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Dante

“Damn it, Sinclair! You can’t make me do this!” I shouted. My words caught in my throat like a bitter pill as I followed him into the large house. He ignored me, of course. Why did I even bother? Why, after all these years of knowing exactly who he was—closed off, inconsiderate, stubborn, a monumental asshole—did I still cling to this pathetic hope that he could change? It was a fool’s errand, a desperate grasp at a ghost of a memory I had idealized, a past that his actions had poisoned.

The truth, the ugly, festering truth, was that I needed him. Even after everything he’d done—the betrayal, the lies, the casual cruelty that had left scars deeper than any physical wound—I still wanted the son of a bitch in my life. My morals screamed against it, a deafening chorus of righteous anger. Cooperating with Sinclair was not just a betrayal; it was a desecration, a blight in the face of everything I’d fought for. He’d hurt me before, deeply, irreparably, shattering my trust like a fragile glass. And yet, here I was, willingly sacrificing those very principles on the altar of my desperate, pathetic need.

This wasn’t just about the clubs, the looming war, or even the chilling knowledge that he held the power to leverage me, to use Danny, to threaten my daughter. It was about something far more insidious, far more personal. It was about the gnawing fear that without him, I was nothing but a faded photograph, a forgotten name. The thought sent a shiver of self-loathing down my spine.

“You will help me do this, Dante, or I will make sure you never see your daughter again. Am I clear?”

His words hung in the air; a poisoned dart aimed straight at my heart. “Don’t threaten me, Sinclair,” I seethed, the familiar anger a thin shield against the icy terror gripping me. “I’m not the weak boy you remember.”

“No, you’re just the pathetic version of the man I raised you to be.” Sinclair’s casual cruelty was a knife twisting in the wound. He was the Devil, yes, but I also knew a chilling truth: Sinclair had shaped me, molded me into the very man I now was. He’d taught me ambition, ruthlessness—the very tools Sinclair now wielded against me. The irony burned.

I clenched my fists as I pictured my daughter, her bright smile, her trusting eyes. I’d sworn to protect her, to shield her from the darkness that had consumed my life. But Sinclair’s threat wasn’t a bluff; I knew it in my gut. I’d seen his capacity for violence, the chilling lack of remorse in his eyes. His own moral compass, once firmly pointed towards good, now spun wildly, disoriented.

A wave of nausea washed over me. Helping Sinclair meant betraying everything I believed in. It meant becoming the very thing I hated—the ruthless, amoral man Sinclair had always wanted me to be. But refusing... refusing meant risking everything for my family that I might never see again. My choice was a poisoned chalice I was forced to drink. I felt the first bitter drops now, the taste of compromise, the slow, sickening descent into a moral abyss. I could almost feel the weight of my failure settling on my shoulders, a crushing burden of a bad choice that would haunt me for the rest of my life. My regret, sharp and searing, was already beginning to bloom.

I couldn’t. No matter the cost, I refused to give into this man. To hell with the consequences.

“No.”

One word. Simple. To the point.

And yet, that one word felt hollow, almost as if the word itself was a lie.

Sinclair’s eyes narrowed, a flash of surprise quickly masked by the cold, calculated expression I knew so well. He hadn’t expected me to refuse, especially not after his threat.

The silence stretched between us, heavy with unspoken words and the weight of our shared history. I could see the wheels turning in his head, the manipulation, the strategizing—all the despicable traits he’d instilled in me. I felt a surge of disgust, not only for him, but for myself. I was a reflection of the very thing I despised.

“You leave me no choice, Dante,” he said, his voice deceptively calm. “I had hoped we could resolve this amicably, but it seems you’ve forgotten your place.”

My blood boiled at his words, but I bit back my retort. I knew better than to fall for his goading. Sinclair thrived on conflict, on twisting people to his will. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead, I turned and walked away, my back straight, my head held high. I wouldn’t let him see the turmoil within me, the doubt and fear that threatened to consume me. I had made my choice, and now I would have to live with the consequences, whatever they may be. But I refused to be a puppet on Sinclair’s strings any longer.

“Alright,” he sighed, the sound of resignation in his voice. Stopping, I turned as he sat in his chair behind his desk. The man looked tired, worn out, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to think. I’d never seen him so dejected, so wary, almost as if time and space had caught up with him. “You want to know why? I will tell you.”

I stood there, waiting.

“Unlike you and the others, I wasn’t born at the Trick Pony. Unlike you, I didn’t have the typical idyllic childhood. I didn’t have the pleasure of sleeping in my bed at night, knowing I was safe. Some nights I still lay awake, waiting for the ghosts of my pasts to enter my room to finish what she started. It’s why I keep my room barren. Just a simple chair. Veronica Meeks was a narcissistic, vindictive, vile sadist, and I fucking hated her. Her greatest joy in life was her endeavor to break me. To mold me into something sinister, something so disgusting that she could use at will. She almost succeeded, too.”

Stiffening, I couldn’t believe it. Sinclair never cursed. Never in all my years had I ever heard him use foul language. Perception was everything to Sin. Yet looking at him now as he lowered his guard, I could almost see the broken, scared boy he once was.

