Chapter 55

Chapter 55

Dante

I woke up to screaming.

My eyes snapped open, but I didn’t move at first. I just stared at the ceiling above me, the faint outline barely visible in the dark.

My fingers tapped lightly against the mattress without me deciding to.

One. Two. Three.

A crash followed somewhere downstairs.

Then my mother screamed.

I closed my eyes briefly.

It was normal.

At least… as normal as things could be in this house.

My father yelled. My mother cried. Something shattered.

Then silence eventually followed before the cycle repeated itself another night.

That was how it always was for the sixteen years of my life.

However, tonight it didn’t.

My body moves before I decide anything and i got up, ignoring my fathers warning echoing at the back of my head. The one that always said to stay indoors.

Mama never liked my presence, if anything it made her hate herself even more, but I loved her regardless.

My hand found the wooden bat beside my door. I grabbed it without really understanding why I needed it.

The hallway outside my room was dark and cold when I stepped into it. Every part of me already knew this was a bad idea.

But my feet kept moving anyway.

The screaming had stopped now.

The bedroom door sat slightly open.

I pushed it carefully.

And froze.

My mother was crouched on the floor beside the bed, trembling violently.

Blood stained the side of her mouth.

One side of her face was already swelling badly.

Pieces of shattered glass covered the floor around her while overturned furniture filled the room like a battlefield.

But my father wasn’t there.

For a second, all I could hear was my own heartbeat.

I stared at her silently.

And then slowly… she lifted her head.

Our eyes met.

The crying stopped instantly.

Just like that.

Like someone had cut the strings holding her together. Something cold replaced it instead.

Hatred. The one she always gave right before she transferred aggression.

“You.”

Her voice came out broken and sharp.

I instinctively tightened my grip around the wooden bat.

“This is your fault,” she whispered.

I immediately shook my head. “Mom—”

“You devil child.”

She stood abruptly.

I stumbled back slightly as she grabbed a pair of scissors from the bedside table.

“You ruined my life!” she screamed.

Tears streamed down her bruised face as she rushed toward me.

I panicked instantly.

“Mom, stop—”

She swung the scissors wildly.

I threw my arm up reflexively while backing away too fast.

Then it happened.

Her foot slipped against the blood covering the floor.

Everything slowed.

Her body lost balance violently before crashing sideways into the sharp edge of the marble nightstand.

The sound that followed, a sickening crack.

The scissors slipped from her hand first.

Then she collapsed completely onto the floor.

Blood spread beneath her head slowly.

I stood there frozen.

The bat slipped from my fingers.

“Mom?”

My breathing became uneven as I slowly stepped toward her.

“Mom…”

Still nothing.

My knees hit the floor beside her body.

I touched her shoulder carefully.

“Mom, get up.”

My voice cracked slightly this time, her eyes had dimmed void of life.

She didn’t look at me like she hated me anymore.

And somehow, that made my lip curl slightly.

She was dead. No more screaming.

No more boiling water against my skin.

No more trembling every time footsteps stopped outside my door.

I hated myself for feeling it instantly.

I remember staring down at my hands covered in her blood wondering what kind of son feels relieved after his mother dies.

“I killed her.”

•~~•

For the past few weeks, the dream had not left me.

It came the same way every time.

Same house.

Same screams.

Same ending.

And every time I woke up, I had to sit in silence long enough to remember I was no longer sixteen.

But the feeling never fully left.

Neither did the thought that something in me had broken that night and never fixed itself.

That morning, I didn’t sleep again after waking.

I just sat in the dark until the sun started bleeding through the curtains.

There were more pressing problems anyway.

The quarters were falling apart, all at once.

Shipments missing. Routes compromised. Deals collapsing without explanation. Every time I fixed one problem, another appeared somewhere else like it was intentional.

And the worst part, I couldn’t see the pattern.

Someone was inside my system.

Someone was moving against me.

But I still couldn’t find who.

And then there was her.

Like a distraction I couldn’t fully remove.

I leaned forward in my chair, staring at the reports spread across my desk.

None of it made sense anymore.

And I hated not having control over things that should have been simple.

•~~•

If I stayed another hour in that car, I was going to lose my patience completely.

And I needed at least one answer before that happened.

Lorenzo was the only thing I had right now that even resembled one.

For months, I’d ignored what he said about Jessica. Written it off as one of his usual mind games. One of those things he threw out just to see what stuck.

But now everything was collapsing at once.

And when everything collapses, you start paying attention to the details you ignored.

I pulled up to Lorenzo’s penthouse just past midday.

An hour passed.

Then another half of one.

My patience was already thin enough to snap clean in two.

I was about to leave when the doors finally opened.

Lorenzo stepped out like he had all the time in the world.

He smiled when he saw me.

“Dante,” he said lightly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m not here for a friendly get together,” I said.

That made his smile tilt slightly, like he found that amusing.

“Clearly,” he replied. “Because if you were, you’d be doing a terrible job at it.”

I ignored him and walked straight past him into the penthouse.

“Cut the act,” I said flatly. “I’ve been trying to get answers from you for weeks and you’ve been dancing around it like it’s some kind of game.”

He shut the door behind us, unbothered.

“Maybe because it is a game,” he said. “You just don’t like when you’re not winning.”

I turned to him slowly.

“I didn’t come here for this.”

“Then why are you here?” he asked, calm as ever. “Let me guess… Veronica? I promise I haven't been around her. Been quite busy.” He mocked

I exhaled through my nose, already irritated.

“This isn’t about her.”

“That’s new,” he murmured. “You’ve been orbiting her life for months. And you even called off a damn wedding before her. Considering everything falling apart in your quarter. “I think it would be smart for you to leave her alone.”

I ignored him.

“That’s not why I am here.”  I stepped forward. “What I care about is Jessica.”

The smile on his face fell for a moment before being replaced by another calculated one.

“…That’s what this is about.”

My jaw tightened.

“Tell me what you fucking know.”