Stolen: Dante's Vow

“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.”

9

Dante

Fuck.

You can hear a pin drop.

She’s right.

She is absolutely right.

Those last words cut into me like the shards that tore me apart in that house. She could have slapped my face and it would have been less violent. Less painful.

I look down at her not quite believing it, the words themselves echoing as if bouncing off the walls. Repeating. Repeating.

“Because Dante would never have let what happened to me happen.”

She stares up with her wide blue eyes, accusing and innocent and terrified at once. Her face is pale, the skin around her nose and eyes pink from crying. She’s waiting for my reaction. Ready for an attack like earlier when she curled into herself thinking I’d hit her. Assuming I would.

Fuck. This has gone off the rails. Everything so very different than I could have anticipated.

I knew she’d be confused. I thought she’d remember me though. It was arrogant, to think it. To assume I’d swoop in and rescue her, and we’d all live happily ever after.

Newsflash, asshole. Kidnapped girls who have lived their lives in captivity don’t get happily-ever-afters. And neither do monsters. I am one, inside and out. I let her see that with her own eyes. Couldn’t shield her from my true nature.

“Matthaeus.” I don’t take my eyes off her as I say his name, sounding much calmer than I feel. I wonder if she hears the current just beneath that false calm.

Neither she nor I look away when Matthaeus comes into the room. He probably heard every fucking word.

“Watch her. She tries anything, give her something to help her sleep.”

Her eyes narrow and her mouth tightens but she remains silent. She doesn’t look away from me, those vivid blue eyes familiar, twisting something inside me.

He nods tightly.

I walk away, unlock the door, and get out of the apartment, letting the door slam shut behind me. I hadn’t taken off my coat, so I button it against the icy wind when I get through the downstairs door. I walk blind through the empty lot, out the broken gate. I don’t look back at the warehouse. It’s one of David’s. Harder to dig up than the others. He had wanted to make sure no one would know about this one, at least when he was alive. I can’t imagine him having spent much time inside it. Not his style. He had it stocked with weapons though and I know he’s had men stay there. I saw the trash they left behind. I wonder what kind of operations he ran out of the place.