Page 74 of A Taste Of Darkness

Even as I started to make huge chunks of money on the daily, Dahlia still transferred hundreds of thousands of euros into my pseudonym bank account for the fun of it.

Over the course of seven years, Dahlia sent me a total of 18.7 million euros.

As far as my family knew, Dahlia was sending Arlo money. About 220 hundred grand a month since hotels, flights, and all those kinds of stuff up to our standards were quite expensive.

“Do you think all of them know I’ve been alive this whole time?” I asked. She didn’t know for sure, but regardless, she was still the one who’d been hanging around here all this time.

Dante didn’t know, that much I figured out.

“Your mamma doesn’t,” she tells me. “I spoke to her yesterday and asked if she believed you were still alive, and she answered no. So as usual, nobody’s talking to the women about anything. She knows Adriana sort of asked Alessandro to send Pino and his brothers after Arlo to check?—”

“Hold up.” I held up my hand to stop her from talking. “Spin back there, Dahlia. Adriana wanted Pino to go after Arlo?”

She nodded hesitantly as her eyes moved over to her husband who’d moved himself and Viola into another room. The door was open, though, so we could see them.

“Yes. I asked her why, and all she could tell me was that Adriana mentioned something about Arlo possibly not being there for her wedding, and so Alessandro got annoyed, then said that it was strange how Arlo was too incompetent to find you. He figured seven years was long enough to look for you, and he realized that Arlo must’ve been doing something other than looking for you.” She began to play with her wedding ring. “Before you get mad, Arlo didn’t know.”

“So you’re telling me nobody knew I was still alive?” All this goddamn time I thought they’d known from the very beginning. They figured I wanted to spend my lousy life somewhere near Sterlie, even if I could only watch her from afar without the possibility of having a single conversation with her.

I thought it was my fault, that I put her in even more danger than I had originally assumed.

Now I learned that they were watching Arlo this whole time. It was stupid luck that they found Sterlie.

That was why they never tried to storm Tartarus. They didn’t know I was there. They didn’t know it belonged to me.

They must’ve thought Arlo was in Toronto to protect Sterlie for me.

That day they showed up at her boutique; it was Arlo they expected to run to protect her, probably wanted to prove their point that he wasn’t looking for me, yet what they got was even better. They got me.

It certainly explained why some of my cousins looked quite surprised to see me.

Dahlia shrugged softly, apologetically. “I believe so. If they knew you were still alive, do you honestly think they would’ve allowed you to stay away?”

No, I didn’t think they would, which was why I’d been so surprised that they did.

“Dahlia?” Someone knocked on the door, light at first. When she didn’t reply because her eyes were set on me, wide with horror, the knocks turned into constant banging. “DAHLIA!”

“Go, open the door,” I whispered, then got up to hide in their bedroom, though I stayed close enough to hear their conversation.

Arlo stood by the door, granting me some more coverage. If my brother saw him, it wasn’t half as fatal as it would’ve been had he seen me.

Alessandro knew I was alive, but inside these walls, I was even less safe than out there.

“Sorry, I was… uh, feeding Viola,” Dahlia lied. “What’s up?”

“I don’t care what you were doing. If I knock on your door, you open it,” Alessandro said, as gruffly as ever. It was such a shame that he hadn’t changed in seven years. “You’re just a flimsy woman, you can’t?—”

“Fuck off, Alessandro,” Arlo spat. “You know, with the way you’re talking to and about women, it’s no surprise your padre would rather work until he takes his last breath before he’d ever let you take over.”

“Because you’re so much better. They should kill you for what you’ve done.” I heard him take a step, but I suppose Dahlia stopped him from entering. He growled with annoyance. “You knew Luca is still alive, didn’t you? They should’ve killed you for betraying us.”

“Yet I’m still alive.” Arlo shrugged. “What do you want from my wife anyway?”

“Her cu?—”

“If you say, ‘her cunt,’ I will punch you in your fucking face,” Arlo interrupted. Though I had a limited view of my cousin, I still noticed how tense he was, but since he was holding his daughter in his arms, I was sure he tried not to make her feel his anger.

She still cried anyway.

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