Page 66 of With a Vengeance

“I’ve been scared since before we left Philadelphia.”

Dante starts cleaning the spot she missed, standing so close that Anna can smell his aftershave. It’s the same scent she remembers after all these years. A mix of cedar and citrus.

“But things have gotten out of hand,” he says. “Two people are dead. And it’s all my fault.”

Anna goes still beneath his touch. “What does that mean?”

Suspicion storms her thoughts. Understandable, considering that they’re in the same car where Judd Dodge died, standing at the very bar in which he accepted the drink that killed him. A drink that Dante had mixed. Anna thinks about the two of them in the galley. Had Dante been there earlier on the voyage, finding the poison beneath the sink? If so, had he already decided to use it to kill Judd?

Then there’s Edith to consider. In the fifteen or so minutes Anna was gone from the observation car, Dante could have slippedinside and killed Edith before returning to his room right before Anna knocked on his door. While she has no way of knowing if any of that really happened, it’s entirely plausible.

“You didn’t…”

Anna can’t finish the accusation, leaving Dante to complete the thought.

“Kill them? Of course not. But I am the reason you’re here.”

“Your father is the reason I’m here,” Anna says, pulling away from him.

Dante drops the napkin onto the bar. “And you wouldn’t know that without the evidence your aunt acquired. Do you know how she got her hands on it?”

“No. She died before she could tell me.”

“Maybe you should have asked me.” Dante pauses. “Because I’m the one who sent it to her.”

It takes Anna a moment to fully comprehend what he’s saying. When it does finally hit her, she feels an unwieldy mix of awe, confusion, and gratitude.

“Yougave it her? Why?”

“Do you want the long answer or the longer one?” Dante says.

“Both.”

“The long answer is because my father doesn’t care one bit about me. He never has. I spent my entire childhood trying to make him love me. Something, it should go without saying, no child should ever have to do. Their parents should love them unconditionally. And my mother did. She wasn’t always the best at showing it, but at least she tried, which is more than I can say for my father.” Dante edges around the bar and starts pacing the area in front of it. “For as long as I can remember, he treated me like a disappointment. Nothing I did seemed to please him. So I made it my mission to prove him wrong. I joined the family business. I workedhard. I tried to impress him. And when that didn’t work, I returned to the tactic I used as a teenager.”

“Rebellion,” Anna says.

Dante gives an enthusiastic nod. “Which meant digging through his dirt.”

“But why did you pretend to be surprised when I told you about the evidence?”

“I didn’t want the others to suspect I had anything to do with it,” Dante says. “Rightly so, it turns out. You saw what happened to Judd. He all but confessed in this very car, and someone poisoned him because of it. If word gets out that I provided that evidence, whoever killed him and Edith might come for me next.”

“Yet when we were alone, you continued to act like you didn’t know.”

“Because I didn’t wantyouto know I was involved. That’s why I started sending everything I’d gathered anonymously to your aunt. I didn’t want you learning that I was helping to prove your father was innocent while I implicated my own.”

Anna slides closer, filling the empty space between them. “Why not?”

“Because you hate me.”

“Hatedyou,” Anna says, the past tense surprising even her.

Dante flashes his famous crooked smile. “I didn’t know that then. But I never forgot you, Annie. I know it was such a long time ago, that this might sound strange. But it’s the truth.”

Anna doesn’t find it strange at all. She never forgot Dante. In many aspects of her life, he was the first. First boyfriend. First love. First heartbreak.

“Anyway, that’s the longer reason,” Dante says. “I never forgot you and I always wondered why my father forbade me from seeing you. Just like I always had doubts that your father did everythinghe was accused of. I know what everyone said about him being a German sympathizer, but it never made any sense to me that he would sacrifice his own son for what was clearly becoming a lost cause. Then there’s the way my father bought your father’s company so quickly—and for so little money. Because it all struck me as suspicious, I started investigating.”

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