The Emperor (Dark Verse 3)

Fuck, he hated this little fucker.

Dante cracked his jaw, keeping his eyes on the fourteen-year-old kid with the biggest chip on his shoulder. Deliberately keeping a little smirk on his face that hurt his bruised cheek, Dante pulled back his fist and punched the boy on his side.

He barely grunted, twisting around in a neat little move that his shorter body wouldn’t have been capable of without intensive training, and his elbow connected to Dante’s back in a hard move.

Fuck.

That one really hurt, but Dante chuckled. “C’mon, little man,” he said, deliberately goading him. God, was it too much to ask for a reaction? He’d been working on his little project to chip away at this guy’s defenses for over a year, and all he’d gotten were blank looks and dead blue eyes. Annoying as it was, Dante liked him, especially because it screwed with his old man. Anything that screwed with Bloodhound Maroni was fucking golden in his books.

The punch to his jaw came out of nowhere, followed by a quick punch to his nose.

Motherfucker.

Dante heard the crunch before he felt the searing pain of his skull being blown. Grabbing his nose, feeling the blood gush out, Dante felt a laugh bubble out of him, blinking the stars from his eyes. Jesus, the guy was good. Served him right for needling him. 

Taking out the handkerchief he always kept in his pocket, a habit his beautiful mother had drilled into him, even in the frayed jeans that would have his mother probably roll over in her grave, he held it over his nose to stem the bleeding.  

“You know I’m not going anywhere, right?” Dante mumbled through the fabric over his mouth, and finally, after a year of drilling, the younger guy spoke.

“Piss off.”

Gold.

He’d hit gold.

Dante grinned behind the handkerchief. “Nice to meet you too, Tristan. You’re my little buddy now.”

Tristan narrowed his blue eyes slightly, before walking out of the training center. Or torture center, as Dante referred to it. Bloodhound Maroni had built an entire structure on his property devoted to training his soldiers and their children – training in self-defense, weapons, and torture, both to give and take it. The building had three levels – the ground floor devoted to hand-to-hand combat and weapons training, the first floor devoted to pain-tolerance training, and a basement devoted to interrogations. And though anyone underage wasn’t allowed there since usually, it held outside enemies, Dante had been down there multiple times. The perks of being a Maroni.

Satisfied with the progress he’d made with Tristan, even though it was barely a centimeter, Dante walked out of the training center, nodding to the two guards posted outside whose only job was to make sure nobody who wasn’t supposed to be there got in. They nodded back with respect.

Dante walked across the well-manicured lawns, uphill towards the mansion. It was such a monstrosity atop the lush green hill, but Dante loved it. His great-great-grandfather had been the one to build it. He’d been a merchant of glass, a well-respected member of the community, and a loner. That was the reason he’d bought the entire hill a little away from town, for his wife and family to live under one roof. Slowly, as the years had passed, more structures had been added to the property. But Dante loved that mansion, for the history and love it had been made with. Only if half the pit of vipers living in it now could somehow jump off the damn hill.

As he walked, the men patrolling the ground gave him respectful nods. As expected. He was the oldest son of Lorenzo ‘Bloodhound’ Maroni, the grandson of Antonio ‘The Iceman’ Maroni, who had been the founder of the Tenebrae Outfit and one of the most notorious leaders of the underworld. Dante was the heir to the empire. He was expected to continue the legacy in his blood, and he fucking hated it.

He was his mother’s son more than his father’s. And he couldn’t understand how someone like his mother had ever been with someone like his father. He didn’t know how they met because she had never mentioned it. And Dante remembered everything about her.

‘You’re my most precious art, my little hell-raiser, my Dante.’

That’s what she’d called him. Her protector in the hell she had tried to survive, the one who would brave this hell and come out. Yes, he knew why she’d named him ‘Dante’. It was after the poet who went through the seven circles of hell and got out. Dante would be lucky if he survived the first.

She’d been a painter, his mother, with the wild, curly brown hair, sad brown eyes, and soft, wide smile. Streaks of paint on her cheek, a poem in her throat, she would recite poetry or even hum songs while he would play with the clay she bought him, and his little toddler brother would be doing whatever toddlers did. She had nurtured the artist inside him, occasionally coming to guide his small hands as he molded the soft clay.

She’d taken a room for herself on the top floor of the mansion. The sunsets were the prettiest from there, she’d said. As a child, he had loved spending hours with her as she worked with her paints and he made little sculptures of clay for her.

It was also the room he’d found her in, her wrists slit open as red pooled around her, her canvas fallen to the side on the floor, soaking in her blood, her last masterpiece.

Shaking off his thoughts, Dante climbed up the low steps to the back of the mansion, walking to the side with a view of the lake, and removed his white handkerchief, now stained crimson. The green went as far as the eyes could see, only obliterated by the occasional structure. God, he loved this fucking hill even though he wished half the people got off it.

Moving his facial muscles, he tested the severity of his injuries. Little bastard got him good. It hurt, but he’d live.

Something barreled into him from the side, hitting him right where Tristan had elbowed him. Gritting his teeth, he spared a glance to the kid who’d slammed into him, now flat on her butt.

“Watch where you’re going, squirt,” he told her absently, calling her what he called his younger brother. Fuck, he needed a cigarette. He wasn’t a smoker per se, but he liked the occasional puff. Taking one out from his pocket, he flicked open his metal lighter and took a deep drag. Smoke coiled inside his lungs, giving him a momentary reprieve from any other sensation. That was until he heard a feminine cough from his side.

