Page 51 of Pretty Wicked Secrets

Dante grins. “Fuck yeah, I did. I found out there was a better way to run an organization after all. I found out what loyalty was actually supposed to mean.”

“But Maddoc must have found you out too. And he actually let you live after he discovered you were a mole?” I shake my head before Dante can answer. “I mean, obviously he did, but damn. How the hell did you manage to save yourself?”

Maddoc is the last person I can imagine showing mercy after someone betrays him. Which, yeah, is ironic given how easily he decided to do it to me. Or maybe it’s not. After all, I guess it doesn’t count as a betrayal when he screws over someone he was never loyal to in the first place.

That thought hurts, so I’m glad Dante gives me something else to focus on.

“Findmeout?” he says with just enough cockiness to make me laugh. “Nah, never happened, princess. But what did happen is he won me over. Not like he was trying to, ’cause he didn’t realize I was a threat, but he managed it anyway by being himself. By showing me what it actually meant to lead an organization the right way. He was building itforthe people who pledged their allegiance to him, instead of on their backs.”

I’m not really in the mood to hear how great Maddoc Gray is right now, so I can’t resist getting a dig in. “So you’re saying he was clueless. That the big, bad Reaper leader had an enemy right under his nose and didn’t even know it.”

Dante smirks. “What can I say? I guess I’m just that good.”

Something in my core starts to heat up. Cocky is a damn good look on him. I’m never going to admit it though, so I punch his arm—which, for the record, feels like punching fucking steel—and he laughs.

“You’re wrong though,” he says, going on with the story “Madd caught on pretty quick to something being off after I came on board, and he was definitely suspicious. Not of me, ’cause I really am that good, but he knew there had to be a mole in the gang based on the way I managed to start fucking up his operations before I came around to a different way of thinking. And not gonna lie, princess, it would have been easy as hell to frame a member of the Reapers and slip back to the Crows once the damage was done, but I…”

He shakes his head, his usual care-free smirk replaced by a faraway look, like he’s remembering.

“You what?” I prompt him, wanting to know.

Dante blinks, coming back to himself. Then he shrugs. “I didn’t want to, so I came clean. Told him everything. Who I was, why I was there, what the Crows were planning.”

“But…why?” I ask, my stomach tightening as I imagine how terrifying that would be. “He might have killed you.”

Obviously it all turned out well in the end, but Dante couldn’t have known it would go down the way it did at the time. He was either really brave or really stupid… or else he really believed he’d found himself a forever home.

And he was right.

My throat tightens up at that, thinking how up in the air having a home is for me and Chloe now. Will we ever have one again? A place we actually feel safe and don’t have to be looking over our shoulders all the time?

I guess it’s possible with that money she’s going to inherit, but she doesn’t even have it yet and it’s already causing problems, so it sure as shit doesn’t feel like any kind of guarantee. It’s all too easy to imagine the two of us actually getting away from the Reapers, but then having to live the rest of our lives wary of who might try for us next, with no one to guard our backs.

Fuck. I’ve been short on money and scrambling to get just enough all my life. Now, on the cusp of actually having some, it feels a lot like it won’t solve any problems at all.

I swallow hard, and whatever Dante sees in my face has his eyes going soft.

He squeezes my knee. “Madd might have killed me, yeah,” he admits, thankfully not commenting on my all-too-obvious emotions. Then his lips quirk up and he adds, “Or, you know, he might have tried.”

I scowl at him, shoving his hand off my knee. “Cocky, much?”

Dante laughs. “Just calling it how it is. But the thing is, I wasn’t worried about it, because Madd had already shown me who he was. He’s fucking ruthless against his enemies, but he’s just as ruthlessly devoted to those who’ve given him their loyalty. I decided I wanted to be one of those people. I wanted to be a Reaper. I wanted… something different.”

I snort. “Are the Reapers really so different from the rest of the gangs here in Halston?”

It comes out sounding a little bitchy, but of course Dante just grins at me like he knows I’m being petty and he thinks it’s cute. He grins like he expects I already know the answer.

I huff out a breath, refusing to admit that I do, and he laughs again, smoothing the hair back from my face and then cupping my cheek.

“Yeah, princess, we are different,” he says softly. “Better.”

I want to argue it just for the sake of being contrary, but as pissed off as I still am at the three of them, I really can’t. The Reapers may be brutal and ruthless, but there’s a code behind the way they operate. One that’s nothing at all like what I’ve seen from that sadistic fucker, Austin McKenna, and his West Point goons, or like any of the horror stories I used to hear back in the day about the Crimson Crows.

And then of course there’s that gang whose members we took out when we rescued Chloe. Capside. They sounded… bad. Really bad. I shudder, hating the thought that my sister was ever anywhere near them.

But still, Dante talks like Maddoc is the second coming or some shit, and I’m still too raw from everything that’s gone down between us to just accept that at face value.

“I saw that map in Maddoc’s office, and it looks like everyone’s just fighting to be top dog without ever giving a shit who gets caught in the crossfire. I don’t really see how you guys are all that different.”

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