Page 72 of Crimson Vows

“Hey, Dante.” My hand moves to find his and gently squeezes it. If I’m going to figure out what is going on, I have to piece together what has happened to him. “I need you to take a great big breath for me. And then I want you to tell me everything that has happened since you and Nico had that argument earlier. Can you do that?”

He looks at me, tears still streaming down his muscular jawline, and nods. “Okay... well, I just started walking. I was just trying to clear my head. I kept thinking about how Marco reacted at the warehouse this morning. He was so pissed at me for saying what I did to Smitty.”

Nico returns with the water, and as he hands it to Dante, he mutters, “Can you blame him?”

I glare at him, and he immediately falls silent.

Dante takes a sip of water and sets the glass on the coffee table.

“Go on,” I encourage him. “Then what happened?”

Dante glances up at Nico, quickly looking away when he sees the disappointed look on his face. “Well, I couldn’t stop thinking that all of this was my fault, so I was trying to figure out how to fix things. Marco thought I would only make things worse, so he wanted me to stay out of it.” Dante’s breath hitches before he continues. “I knew if I could tell Vincent that what I told Smitty was just me talking and that nobody else even knew about it, he’d realize Marco didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Sweetie, I know you want to fix this, but Marco’s right. We need to let him handle this. He knows Vincent better than any of us,” I assure him.

Dante looks over at me, wiping a tear away with his free hand. “No, I know. But then, that was when Marco texted me.”

“Marco texted you?” Nico asks, clearly just as shocked as I am.

Dante nods. “Yeah, and I don’t know. It felt like in a way he was telling me how I could fix everything without actually saying it, you know?”

“No, I don’t,” I reply. “What did Marco text you?”

Dante gulps. “He said that Vincent’s flight was landing at two and that I should lie low.”

I blink repeatedly, struggling to piece together what Dante could have gleaned from the message that I wasn’t. “So you thought Marco was telling you that you could fix everything by lying low? I don’t understand.”

“No,” Dante answers, not offering any clarity.

“Fuck, man, what the hell did you do?” Nico asks, the anticipation overwhelming him.

“I went to see Vincent,” Dante confesses, his voice cracking like thin ice.

Nico’s stance stiffens, disbelief etched into every line of his body. “You did what?”

“When Marco told me Vincent was landing at two, I thought maybe that was his way of telling me how I could help,” Dante says. “So I waited for him outside his place. I just wanted to talk.” Dante’s eyes are desperate pools, begging us to understand. “I tried to tell him, but he didn’t care.”

A muscle flickers in Nico’s jaw, tension rolling off him in waves. Dread settles over the two of us as we listen in silence to what Dante has to share, helpless to alter the events that have already occurred.

“Vincent knew.” Dante’s words are laden with regret. “I swear, it was like he knew everything. The more I insisted that it was just me, the more he pushed back that he was certain Marco was a part of it.”

“Why would he think that?” I ask, picturing Marco walking into a meeting with Amelia. If Vincent had already made up his mind that Marco was part of the plot, the last place he should be is in a meeting with his sister.

“I tried to convince him he was wrong, but Vincent... he wouldn’t listen. He told me he knew the four of us met at Gia’s and we didn’t come out until the next morning. He said he knew we were there to plan our attack.”

“What? He had someone watching me?” I gasp, wrapping my arms around myself as my skin begins to crawl.

Dante shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess, maybe.”

“Dammit, Dante!” Nico shouts. “Why the fuck did you go there? I can’t believe he even let you leave.”

“I shot him.” The confession tumbles out of Dante’s mouth, and Nico stumbles back as if the words were a projectile.

“You shot him?” Nico’s voice is a hollow echo of disbelief.

“I didn’t mean to,” Dante cries, his entire body trembling. “I just wanted him to listen. But no matter how hard I tried, he kept going on and on about how he knew the truth and how we would all pay.” Dante looks into my eyes. “He said he was going to kill us all. I couldn’t let him walk away from me. You understand, don’t you?”

“Jesus,” Nico mutters as he begins to pace back and forth, running his hands through his hair. “We are fucked. We are so fucked.”

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