Chuckling, he looked at the girl properly, seeing her back on her feet, in a simple blue dress, her black hair in a ponytail, and her large green eyes on him. He’d seen those eyes somewhere.

“Are you supposed to be in this area?” he asked, taking a little drag of the cigarette, watching her cute nose wrinkle.

“I’m hiding from my friend,” she told him, her eyes drifting to the ground. “I think I should go now. Bye.”

Surprised at the abrupt change, Dante threw his smoke to the ground. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up, squirt.”

She whirled around, her ponytail hitting his chest, her eyes blazing with more fire than her little body was capable of. “Stop calling me that!”

Amused, Dante bowed his head slightly as he would to a lady. “My apologies, queen.”

She liked that, he could tell.

“How old are you?” he asked, curious, trying to place her.

“How old are you?” she fired back.

Dante grinned. “Sixteen.”

“I’m eleven,” she declared proudly. “It was my birthday last month. I told my ma to send some of my birthday cake to you.”

Dante suddenly realized who she was – their housekeeper’s daughter. They had the same green eyes. He didn’t know their housekeeper’s name, but he had started calling her Zia after she’d started feeding him home-made cookies. While he didn’t talk much to Zia, he lived for those sweet treats. His mother hadn’t cooked much either, so Zia’s desserts were something he’d started to cherish. He looked forward to having them all the time. And she was such a nice woman. Dante liked her.

The young girl, her daughter, was too far from the staff quarters. She’d be in too much trouble if his father, or worse his uncle, saw her there.

“You should go,” he nodded to where she’d come from, not wanting her or her mother in the crosshairs of anyone at the mansion.

The girl blinked once, before giving him a little smile, almost shy. “You have really pretty eyes,” she told him. Before he could respond, she turned away and ran down the hill, back to the staff wing.

‘You have the prettiest eyes, Dante. Be careful with them.’

His mother’s words came back to him, the only person before this girl to have told him so. His memory filled with her beautiful but sad brown eyes. Running his hand through his hair, he bent down, picking up the half-smoked cigarette, put it to his lips, and lighted it again. Exhaling through his broken nose hurt like a bitch, but he welcomed the pain, looking down towards the lake and the cottage beside it.

He’d never thought he’d find anyone on this planet who hated his father more than him – until Tristan. Though just fourteen, the younger boy would one day pull the trigger on the old man, and Dante would happily give him the gun. He just had to bide his time, until he was ready, until the world was ready.

“You have to make a run to the city tomorrow.”

Speak of the devil.

Dante ignored him.

Suddenly, his father came before him, his voice agitated, “What’s all this blood? Did someone hit you?”

Dante didn’t turn as his father’s voice thundered through the grounds on the last word. The power play had begun. His father would flex his muscles, remind everyone who had authority there, just in case anyone could forget the suffocating fact, and everyone would go to their stations a little more fearful of Lorenzo Maroni.

Flicking the ashes to the ground, Dante stayed silent, continuing to smoke.

“Don’t you dare ignore me, boy. Did someone hit you?”

“It’s nothing,” Dante stated. But it was useless. His father wasn’t hearing him.

He shouted, calling to Al, his right-hand man, commanding everyone on the compound to gather on the ground.

Dante gritted his teeth, trying to watch the gorgeous sunset as minutes passed and people nervously gathered, silent but stinking of fear. That’s how his father ruled – fear. And the only way to piss him off was to not react to it.

Finally throwing the cigarette on the ground, Dante crushed it under his shoe, his eyes glancing over the crowd. He spotted Zia holding her daughter, the young girl with the green eyes who had just told him he had pretty eyes. She was watching not his father but him. He gave her a little wink, watching her flush and quickly look away, and he wanted to laugh in the middle of the shitshow. Moving his eyes over the group, he saw Tristan standing at the far side, slightly removed from everyone else, a blank expression on his face. If he thought Dante was going to rat him out, he had another thought coming.

“Who hit my son?” his father barked. He paused for dramatic effect, his eyes going over the gathering. When no one responded and looked adequately fearful, his father continued his tirade. “Who dare hit my heir? A Maroni! Tell me now or you will be punished. Tell me who did this. Attacking a Maroni on this compound is the biggest insult to me.”

Nervous glances were exchanged. Hushed whispers rolled over. The sun slowly set.

“You stand on my land, and insult my blood,” his father went on. “Tell me now, or the consequences will be severe for everyone.”

A movement from the side drew everyone’s eyes. Dante watched, surprised, as Tristan stepped out from the gathering, his eyes steady on Bloodhound.

“You,” his father sputtered, marching up to Tristan. “You did this? You disgraceful little bastard. I own you. Everything you do here, I control. You cannot-”

Dante saw, adrenaline pouring in this system, as a young boy inches shorter than his father, stepped right into his face, nothing in his expression, and uttered his first words in public.

“You ever try to leash me, I’ll fucking strangle you with it.”

If angels could sing, that was the moment Dante heard the whole freaking choir.

Someone in the crowd gasped but Dante kept his eyes on Tristan. He had been right to trust his gut when it came to him. The younger boy stared his father down for a second, before turning on his heel and walking away without another word, leaving behind a speechless, seething Lorenzo Maroni. 

Oh, this was going to be good.

Tristan had just sealed his fate.

Dante grinned. They were going to be buddies if it killed him.