Page 63 of Vicious Souls

“What happened to bring you here in the first place was an accident, Dante. You can’t go on punishing yourself for something that was always meant to happen.”

* * *

I findKingsley in the graveyard, where my security told me she would be. She has braved the unknown and waded through the overgrown weeds to get to the cemetery, and I have to give her credit as I watch her back rise and fall with every breath she takes. I approach her quietly, then say her name when I’m closer so she doesn’t startle. She turns to look at me, a flash of guilt tracking across her face, followed by a silent apology as she realizes what she’s done.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I came.” She shakes her head. “I do know. I followed you. But I don’t know why.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to spend your morning in an old graveyard,” I smirk, breaking the ice and absolving her of any wrongdoing. In telling her I didn’t invite her because I didn’t think she’d be interested in starting out her morning this way, I take the burden of guilt off her shoulders and place it elsewhere.

“There are graves here more than a hundred and fifty years old,” she tells me, surprise coating her voice. “It must have been beautiful once upon a time.” She turns back to the church and admires the old building, showing she has an appreciation for historic sites. “How do you even know this place?”

“Walk with me?” I ask, leading her out of the graveyard. She follows, and as we step out onto the street, I realise that she isn’t wearing a coat. I take mine off and drape it across her shoulders, scolding her for leaving the house without a coat.

“Can we stay here forever?” she asks. I look at her as we walk, questioning her request. “It seems like we’re a whole other world away from the mess we were in with Tate and the Savages. It’s so peaceful here. Normal. Quiet.”

“And what would you do with your father’s businesses? Properties? Contracts?”

She shrugs. Then she throws her hands up and tells me she could sell them. I try to convince her that it’s not as simple to sell things off as it is to talk about doing so.

“I don’t know that I’m cut out for being a businesswoman, Dante.”

Her uncertainty and self-doubt is something I’ve not previously been privy to. Not until we’d placed her squarely at the head of the Murray family and told her to be boss. She has a lot of catching up to do, with the fear of failure ever present at the forefront of her mind. And of course, with the added stress of Tate looming over her, she will most likely be second guessing every move she makes.

“No one can force this on you, Kingsley. My recommendation is that you give it a year, six months minimum. If you find it’s not for you, you can re-assess and make better decisions. Don’t forget, you’ll have a whole team of advisors, so you’ll literally be doing nothing but making decisions.”

“I’ve never had to make decisions,” she reminds me. “They’ve always been made for me, even down to the hideous outfit Marco resorted to burning because he was traumatized by it.”

We laugh together at the memory as we continue to walk. When we reach a coffee shop, I grab her hand and pull her through behind me, where we order coffee and slide into a booth.

“We have a nasty habit of showing up to empty restaurants,” Kingsley observes, looking around the empty coffeeshop in confusion. “What is the universe trying to tell us?”

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, I hope it’s rooting for us.”

56

KINGSLEY

It’s as we’re leaving the coffee shop that I notice two things. One is the sign in the door telling customers the shop is closed. Which means there’s a reason why we were the only two patrons inside the shop. The other is the fact that the owners could not thank Dante enough when he slides his black card across the counter to pay for our coffees. They are so high on singing his praises, I think they won’t stop long enough to let us leave. I may have been sheltered from the real world my whole life, but I am nobody’s fool when it comes to understanding situations for what they are.

“How much did you pay them?” I ask him.

“What?” He looks surprised that I am even asking.

“Do you always make it a habit to shut down restaurants when you feel like it?”

“Not always. But almost everything I do is deliberate, Kingsley.”

“What do you mean?”

“This shop has been here for years. They make the best coffee. They also have the best prices, because in this economy, they have to be competitive to stay afloat. But their good intentions have landed them in some financial strife. So I popped in and asked for a favor. Because they were so accommodating, I paid them enough to cover their rent for the next year. That should help in getting them back on their feet.”

I look at him, gobsmacked. The lengths he went to in order to help these people. The sort of money he drops on keeping a coffee shop afloat for another year in this city is a person’s wage, so I understand the kind of money he’s paid here today. EvenIhave heard the notorious stories about the price of real estate in New York.

“How did you even know all this about them before you stepped into the shop?”

The smile Dante gives me is doing things to my insides I can’t explain. There is so much for me to learn about him. So much I still haven’t unpacked. And so much I can learn from him.

“Everything was carefully orchestrated,” he begins. “From the moment my guy told me you left the house and tracked me down the road, I set things in motion. You just accelerated my plan.”

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