Page 46 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Dante

Of all people, the bastard came to fucking Mack for help.

Mack , whose sole definition of the term “friend” only extended to how far up someone else’s ass he could shove his foot out of pure amusement.

Mack , who would have easily chopped Arno into pieces and sold him for scrap back in the day if the parts would have brought him some easy cash.

Mack , who liked to shoot Parish up with dope and fuck her for kicks.

Mack , who looked at Stacatto’s woman like...

I inhale, my eyes narrowing at the way his gaze traced her body. He looked at her like he was already imagining her riding his cock. Willing or not, the bastard didn’t give a damn.

“Don’t give me that look,” Arno mutters while the fucker is still out of earshot.

“While you were in prison—ignoring phone calls and visitors, I might add. Fuck, I even sent you a letter once.” He scoffs, shaking his head.

“Anyway. Things aren’t the same. CJ. Kade.

Trolito. Benji. Alex.” He holds his hand up and ticks the fingers off one by one.

“Dead. Dead. Prison. Dead. Accountant .” He shakes his head.

“Don’t ask me how the fuck that happened— ”

“Why him ?” I growl, dragging him back to the question at hand.

“He’s the only one fucking left,” Arno argues.

“At least the only one with enough infrastructure to take on someone like Stacatto. Take a look around, Dante.” He gestures with a wave of his hand.

“This is what’s left of the Saints. But trust and believe that I don’t like this any more than you do.

” His eyes narrow, and I know he hasn’t forgotten how the bastard treated his sister in the past.

“I don’t like it,” I say—not that it fucking matters. This is Arno’s battle, after all. The woman isn’t my responsibility, and I don’t owe her a damn thing—least of all the need to plead her case.

“I want to take something from him.”

“If you want to hit Stacatto, you need a plan,” I heard myself admit through gritted teeth. “She’s the only one who knows how his fucked-up mind works.”

Arno scowls, and I don’t have to remind him that she already outsmarted Stacatto once. Who knows what she learned while tucked away in his gilded cage?

“ She is all we need. We could regroup somewhere else. We could—”

“Now, don’t be stingy, Dante.” Mack grins as he approaches the bar.

The asshole’s done well for himself, it seems. I count at least thirty men in this room alone, and there are even more stationed outside, monitoring the property’s perimeter.

What Mack lacks in charming personality he’s certainly made up for with brutality and paranoia to help win him some new friends.

“I want to help. It’s the least I could do for Parish.” The bastard has the nerve to actually pretend to care. He bows his head for Arno’s benefit, but I’m not impressed.

“Then let Arno handle this his way.”

Mack flashes another cocky grin, erasing all traces of mock concern. “Now, where’s the fun in that, Dante?” he asks. “Vinny Stacatto’s no average fuck. I want a piece of him too.”

Not out of revenge, I suspect. Mack merely wants a piece of the pie. He wants the girl. He wants to use Arno’s fuck-up for his own gain.

Some shit never changes.

“The pub is gone,” Arno says, explaining the reason why he’s already lurking around the nearest stash of liquor. “Everyone got out, but the fuckers set it on fire—”

“Espi.” I’m already on my feet, but Arno places a hand on my shoulder and shoves me back down.

“You think I wouldn’t make sure he’s okay?” He scoffs. “He was already out running errands for me, but I made sure that he knew what’s up. When he’s ready, he’ll join us here.”

When he’s ready. I grit my teeth and somehow manage not to wrap my hands around Arno’s neck until he tells me where I can find the kid.

Instead, I cut my gaze to the back of the room, where one of Mack’s punks is still guarding the door to the “clinic.” Unease is a useless emotion.

I don’t like to feel it, and I clench my hands into fists, craving the vicious surge of anger in my blood to replace it.

Anger, I understand. Men like Mack react to it better than any other fucking language, written or spoken, anyway.

“Dante.” Arno’s watching me, uncharacteristically tense.

We’re no longer in his domain. This is Mack’s territory. His property. His rules. My quickly thinning patience. It doesn’t take this long to simply bandage a wound. My gaze returns to the door and I scan the stoic expression of the man standing beside it.

“Dante thinks the woman could be of use. If she’s on our side,” Arno says to Mack, picking up the thread of conversation.

That’s right. Apparently, the three of us are supposed to be planning something. Bullshit. Dogs don’t plan. They steal. They scheme. They react on pure instinct .

“We... Dante?” Arno reaches for me when I stand up, but his fingers graze off my shoulder as I start across the bar.