Sinclair’s unexpected revelation left me rooted to the spot, my anger and defiance momentarily forgotten. I had always known he held a certain power over me, a power that stemmed from the role he played in my upbringing. But hearing him speak of his own troubled past, of a vulnerability so carefully concealed, shook me to my core. In that moment, I saw a glimpse of the boy he once was, a boy haunted by fears and insecurities, a boy like me, who was shaped by the darkness that surrounded him.

As his words hung in the air, I felt a strange mix of emotions. Part of me wanted to dismiss his story as nothing more than a manipulation tactic, another weapon in his arsenal to gain the upper hand. But there was an authenticity to his tone, a raw honesty that was difficult to ignore. I questioned everything I thought I knew about the man who had raised me, the man I both admired and despised. Was he truly the Devil I had made him out to be, or was he a victim of circumstances, just as I was?

The silence that followed was heavy with the weight of our shared history, the complexities of our relationship laid bare. I knew that my decision to refuse his demand came at a cost, but in that moment, I also understood the true price of our bitter dynamic. We were bound, not just by the choices we had made, but by the wounds of our pasts.

“I know you’ve heard the stories of how we escaped,” he said, looking over at me as I nodded. He took a deep breath and continued, “It was a Tuesday. I couldn’t tell you what month it was, but I knew it was Tuesday because it was the only day she ever visited me. I loathe Tuesdays.”

Confused, I whispered, “Yet that’s the day you insist we all sit down for family dinners.”

“Yes.” Sinclair smirked. “As a remembrance of what we’ve all overcome. What I’ve overcome.”

“Wait a minute. You weren’t born at the Trick Pony?”

“No I wasn’t. I was born on a rainy Tuesday morning in August, on a country back road in Reading, Pennsylvania. That day forever changed the course of my life. My father was rushing my mother to the hospital. A deer came out of nowhere. He swerved, flipped the car and rolled several times before landing against a tree. He died on impact. When the paramedics arrived on the scene, my mother delivered me right there on the side of the road before she too succumbed to her injuries. I spent several weeks in the hospital before Veronica Meeks carried me out in her arms. Had anyone cared to look, they would have seen her instability, her vile nature, the malevolent retribution carved in her eyes. Yet, like most people, they turned a blind eye and never looked back. My first genuine memory of Veronica Meeks was when I was around four and she whipped my backside raw for wetting the bed. She hated what she called ‘ lesser masculine qualities ,’

deeming me unsuitable, before she gifted me to Devlin Scott. That night, the pain I endured paled compared to the whipping she gave me. Over the years, I learned control. Control over all aspects of my being, but she never relented. Every Tuesday, she would show up in my room and subject me to some new hell she came up with. I became her plaything. Her whipping boy. The one person in the Trick Pony she could vent her rage, displeasure, all her animosity on, until that fateful Tuesday, when I refused to take it anymore. I don’t know what made me do it. All I know was that one moment she was laughing at me, the next I had her blood on my hands.”

“I don’t understand. What does her death have to do with anything?” I breathed, my words catching in my throat like shards of glass. The taste of bile rose in my mouth, acrid and bitter.

Sinclair’s gaze, cold and sharp as shattered ice, pinned me to the spot. The air crackled with unspoken things, heavy and suffocating. He spoke, his voice a low growl that vibrated through the floorboards, “Because only a son’s love, twisted and poisoned by years of agonizing torture, could unleash that kind of incandescent rage.”

“What?” The word escaped as a strangled gasp. My heart hammered against my ribs like a frantic bird trapped in a cage. I stood paralyzed, rooted to the floor by a terror so profound it stole the very air from my lungs. I couldn’t have heard him right. The sheer audacity of it... His voice dropped to a venomous whisper that slithered into my ears. A serpent in the garden of my mind.

“The day my mother died, Veronica Meeks was born. And that vindictive bitch spent seventeen years meticulously and systematically savoring as she made me pay for my father’s death. Every cruel torment, every calculated humiliation... it was a slow, agonizing torture designed to break me. And finally, I snapped.”

The room seemed to shrink around me as the truth settled in. Sinclair, the man I had known as a father figure, a mentor, and an adversary, was revealing a side of himself that I had never imagined.

He killed his own mother.

His words were impactful; each one a revelation reshaping my understanding of him. I had always seen him as a powerful, ruthless man, but now I understood the source of that ruthlessness. Veronica Meeks had molded and shaped him, just as he had done to me. The cycle of abuse, passed from one generation to the next, was a bitter pill to swallow.

The thunderous clap ripped me around, Sinclair’s chair screeching as he shot to his feet. My breath hitched, a metallic tang filling my mouth as she appeared, bathed in the sickly-sweet scent of her perfume—gardenias and something darker, something feral. The very woman who’d bled my sanity dry, etched into the marrow of my nightmares, materialized from the shadows.

Her eyes, twin chips of obsidian, glittered with a chilling amusement. “Good evening, Dante,” she purred, the greeting a venomous caress. Her voice, a silken whisper laced with steel, slithered into the silence. The air crackled with the unspoken threat humming between us, thick as the miasma of fear clinging to my skin. “I’ve missed you,” she breathed, her words a prelude to the storm brewing in her gaze—a storm I knew, with a gut-wrenching certainty, I was about to be caught in.