon in the hope that it would fix mycuriosityabout the human body.”
Goose bumps break out on my skin. It’s all so twisted.
“So, I went along with it. He kept sending me money, thinking he was setting me up for a ‘better life,’ and I continued doing small jobs for Luca on the side back in Italy and then London, where I studied. Luca hadn’t forgotten about me, and my brother was none the wiser about our dealings. I almost fooled myself into believing perhaps that was enough for me. But it wasn’t. So, I walked away with only one year of residency left, and came here instead.”
