“He told me once he wished you were the same horrible cunt you were when you dragged him to that fucking snooker club, but something changed in you the moment that bullet hit, and it’s been harder for him to hate you ever since. Does that mean anything to you?”
Dante stopped walking. The full circle from cooking Sid dinner to the dark day that had landed him in prison in the first place gave him vertigo, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. Pain and fear laced those memories, but beyond that, there was light. And there’d been light in Dante’s soul ever since, a slow burn that had sparked brighter the moment Sid had come into his life.Am I a different person now? Was Sid right all along?“It means everything,” Dante whispered, then louder, “I don’t expect him to ever forgive me, but I’m not the same person who hurt him so much. If he ever believes it, that’s enough for me.”
Paolo laughed again, but it was softer this time, more like Sid than Dante was prepared for. “Keep doing what you’re doing, mate, and he’ll believe it. If your brother knows anything at all, it’s how much a second chance fucking matters. Be safe, yeah? Talk soon.”
He hung up.
Dazed, Dante lowered his phone, but in truth, he’d been in a trance for far longer than the snatched minutes he’d spent on the phone with Paolo. Asa. Sid. Asa. Sid. His mind jumped back and forth, from hell to heaven, rinse and repeat. Adding Luis to the mix was too much. He couldn’t do it.You have to. He’s your brother. Loving him made the good parts of you, even if you fucked it up in the end. If you hadn’t loved him, you wouldn’t know how to love Sid.
The comparison made no sense, but it didn’t need to. Luis was the solid oak door, and Sid had kicked it wide open. Only Asa remained between them.“If your brother knows anything at all, it’s how much a second chance fucking matters.”
Luis had got his second chance. So had Martell. And now Dante too. Didn’t Asa deserve the same? His head said Asa Gerrard wasn’t his fucking problem, but his heart?
If Asa isn’t yours, then you’re not Paolo’s.
Or Luis’s.
Or Sid’s.
Dante forced one foot in front of the other and kept moving, Sid’s shopping list burning a hole in his pocket as the darker side of his brain switched to a mode he’d spent the last few years trying to forget. Helping Asa meant stepping back in time and becoming the man he’d just told Paolo was long dead.The fucking irony. Except, it wasn’t ironic. It was inevitable.Right?
A car skidded to a stop at the side of the road, mounting the kerb. Dante lurched out of the way, dropping his phone. It clattered to the pavement.Motherfucker. He crouched to retrieve it.
The screen was shattered. Dante cursed again, out loud this time. “Motherfu—”
A gloved hand sealed his mouth shut. “Easy, there, Pope. Hand it over.”
Asa.
Dante almost rolled his eyes, but the gun pressed to his ribcage, cold and unyielding, killed any humour stone dead.
He held the phone out.
Asa took it and dug the barrel of the gun in harder, a low growl rumbling from his chest like he thought he was a goddamn wolf. “That’s it. Now get in the car like a good little road boy and I won’t blow your fucking head off.”
He let his hand drop from Dante’s mouth.
Dante laughed. “You’re not going to blow my head off.”
“Aren’t I?” Asa turned Dante around and crowded him against the car that still had its engine running.
Dante fought a flinch, but a shudder ran through him all the same, and Asa felt it. Of course he did.Perceptive bastard. All those years Asa, Dante, Martell, they’d fed off each other, getting under the skin of any fucker that got in their way. Honest men like Luis had never stood a chance.
“Wake up,” Asa snapped. “Look at me.”
“I am,” Dante drawled. But he wasn’t, not really. Disassociation kicked in. The roadside blurred to only sounds that made no sense as his brain pushed them away.Focus. Just do what he wants and get it over with. Logic told him, as it had done since Asa had shown up yesterday, that he wouldn’t actually kill him, but as perspective returned to him and Asa’s face solidified, Dante’s frightened heart sank.
Something had changed. Asa was a handsome man, but his trademark sharp threads and smooth face were long gone, and in its place were dirty clothes, an unshaven jaw, and bloodshot, wild eyes.
Fuck. Dante’s pulse struck up an ominous tattoo. Real fear replaced untethered panic. Asa Gerrard had become a desperate man, and if there was one lesson Dante had never forgotten, it was that desperate men had nothing to lose.
* * *
Sid’s day turned out to be the sum of two parts, one spent fretting over the clusterfuck the pumpkin display was threatening to become if he didn’t get a shift on, the other with his head in the clouds as he daydreamed about running home to Dante.
His body always hurt, but today he enjoyed it, appreciating every ache and twinge for what it was: a reminder that he was alive.
And honestly, he didn’t give two fucks about the garden party display. By the time five o’clock rolled around, finished or not, he was done with it.