Page 86 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Dante

When you’re in the cage, nothing else matters. The world becomes a prison and only the bastard locked in with you has the key. To get it, you’ll kill, fight, scrap—beat the living fuck out of him—because losing isn’t even an option.

But, when a little bitch sticks her fingers through the bars and demands that you set her free...

The rules of the game change—just when you’ve lived your entire life believing that laws didn’t apply. But, even in the most fucked-up end-game strategy, little lambs aren’t supposed to make demands of the wolf and then turn around and sacrifice themselves.

“She... He...he took my phone,” Espi croaks, sounding a million goddamn miles away, though this is the closest to him I’ve been since getting released.

He doesn’t cringe when I touch him and pin him in place by his shoulder while Darcy struggles to staunch the bleeding from his hand.

“He called the b-burner I gave her. Ow! Fuck—” The kid breaks off, ripping his hand from Darcy’s grip, spraying blood all over the floor in the process .

“Hold still,” Darcy coaxes him, still trying to wrap his hand in gauze. When blood soaks through the bandage, she grits her teeth but keeps going. Apparently, living with Mack has made her immune to loss of limbs. “ Please , Espi, I need to clean them or they’ll get infected—”

“You need to find her.” For the first time in five years, the kid looks at me directly, though I’m not sure just who he sees now. “Dante, you need to find her. He’ll...he’ll kill her.”

“Find her how?” Arno interjects, crossing his arms. “As far as I’m concerned, good fucking riddance. The bitch was as good as dead anyway, but the real question is—how soon before she comes back with Stacatto in tow—”

“Where is he?” The voice of the man speaking doesn’t sound like me—and I don’t realize that it is until Arno glances in my direction. The calm, collected tone doesn’t match what I feel inside.

I’m on fire. These flames are colder than I’m used to, licking through my veins as three thoughts bounce off the inside of my skull: She went back to Stacatto. She went back to him alone. She went to him alive.

“Where did he take you?” I hear myself ask again.

“A better question is: How do we know that the bitch didn’t plan this all along?” Mack interjects.

“What part of ‘she traded herself to that bastard so he wouldn’t cut my balls off’ did you not understand?” Espi’s voice rises in pitch like it used to when he was younger, always whining for shit. Pleading. “I don’t know where she is.”

You need to find her, Dante.

Oh, I’ll find her all right, if only to kill the little bitch myself.

“Where?”

Espi shrugs, biting his lower lip as Darcy works on his cuts once again.

The hand missing its fingers has been bandaged up tight, but it’s still bleeding.

He’ll need a doctor to check it out. As for his mind?

He’ll need a hell of a lot more treatment.

“I...I don’t know. I just ran.” He flinches when he admits that out loud, not that I blame him.

“One of them caught up to me and shoved me against the wall, but I got away. By the time I found a street that I recognized, she was already...”

Gone. With Stacatto. Willingly.

Those facts jostle in my brain, resonating deeper than any fucking blow Mack could deal with his fists or his fucking knives.

The fucker in question watches me, adjusting a bag of frozen peas against his throat.

I know that both he and Arno are already plotting a defense against the horde Stacatto will supposedly send our way, but for some reason, I’m not fucking worried.

The little girl didn’t go back to talk. On the surface, her actions could have seemed heroic—a better man than me would have even felt gratitude.

But Stacatto’s precious bitch is as cunning as she is desperate to escape him.

She knew I would have gone through hell for Espi, and she turned herself in for no reason other than pity.

She didn’t trust me in a head-to-head match against her beloved “Vinny.” She didn’t trust me to protect her. She didn’t trust me .

Gritting my teeth, I face Arno again. “Where is his hotel?”

“I don’t fucking know.” Arno shakes his head. “Besides, the asshole would have moved by now. He isn’t stupid—”

“Then where would he go?”

It isn’t until Arno cocks an eyebrow that I realize that my fingers are already flexing, aching to rip, tear, destroy. I clench them into fists, but they still fucking shake. Funnily enough, it’s her face I picture ramming them into, not Stacatto’s.

“Where?”

“The fuck if I know,” he snaps. Then he seems to realize something, cocking his head. “Dante...you can’t really mean to go after her—”

“Your phone.” I hold my hand out .

He resists for a second before reaching into his pocket with a sigh. “Son of a bitch. You are going after her. That little bitch...”

