Page 7 of Where Quiet Hearts Scream (Dark Hearts #3)

A ndrew

I wait until she’s left the restaurant before I let my shoulders relax. Then they drop a little too heavily, like a weight has been lifted.

I recognize the symbols, the lines, the aspects. It all still rings so true—my character and her analysis of it.

You want to be first in everything—the best.

That’s true.

You often are.

That’s also true.

She suggested I might watch from the shadows and carefully plan my moves. She has little comprehension of just how true that is.

Some might even say, ‘feared.’”

I’d probably switch out “some” for “ most,” but who’s keeping score?

She suggested I “ attract danger .” Baby, I am danger.

But there was one insight that stunned me with its accuracy. She suggested I might have lived two lives.

You could slice a knife through the middle of my timeline and the two halves wouldn’t recognize each other.

The first half was about survival—making it through the night without a blade in my temple or barrel in my mouth.

The second is about ruling everyone and everything that once upon a time held said blade and barrel.

My dead father’s men, the government, the fucking South Boston gangs.

The first life is history. The second is gonna make history.

I settle back in my seat and as I replay the conversation, my chest begins to heat.

It’s a liquid sensation that flows through my veins into the muscle tissue lining my arms and abdomen.

She mentioned people coming into my life who’ll transform me.

Love and obsession, endings, beginnings.

I know of at least one ending—the man who stood by my father’s side as he turned an eight-year-old boy into a killing machine.

And I know of at least one beginning—a renewed relationship with a long-lost brother.

And hopefully a second—an alliance with New York’s ruling mafia family.

That’s why I’m here, after all. I’ve taken Providence already, keeping my name and face out of the action.

I don’t want Benito, my brother, to know I’m so close.

Not until I’m ready to show my hand, and I won’t be ready until I’m confident I know everything I need to know about the Di Santo’s.

And when I do, I will make it known what I want.

I want Boston.

I want to exterminate the gangs that have ruled the south of the city for too long. I want to build wealth there, create a legacy that outlives me. I want to show everyone who once had a connection to my father that I rule it now. And I want my brother to rule it with me.

Of course, there’s a chance he won’t want that.

There’s a chance he might be bitter about the fact I haven’t shown my face in a decade.

I can explain that the reason I let him believe I was dead for so long was to fool my father’s connections so I can annihilate them when they least expect it. He might choose to hate me anyway.

Either way, Serafina was right in saying something’s about to change. I know it is, because I’m the catalyst.

I breathe steadily, impressed at her ability to interpret my chart with such accuracy, and warmed at the familiarity. Her commentary echoed the one I heard all those years ago. But hearing Serafina’s conclusions, the ones she’d drawn using her own knowledge, understanding and intuition, lit me up.

Her interpretation was spot on.

And she sees me for who I really am. But I could tell, through her stuttered words and shy glances, she doesn’t want to admit how closely she just grazed the truth.

I finish my water and go to stand, but something in the hall outside the restaurant catches my eyes and stiffens my shoulders once again. I crane my neck and narrow my focus. It can’t be. Not again.

A thin man dressed in a bad suit, with a cigarette hanging from his lips, walks past the restaurant.

I step to the side for a closer look but he’s disappeared around the corner.

My heart pounds against my ribcage, at first with something that feels like terror, but that’s just the child in me. I’m not that child anymore.

Striding quickly, I make my way out to the hall, my gaze searching for the man.

It can’t be him. It’s not possible. My father was killed in a gang shoot-out eight years ago in the Bronx.

As far as I know, he was buried beneath a parking lot, no headstone to his name.

This thought alone lifts me as I quicken my gait.

I push past a couple moving too slowly and follow the man’s footsteps through the lobby and out of the main exit.

In the blinding glare of sunlight, I stop short.

The man is standing a few feet from the exit talking to the valet. It’s not him . Emotions flood out of me. Hatred, bitterness, rage… vengeance .

Cool, hard emotions with nothing to take them out on.

Because my father is fucking dead.

Six feet under, where he belongs.