Page 89 of Depraved
Declan laughs, jumping back and holding up his hands, as I shriek and claw at Dante, trying to get free. My feet touch the ground, and I hear Dante telling me to calm down, but my eyes scan the room for a weapon. My hands dart to the gun in his hand, but he grabs my wrists.
“Billy, look at me,” Dante pushes, but I refuse, craning my neck past him to shoot daggers at Declan.
“How are you alive, you piece of shit. I hate you. I’ll kill you again,” I scream.
Grabbing the stem of a broken champagne glass from the mess on the table, I charge at him again, only to be pulled back easily by Dante. This time I’m pulled into Dante’s arms and held firmly against him, quieting my struggle, forcing me to give-in, and calm down. Unintentionally forced to acknowledge the ghost standing in front of me.
“This isn’t real. Tell me this isn’t real,” I whisper to myself, dropping the crystal from my hand.
Declan smiles, but it always looked unnatural on his face, one only a mother could love. No matter how attractive he is outside, he’s rotted and twisted on the inside.
“Oh, I assure you, darling girl, I’m real. You’ve been gone so long, I bet you felt like you were seeing a ghost. We have so much to catch up on. Let me start—I run the O’Bannion crew. It’s a real ‘rags to riches’ story. I’m at the top, but I’m still missing one thing.” Declan crosses his arms over his chest, twisting his wedding ring with his thumb. “Care to guess?”
His voice is still as cruel as I remember, and I almost choke on the bile trying to come up from the sound of it. My eyes cut to him, and I wish I could shoot him again.
Dante stills behind me, and I can tell it’s sinking in. He understands why I just came undone. He turns me around to look at him, touching my face so gently with the hand that’s holding his gun, that I close my eyes, so I can block out everything but his touch and the scratch of the hard metal against my cheek.
“This is the guy? The one they sold you to?” Dante grinds out angrily, his chest heaving as he points the gun back at Declan. “The one you thought you killed.”
I nod, unable to even answer. I never want to say the words again.
Dante moves me to stand in front of me, and I clutch the back of his jacket, willing my body to stop trembling from my anger.
“Don’t address her, or I’ll cut your fucking tongue from your mouth. In fact, you tell me why I shouldn’t blow your head off now…”
I feel Dante take a step forward but stop abruptly. I step to the side to see the two guys flanking Declan lift their shirts, exposing the guns they’re carrying. Shit.
“There’s one reason,” Declan answers arrogantly, “and here’s another…because then you’d make her a widow, admittedly something she tried to do herself eight years ago when she shot me on our wedding night. Except I didn’t die, Sarah, and now I’ve finally found you.”
Declan looks at Dante and grits out cruelly, “I’ve come for what’s mine.”
Fuck. My head whips to look at everyone in the room. I did this. This is my fault. I brought this here, but each set of eyes I look into don’t reflect anger toward me. No, everyone is glaring at Declan like they want him dead.
I look up and see Dante’s jaw tensed, the muscles rippling as he grits his teeth. Taking a deep breath, I slip my hand into his and step up to his side, the other finding its way to my choker. “I’ve never belonged to you Declan. You can’t own what you’ve never had.”
He sneers, and I stand straighter.Not today, motherfucker.
“Always such a smart mouth. It should be fun breaking it in,” Declan answers.
A rumble in Dante’s chest vibrates all the way down his arm as he shakes his head. “I’m gonna make you choke on those words. You may have these assholes with you now,” he barks, motioning to the gunmen, “but they won’t be there forever. I will though. I’ll never stop, and I won’t just stop with you…I’m gonna chop down your whole goddamn family tree.”
Luca’s voice comes from Dante’s right. “You aren’t taking Sarah. You tell the rest of the Irish we’re coming. E taglieremo la testa dal serpente.”And we’ll cut the head off the snake.
A deep laugh pulls from Dante’s chest from whatever Luca said, and Declan looks between them, his eyes growing wild with anger.
Declan steps up to Dante’s face, smiling wide. “You have forty-eight hours to deliver my bride to me, or you’ll get your war.”
He barely gets the words out before Dante’s head connects with Declan’s skull, sending him stumbling backward. Guns click, two pointing at Dante as his stays on Declan. I squeeze Dante’s hand, but Declan begins to laugh from his bent stature, holding up a hand and waving it.
“Put them away. I’m fine. I’m fine.”
Dante’s quiet rage is so palpable that I’m feeding off it, as if it’s being siphoned from him as he lowers his gun. I dig my nails into my leg, watching as Declan stands and wipes a trickle of blood from his busted eyebrow.
“I was warned about your temper. It could take down cities, they said…” Declan laughs again, pulling a handkerchief from his breast pocket. “You definitely live up to it.”
Declan’s eyes swing to mine as he blots his face. “You always were a survivor, but this time you hid in the lion’s den.”
His face swings to Luca, as he begins to pace. “You’ve got one brother who’s so calculating and vicious, that he may have stepped away from the mafia, but nobody would ever dare to question him for fear of what he’d do.”