When he slaps the phone onto my palm, I turn away and barrel through the doors of the bar. Icy rain lashes at the ground outside, smearing the gray horizon. It’s already past sunset. How fucking long did Mack and I fight? What seemed like minutes must have translated to hours...

Hours he’s had her. Espi claimed that he’d kill her—but I knew better. Vinny wouldn’t put his little dove out of her misery just yet, and the caged songbird who tasted freedom surely wouldn’t be inclined to remain captive again for very long...

The thought goads my fingers into typing a single number into the keypad, and when a gruff voice answers, I don’t waste any time on formalities.

“Where is Stacatto?”

“Ah, Vialle,” Van Hallen grunts, sounding too tired to fuck around either. “Want to tell me why my phone has been ringing nonstop with women—all with broken English, mind you—who are more than willing to testify against an illegal sex-trafficking operation?”

I flinch, caught off guard. So the girl’s plan worked after all—a victory that will soon be turned against her. For every girl she set free, Stacatto would be sure to make her suffer. Who knows what the fucker has already done to her. He’s had hours, after all...

“Stacatto.” I clip the name, and it cuts like a whip. “Where the fuck is he?”

Van Hallen takes a second before answering.

“Vialle, I wouldn’t tell you where Stacatto was even if I knew—but let’s say I did know,” he adds before I can cut him off.

“Let’s say... hypothetically, that I just received a tip that the man bought a house in the waterfront district.

Walnut Street. Number two sixteen. And, if this tip panned out, I wouldn’t then be an accessory to a crime, now would I, Vialle? ”

I hang up. With the address burning in my brain, I cut through Mack’s territory, my gaze on the fenced-in perimeter. It’s only when a fist rams into my shoulder that I realize I’m being followed.

“Slow the fuck down,” Arno snarls, moving to stand by my side before I can whirl on him with a blow of my own.

He’s wearing a leather jacket over his tattoos, the hood drawn to cover his hair—the same tactics he used when he ran deals for Dino to avoid being spotted.

“What? You think I’d let you go after this fucker alone?

” He jerks his head behind him to the scattered remains of his crew.

They fall into step like jackals in a pack. I spot Dall and Francisco among them, their eyes sharp, looking eager for a fight.

But then my eyes home in on two figures who don’t belong. One of them is just a kid who’s clutching his injured hand to his chest and doing his best to fight the pain back.

“Es—”

“I’m coming,” he insists before I can say a word. Fuck, he almost sounds like me.

The other figure lingers a few paces behind the others, his cocky smirk bloodied and smug.

“Did you really think I’d let you boys have all the fun, Kitty?

” he demands, his voice still rough despite the bruising around his neck.

He reaches into his pocket and tosses whatever he pulls out into the air only to catch it in a closed fist. “We’ll take my van. ”

“We need a plan,” Arno grunts as the van approaches the address Van Hallen gave me—who, at the end of the day, was still a fucking cop. Any other time, I wouldn’t go near the place with a ten-foot pole.

Tonight? Tonight, I can’t think. I can only taste.

My tongue clings to one flavor in particular, and I spit it out onto the floor of the van, not that it helps any.

Heroin was easier to come off of than her.

On dope, I was meaner, too. Colder, liable to beat the living fuck out of anyone unlucky enough to meet me in the cage.

Now ? It’s impossible to think above the buzzing. To drown it out, I’ll barge in there alone through the front fucking door. I’ll drag her out by her hair if I have to. Right there in front of her beloved fiancé, I’ll kill the bitch myself—slowly.

I’ll make her regret having taken it upon herself to break one stupid fucking promise.

My thoughts drift while Arno plots out a method of attack out loud. “We’ll sneak up from behind. Case the property for an hour. Think this through...”

But there is nothing to plan. No thoughts to think.

Gritting my teeth, I scan the narrow street, searching for the house of that prick. No matter what he does to her. What he says. How badly he hurts her. How loudly he makes her scream...

She won’t ever truly belong to him again. Not if I have any fucking say in it.

“Dante!” Arno snaps his fingers beneath my nose.

It’s only now that I realize that the van stopped moving, but he has his arm barred over the door to stop me from climbing out.

“Dante, wait—”

I shove him off and wrench the door open. When my boots hit the pavement, I’m a beast again, aching to kill, tear, rip, bite, destroy.

But, when the sound of sirens reaches my ears and smoke fills my nostrils, I realize I won’t have very much left to sink my teeth into.