Stolen: Dante's Vow

As that thought settles over me my gaze falls on Dante and something inside my chest aches.

No, I won’t fool myself.

I. Am. Alone.

I make myself repeat it.

We reach the boats. Dante climbs onto one, then reaches a hand to me. Cristiano is nearby, Matthaeus beside him.

“I can’t swim,” I say when I look down at the boat bobbing in the water.

“Well, we’re hopefully not swimming today,” Dante says with a smile. “But just in case, I’m a strong enough swimmer for the both of us, okay?”

I don’t answer.

“Give me your hand,” he says, his smile gone when I don’t respond. “I won’t let you fall, Mara. I’ll never let you fall.”

I hear his words. Think of all they can mean. Think how stupid it would be for me to trust them no matter how much I want to. How desperate I am to.

But then Samuel comes to mind. His deception. My stupidity. It helps. And when I place my hand into Dante’s, I don’t let myself think about how it feels when he holds it, how he feels when I’m close to him. I step onto the boat and sit down where he directs me inside the little cabin. He starts the engine and a few moments later, we’re moving, the sound deafening, our speed exhilarating.

It’s cold but I don’t care. I get up, make my way outside. Salt air blows my hair, droplets of water hitting my face.

“Go back inside. It’s too cold.”

I shake my head, sit down at the front, turn my face into the wind. It feels wonderful. God. I feel alive.

He makes a sound and I glance at him to find him smiling. And when he shifts his attention to steering, I watch him. I watch his dark hair blow in the wind, watch how he stands so strong and straight, unyielding to the cold. Stronger than any man I’ve ever known.

And there’s that feeling again. Home.

But I’d better be careful with that. Careful to guard my heart.

As the island comes into view and he slows the boat, any exhilaration dissipates, replaced by an anxiety so deep I feel like I’m going to be sick. Because there it is. The hulking house on the island. The safe haven that turned into something so opposite, so gruesome.

The place I watched my best friend murdered.

The place I saw them all dying.

Dead.

The place my nightmare began.

23

Dante

She leans over the edge and throws up as soon as I dock the boat.

I rush to her, wrap a hand around her arm when she leans too far out. When it’s over, she looks up at me, her red-rimmed eyes shiny making the blue look like shards of glass. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

I could chalk it up to travel. Time differences. Jet lag. Lack of sleep and sea sickness but I know that’s not what this is. And as much as I wish I could tell myself all of those things, her words quash any hopes of that lie.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asks.

I see the door open over her shoulder, see Lenore rush out but stop. See little Alessandro and Scarlett behind her. She turns to follows my gaze too, but I stop her, take her arms and rub.

“Your family is here, Mara. This is where you belong.”

Her eyes mist with fresh tears, sadness softening her features. “I can’t do this,” she manages, her voice barely a whisper before it breaks on a sob.

I pull her to me, and she lets me. For the first time since I found her, since I carried her out of that penthouse, she gives herself over to my embrace. She lets me carry her full weight, hugging her arms tightly around my middle and pressing her face into my chest as if she can burrow inside, disappear there. If my heart hadn’t already broken when I first saw her, saw what they’d done to her, it is surely and wholly split in two now as I hold the trembling remnants of what was once a beautiful, vibrant girl in my arms.

I gather my own strength. Collect my rage. Build it like a weapon around all the pain, all the loss and my arms wrap tighter around her.

I will kill the men who did this to her.

I will tear them limb from limb.

* * *

I walk with her around the island first. Cristiano and the others go inside. I see Lenore watching from the window. See her face as she takes in her granddaughter, a woman now. A stranger. She hasn’t seen her in fifteen years. I don’t know what she expected. A happy reunion, maybe. It was naïve if she did. Wishful thinking.

We walk for more than an hour along the beach, climbing the cliff to a midway point. I avoid the top. The mausoleum. She knows it’s there, but I get the feeling she’s avoiding it too.