My eyes are on the door while I shove past asshole after asshole, not caring who the fuck I have to jar out of my way. The man by the door perks up when I get close. He glances over my shoulder to where I know Mack to be and nods once.

“I can’t let you—” he starts to say, his posture tensing and stance turning hostile. His lips move, and words keep churning from his mouth, but the buzzing blaring through my skull drowns them out.

It’s like my brain separates from my body for a second. I’m merely a machine, cold and empty. My footsteps slow before I enter the man’s personal space though. Maybe I even mean to turn back.

Then I hear it. I hear her , even above the buzzing. Faint. Desperate. Pleading.

“ Dante !”

All I know is that I laugh first. The dumb bitch is calling for me. She thinks I actually give a damn. That I’ll come to her rescue. She thinks I’d care. She thinks. She thinks .

I don’t think; I react. My fists go flying, striking flesh, bone, and wood.

I register nothing but pain surging through my knuckles.

I see red. I taste it. When I blink, I’m standing inside a narrow room with a black chair in the middle and a row of counters lined with vials of drugs.

I spot her instantly; she’s sprawled over the floor, crawling for the door.

Her eyes widen when she sees me. Then she sticks one hand out, the fingers shaking. “He...he drugged me.”

The fuck he did. Her words are already running together.

When I take her hand and pull her upright, her entire body jerks like a kite on a loose bit of string. I let her stagger against me, her hands pawing for purchase over my chest. Behind her, the man named Sammy cringes back against the wall, clutching at his left shoulder .

“She stabbed me! The fucking little cunt stabbed me—”

“Now, Dante.” The voice gnaws on my thickening rage, injecting clarity back into my brain. “This is no way to make new friends.” Mack stands just beyond the doorway, shaking his head while tsk-tsk-tsking through his teeth. “We’re all family here.”

Ignoring him, I focus my attention on the man huddling in the corner. “What the hell did you give her?”

Sammy jumps. One of his hands starts to claw at his wrist, the nails raking the skin. “J-just a little something to take the edge off—”

“Heroin,” Mack says without a fucking ounce of shame. “Nothing lethal. Just enough to make her docile.”

Docile. I force a dark chuckle from the back of my throat as I skim my gaze over Stacatto’s battered and now high woman. Her eyelids flicker, the hazel irises swirling. She’ll be docile, all right. I have to press my hand against the small of her back when her knees buckle.

I swallow hard, shaking my head to hear above the fucking buzzing. “Why?”

Mack shrugs. “To make it easier to send her back to Stacatto in a body bag.”

I laugh. It’s only when I see Sammy cringe into his corner that I realize the sound comes out more like a growl. Trust Mack not to have read the fucking CliffsNotes.

“Arno tried that.”

Mack’s expression flickers, and suddenly, the bastard’s harder to read. “ Arno did,” he admits. “But I’m not above using other methods of persuasion.”

“Other methods?”

Chuckling, he runs a hand over the stubble along his jaw. He’s sizing up the details of his plan, picking out just how much information he’s willing to share. He was always a sneaky little fucker. “Let’s just say I already have a buyer lined up. ”

“A buyer?” It takes two seconds before the words click and his genius plan unfurls in my mind.

He wants to sell her. Whore out Vinny Stacatto’s girl, getting off on the man’s humiliation. It’s sadistic. It’s lucrative.

It’s fucking stupid.

“If you want to take down a fucker like Stacatto, then you go for the head,” I say.

“You cut it off the fucking snake. She”—I jerk my chin toward the woman—“knows the inner workings of his organization. His habits. His weaknesses. We use her to take him down, and you stick to whoring out your women on street corners.”

Mack rubs his chin. “Who’s to say she can’t speak while she’s riding my buyer’s cock?”

Red. It’s only when Stacatto’s woman whimpers that I realize my fingers tensed, threatening to crush her spine beneath them. “She’ll help us take him down on her own.”

“Funny.” Mack rocks his head from side to side, stretching out the muscles in his neck. “I’ve heard about the little tape you made with her. If she’s that good of a fuck to get Dandy Dante on her side, then maybe I should double my asking price?”

“No.” The hoarse command weasels through my eardrums before I even register stepping forward, jarring the woman clutching my shoulders.

Her head falls back, those unfocused eyes seeking mine out. “No...only...you.” She utters the words softly enough that only I can hear them, not that they make any fucking sense.

Only you.