Chapter 143

"I have a birthday."

He smiled slightly.

"Don't tell me."

He closed the small distance between us, the light of the cake growing brighter, bringing warm air to my face. My lungs expelled all the energy I was feeling, all the reactions my body was betraying me with.

"You remembered."

"Of course, I remembered. I'm not you."

I let out a tiny laugh, still staring at the candle illuminating his chiseled face—the face of a man growing with all his dark and beautiful parts.

"You made this cake?"

"I tried."

"You’ve never made a cake before?"

"There’s a first time for everything," he joked.

The silence between us was strange. There were only two people staring at each other, surrounded by an intense flame, the tiny stars fallen from the sky, and the void of a city plunged into darkness.

"How… how did you manage this?"

"Contacts. It’s nice being adopted by a cop."

Jesus.

"You didn’t have to do this."

"I thought the person giving the gift chose it, not the one receiving it."

Dante took my hand and guided me to sit at the edge of the bed. He crouched, aligning himself with my height, but still facing me. The cake never left our line of sight.

"We’re the only light in the city," I commented, still in awe.

"You are."

That was it. No one could tell me this boy carried cruelty inside him. Dante was good. Very good.

"Make a wish," he asked. "And I’ll make it come true."

I closed my eyes and let the wish flow.

I wished for so much. For me and for him.

"The cake smells good," I said as I opened my eyes.

I was startled by the fire in Dante’s gaze.

I blushed.

He was looking at me with far more than I could give him at that moment. Though I wanted to.

Part of me wanted so much from Dante, in a way impossible to put into common words. I craved the distortion and the torment he claimed to carry.

As a distraction, I dipped my finger into the cake and licked it.

"Really good. I’ll get forks downstairs for us."

He nodded, standing up and placing the cake on the bedside table.

"I’ll wait here."

I got up, my legs trembling with the overwhelming sensations shooting through my bones.

I never reacted this way in his presence, but that day, the fortress I had built to lock away my feelings was crumbling.

I turned to my best friend, who had taken the book in his hands again.

My heart couldn’t bear it.

"Do you think we’re all like Hamlet?"

"Depends on what you mean about him."

"Demons and lunatics… if we all carry a bit of that."

He didn’t take long to answer.

"Yes. But I don’t think you have demons, Gray.

I believe your soul was born from angels."

That hurt.

For some reason, it hurt.

"Then I..." I swallowed nervously, even though he wasn’t even looking at me. "Then my angels protect your demons, Dante. They do that."

My best friend lifted his gaze to me.

He looked as surprised as I felt, aware of what I had just said, of how it sounded, and of its implicit meaning.

Finally, he let out a small sigh.

"I was going to say you’re not a lunatic either, but you proved me wrong quicker than I thought," he teased, though his expression turned serious. "Don’t say that again."

"Why?"

"Because I believe it."

The tingling spreading down my spine was strangely good.

His eyes seemed to speak more than his words, and I held onto his image more than his phrases.

"Okay."

That was all I could muster when I realized the air was missing, and I couldn’t last another second in that room with Dante.

What was happening?

"Emilia," he called, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn around.

"Love doesn’t thrive in hearts that fear shadows."

I swallowed hard.

It was rejection.

Dante was rejecting me, but I would pretend he wasn’t. I would act like it was something normal.

"Yeah. I know. Thanks for the heads-up, William Shakespeare," I joked, leaving the room.

I rushed to the kitchen to grab the forks and returned, but when I got back, Dante had left me with the window open, the book closed on the bed, and the untouched cake waiting to be eaten.

And, of course, the lights had come back on.

***

POV Dante

The smell of blood was something I was used to.

The walls of my world were made of corpses and decorated with the screams of others.

The nightmares of those I had killed were my purest dreams. I slept knowing I had ended families, destroyed the future of children, and acted as a god when I was merely a servant of the hell that was life. Yet, I was conscious, and my shoulders felt light. There wasn’t a shred of regret crawling down my spine.

No one knew what I had been through. No one knew I was just a thirteen-year-old boy forced to become a man. To see the world through the eyes of the starving. Of someone begging for revenge.

The guys and I shared a pain that made chaos our best companion.

"Anger is a poison we drink, hoping others will die." Shakespeare was a pathetic writer, but his philosophy fueled any troubled mind, including mine.

Emilia would never understand the weight she placed on my shoulders that day. How she had made me find something that gave meaning to my vengeance.

That bastard was as twisted, deceitful, and disturbing as I was. However, he didn’t kill or torture his victims. He achieved that through his characters, his mind spread across literary puppets that carried fragments of himself.

I, on the other hand, was driven by a singular goal: to destroy the Factory.

I would die trying and make every person in this game fight with their life and soul.

