It was a threat Dante could take because hewasout of the game. Nothing and no one would ever convince him to come back. “Dream on that, motherfucker, cos you ain’t ever seeing me again.”
Dante dead-eyed his assailant and stepped around him. He kept moving, waiting for someone to stop him, but nobody did. He reached the fire exit and pushed it open. Fresh air that seemed too good to be true swept over him, and he stepped outside, steeling himself for heavy tread behind him.
None came. The door slammed shut, loud and final, and Dante broke. The terror he’d suppressed since Asa had snatched him boiled over and he stumbled into the shadows, retching.
There was nothing in his stomach but bile. It burnt as it came up, choking him like everything had from the moment that damn fucking bullet had hit his foot.
I can’t breathe.Hyperventilating, Dante slumped against a concrete post, hunched over, and fought his lungs—no, his brain. His lungs worked just fine; he’d just forgotten how to use them.Fuck fuck fuck.I can’t breathe.
Dante closed his eyes and a tortured scream escaped him, muffled only by his fist pressed to his mouth.I need to go. But he couldn’t make himself move, not without Asa.
See?Sid’s voice came again.You are a good person.
Dante screamed again, banging his head against his knees. He wasn’t a good person. He was theworstfucking person. He didn’t care about Asa, he just wanted to be free.I want to go home and face Sid knowing I didn’t leave that cunt to die.
That was it.
Nothing more.
Liar.
Time seemed to stand still. Dante pulled himself together, breathing slow the way a kind bunkmate had taught him in prison when leaving his cell had been a mountain he couldn’t climb on his own. Gradually, his pulse calmed, and the rush of his blood faded to a dull roar as he waited in the dark for any sign of Asa emerging.
There was a clocktower nearby. It tolled every hour. The first time Dante barely registered it, and he was taken aback the second time when he realised it was 10pm, not the middle of the night that he’d assumed. On what day, though, he had no clue. For all he knew, the skag Asa had jabbed him with could’ve knocked him out for a week.
Fucking hell.Dante rubbed his chest and thought of Sid and how often he’d seen him do the same when the medication he took made him feel so unwell. “Cruel to be kind,”he’d said. Dante thought it was just plain fucking cruel. Palpitations made him want to die and he deserved it, but Sid didn’t.
Never Sid.
Dante began to drift, carried along by thoughts of Sid as hunger and exhaustion overcame him. There was dried blood on his face from the split in his eyebrow. It tightened his skin, and his imagination ran riot, picturing his entire face fissuring and his soul spilling out to stain the damp concrete black. He still felt sick, but his body was done. Any demons left inside would have to stay.
This is it. This is who I am forever.
The proclamation made no sense, but as Dante opened his eyes to think about it, the screech of the warehouse door pierced the quiet night.
A body—abigfucking body—tumbled out, hitting the tarmac of the abandoned yard.Asa. Fresh fear seized Dante’s heart.Is he dead?
But even before the body unfurled itself and came upright, Dante knew he wasn’t. The Albanians were a slick operation. Dumping a dead body in the open wasn’t their style. They made people disappear... and they’d let Asa go.
Cautious hope threatened the despair weighing Dante down. He scrambled to his feet and crept out of the shadows. Asa turned as he emerged, and through the blood streaming from a gash on his temple, their eyes met. He grinned, and the entire fucking world left Dante’s body in a dismantling sigh of relief. “Is it over?”
Asa gripped Dante’s arm, leaning on him as much as Dante returned the favour. “Fucking A, it is, brother. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Brother.Dante pushed Asa off him, causing Asa to stumble. “You’re not my brother.”
“Easy.” Asa steadied himself and rubbed blood from his face with his elbow. “It’s just a word.”
“To you, maybe.”To me, it’s everything I fucking lost.“Whatever. Go fuck yourself, man. I’m over this shit.”
Dante veered away, staggering towards the main road with no real clue where the hell he was going except home, to Sid, if Sid would still have him.
Asa caught him and dragged him back. “Wait. Wherever you need to go, I’ll take you.”
“Fuck off.”
“No. I’m not letting you loose into the city, it’s not safe.”
“From who? You?”