Page 97 of The Enslaved Duet

Dante shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe. You’re a product of your upbringing, as much as any of us try to hide it, and mine was crazy enough for most.”

“I don’t understand what the motivation is here. Why are you in this car talking to me? Why did you come to Pearl Hall after all these years and then save me from Ashcroft at The Hunt? What am I to you?” I asked.

I didn’t have a good track record with getting my questions answered, but I was alone in a car with one of the many men who seemed to be pulling the strings of my life like a master puppeteer, and it wasn’t like we had anything else to discuss.

Dante stared at me for a long moment with his undeniably gorgeous obsidian eyes, and then when he spoke, it was in a voice more British than he normally seemed to allow.

“Let me tell you a story. It takes place in a home that is like a castle, but it is not about a beautiful princess and her prince. Instead, it’s about a man of great power who seduced a woman into marriage with false promises and then ruled like a tyrant over her for the entirety of her life. The only joy she ever had was her two sons, two boys she made a promise to herself would never turn out like their cruel father.

“She enlisted the help of her childhood best friend, a male influence to teach them about the difference between right and wrong, an important lesson they wouldn’t learn in the world of power their father ruled from.

“For a time, everything was bearable, and then, the woman discovered an awful secret that changed her entire world. She vowed to take the boys and run away with the aid of her friend. Only, her husband found out, and before she could run, he killed her.”

I blinked at him. “That doesn’t sound like any childhood fairy tale I’ve ever heard before.”

“It wouldn’t.”

“Listen, I understand that you think Noel is a cruel man. In my personal experience, I haven’t seen much of that. He was kind to me when I lived at Pearl Hall. Alexander obviously has his own issues with his father, and in the end, we weren’t allowed to spend time together, but I don’t see him as this awful villain. And I do not believe he killed your mother. Not when she was atSalvatore’s house withyouwhen she died.”

Dante’s amiable façade vanished like the plume of smoke out the open window. His eyes went black as sin and his rough-hewn face went taut with rage.

“I was there, so I should know what really happened. Mum had taken me with her to Salvatore’s to plan how we might get away from Noel. Alexander wasn’t there because he was the heir, and Mum worried he felt too much of the family obligation and was already too much like him to understand how dangerous it was to stay at Pearl Hall. We weren’t kids anymore. He was twenty-six, and I was twenty-one, so we didn’t have to blindly follow anyone anymore. But I followed her, and Alexander stayed at home.”

“Why did she decide to run after all those years?” I asked, invested in the story despite myself.

This was the great mystery. This was the reason Alexander had allied himself with a father he hated and was using the Order to find answers to his mother’s death.

If I could find the answers for him, maybe everything would be different.

The car slowed, and I realized we were stopping. Outside my side window, a field of poppies stretched as far as the eye could see, and before us stood a huge stucco home the colour of daffodils.

The door opened for me, but I didn’t get out because Dante was staring at me, his face so solemn I wondered if we were arriving at the place of my own death.

“She ran because she discovered what Noel had been doing all those years with the slave girls he took and didn’t hide from her.”

“What did he do?” I asked as Salvatore appeared at the opening to my door and stoically offered me his hand to help get out.

I didn’t take it.

“He killed them,” Dante said. “Just like he killed my mum.”

After a brief reprieve to wash my face and gather my thoughts in a spare bedroom in Salvatore’s home, I was led by a man with a gun strapped to his arm to a red flagstone patio off the back of the villa. Salvatore and Dante sat at a round wood table laden with a charcuterie feast and a huge flagon of red wine, talking animatedly in hushed voices. It was dark, the stars blazing in the velvet blue sky as they can only do in the countryside. The air had cooled enough to feel gentle against my skin, and the sweet scent of acacia blooms lingered on the breeze as it swept through the outdoor kitchen.

They both paused when they noticed me in the door, their eyes sweeping up and down my body simultaneously.

Dante’s gaze was filled with male interest and admiration.

Salvatore’s was harder to discern, but there was a slight smile on his lips that he couldn’t quite suppress that made me think he liked to see me standing in his home.

I frowned and stalked forward, taking the seat the gunman pulled out for me and crossing my legs in a business-like manner.

“Well gentleman, the hour for explanations has arrived,” I declared.

Dante didn’t even try to curb the boyish delight in his smile, but Salvatore bit his grin back and nodded solemnly.

I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t mock me. You may not have killed Chiara Davenport, but you abandoned my mother, brother, and me, then, to make matters worse, yousoldme. So you are still the villain here.”

Any humour or pleasure lingering in Salvatore’s patrician face snuffed out, and when he leaned forward to speak to me, it was in the low, unspeakably powerful voice of an Italian mafiacapo.