But not her.

Emilia couldn’t walk this path.

She was the only regret that destroyed me. She was the true meaning of disaster in my life. Everything about her had shaken my plans. I had nearly given up living for her. Because I knew I would bring the most feared nightmares into her life. I wasn’t the one to protect her. I was the problem she should fear.

Yet, since she was a child, Emilia had made me believe I could be good. That I could be capable of love. That I could give her the world and a thousand reasons to smile.

I wanted to be the man she needed. But I became the man who brought out the worst in her. And there was nothing I could do to fix that.

I threw my head back, shaking my hair, trying to regain focus.

I had a scumbag to interrogate.

"Where were we?" I asked rhetorically, raising my blood-stained knife.

"I already told you, I don’t know anything."

The little man pinned to the wall squeezed the words out.

We didn’t give comfort to our victims. No chairs. Not even a stool for them to rest their asses. They were treated like animals. Thrown into cages. Tossed around like trash.

In truth, we treated animals better. Rachel was spoiled and protected as hell.

"I’ve heard that phrase so many times I’m going to make a deal with you," I replied. "Get creative. Use different words, a more interesting speech."

"I swear!" he screamed, his sobbing grating on my nerves like hell. He sounded like a damsel in distress, for fuck’s sake. "I have a family… Please. They need me."

"They need you?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Funny, I don’t remember seeing that concern when you smiled at the children being auctioned off, stripped of their innocence right before your eyes while you stuffed your gut."

"Please… I’ll help you with everything. I’ll give you all the names you need."

He was humiliating himself, and I was growing bored.

"I don’t want names. I want one thing. Who organized the last delivery?"

"What do I get in return?"

I almost laughed.

Spinning the knife in my hand, I grinned wickedly.

"Maybe a few more seconds of life. By the time I write down the address, call my comrades, drink some tea, and brush my dog’s teeth after she eats your leg, you might enjoy a little more time in the place where your corpse will rot."

His crying was becoming unbearable. Even Beethoven couldn’t compose a decent melody from this coward’s fearful squealing.

I needed to speed this up. I had other matters to attend to. Things that demanded far more than cleaning up after a criminal worth pennies.

"I just want the address, and I promise your friends will stay safe. Isn’t that a good deal?"

My word meant nothing. It was a Judas kind of promise. Emilia would vouch for that.

"You gouged out my friends’ eyes and smashed them in front of me, for fuck’s sake!"

"Just that? I was being too soft that day," I lamented.

"You’ll pay for this!"

His words clawed at my brain, stirring violent emotions. I got up from my relaxed position, advancing toward the scumbag slowly, letting him feel the regret for his words settle in his chest.

I saw his breathing grow shallow, choking his windpipe like a drowning duck.

"Pay for what, huh?" I spat, and the bastard trembled. "Do what I’m asking. It’s simple. I’m giving you two options that even an idiot like you can understand: give me what I want and get some extra comfort. Don’t be a fool and pick the wrong one. Death can be a relief, but getting there is a long road..."

The sound of flesh tearing and his face turning a crimson hue delighted my vision.

The knife slid across his exposed abdomen. His skin split lethargically, the blood flowing like a watering can. His mouth opened in agony, a scream echoing through the walls as the blade sank deeper into his belly.

The metallic scent burned my nostrils.

Even I, who was used to blood, felt nauseous. His leg was already shredded by Rachel, his fingers scattered on the ground, and now his abdomen was being sliced open like the incision of a counterfeit surgeon.

"Hurry, or your death will last a lifetime."

I sank the knife deeper, piercing his flesh. The sound of his organs contorting, his body trying to expel the blade but failing, was chilling. I dragged the blade to his mouth, gently spreading it across his tongue.

The man shook his head, screaming a silent "no." His coughing grew violent until vomit spewed out like a turbine.

Hell.

I stepped back enough to avoid getting dirty. My hygiene was sacred. Getting dirty was out of the question.

"Asher will clean this mess when he’s done training," I muttered, displeased.

The door opened just as I slowed my steps.

I focused on Vance entering with the same stoic expression and lack of vocabulary as always.

He didn’t speak. His mystery had lingered since the abduction. We communicated through looks, inexplicable feelings, and that was how we lived and protected each other’s backs.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

"Where have you been?" I asked, wiping the knife on the man’s body.

His eyes told me nothing, but his raised eyebrow did.

Instantly, I heard a female scream.

"Let me go, you monsters! I’ll kill you all!"

Emilia.

That irritating, high-pitched voice was hers.

What the hell had she done? Didn’t she know how to enjoy the freedom I’d given her?

Stubborn creature. I would have to teach her to behave.

I clicked my tongue and headed out. But before I did, I handed the knife to Campbell.