Page 94 of Vicious Souls

Fiona struggles beneath me, her eyes wild. “It’s mine! It’s all mine!He told me!”

“Who told you, Fiona? Who?”

“My father,” she whispers, right before I drop my arm and drive the shard of glass through her neck.

* * *

My recovery is slow.It’s excruciatingly painful. It takes me weeks to even be able to get up and walk about without assistance. But finally I’m on the road to recovery, with Dante right by my side.

Fiona’s dead. From what we were able to piece together about her life, she was Tate’s daughter. Whether biological or not, he somehow made her believe that she was actually my father’s daughter, banished and cast aside because she was born out of wedlock, the rightful heir to the Murray empire. It seemed like that was Tate’s Plan B. If he was unable to get to me, the obvious next step would be to passheroff as Kingsley Murray. I don’t know how long he’d been planning and scheming, nor how his plan had devolved over time, but I can only imagine that no-one knowingwhoKingsley Murray is or what ‘he’ looks like would have only helped him in his cause.

There’s been no trace of Tate, and he didn’t claim Fiona’s body, so it’s anyone’s guess where he is and when he’ll strike again.

* * *

My hands look clean.But they’re not. Beneath the soap and water, beneath the illusion of normalcy, they’re slick with blood—blood I can never wash away. My first kill. A milestone in this world of shadows and whispered threats. I tell myself it will be my last, but the lie rings hollow in my ears. In our world, nothing is certain, except that there’s always someone waiting in the dark to test your resolve.

This life isn’t something you ease into. It grabs you by the throat and drags you under, suffocating you with its rules and rituals. The first lesson you learn? Trust no one. Everyone wears a mask. Allies can become enemies overnight, and enemies might one day save your life. You walk a tightrope every day, balancing loyalty and survival, knowing one wrong move could send you plummeting into the abyss.

My initiation is brutal. It comes at the expense of taking another human’s life. But make no mistake, it was either her or me. One of us was going to die that day. I just didn’t choose it to be me.

With this, I’ve developed a second skin, one that’s impervious to fear, doubt, and pain. And yet, beneath my hardened exterior, I’m still human, still haunted by the things I’ve done and the things I know I’ll have to do.

This life doesn’t just change you; it consumes you. It seeps into your soul, turning every decision into a gamble, every relationship into a potential liability. You start to question who you are, who you’ve become. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. In this world, survival trumps identity. And survival demands sacrifice.

This is what I tell myself every night before I go to sleep. Even as Dante wraps his body around mine, cocooning me in his protection, careful not to lean into my healing wound, a guard dog intent on never letting me out of his sight again.

We’ve been inseparable since Fiona crashed into my home and made a mess of things. Mainly, my floor as her blood soaked into the marble tiles. I can never look at those tiles again and not remember what happened, so I’ve moved into Dante’s place while mine is getting retiled. Then I plan to lease it out. It doesn’t make sense for a couple that’s soon to be married to be residing in two different places.

The companies, too. We’re consolidating everything and merging our empires to form a dynasty. One that I know will take us to new heights. One that we can run together, creating a legacy for generations to come.

* * *

“Where to?”I ask, like an excited school girl when Dante suggests we go for a drive. Things have been relatively quiet in the weeks after Fiona attacked me. There have been no more threats, no more roses, and no indication that Tate is still in the country. Of course, I don’t miss the security that’s been ramped up in the lead up to our wedding, but I guess that’s what happens when you run a multi-billion dollar industry. Dante’s not taking any chances when it comes to our family’s safety, and I don’t blame him.

Dante is tight-lipped as we make our way to the underground garage. He opens the door and steps aside for me to walk through. He pushes his hand to the small of my back and guides me to the lift, shooting a spark of electricity through my bones. His touch alone is enough to undo me each and every time his hand makes contact with my body.

We drive out of the city in the Maserati and head towards the Cascade Mountains. Dante decides to ditch the security detail in favor of a few hours of sanity, and I’ve never felt as free as I do in this moment, sitting beside him, shutting out the rest of the world as we fly through the streets unhindered.

The work to repair the damage done to Dante’s home when Tate’s men broke in is done and Dante’s eager to show me the finished product. He promises the house looks nothing like it did before, and my excitement matches his as we speed through the countryside on the way to the estate.

“I thought you said you were going to burn the house down to the ground,” I remind him.

He shakes his head. “I could never do that.” His gaze moves from the road to settle on me as we wind down the gravel road that leads to the house. “It’s the house where I spent my first few years with my mother before she passed. It’s the home where all my memories reside.”

“The house where we’ll make many more memories?” I ask. I’d like nothing better than to move away from the city and into the house that started my love affair with Dante Accardi.

“You never did tell me whose room you put me in.”

“That room belonged to my brother Rollo,” he says, and I’m momentarily stunned into silence. Dante never speaks of Rollo. I never even knew he had a brother until I read the letter my father left in his will.

“You never mentioned him,” I whisper, my eyes never wavering from him. Even when we drive up to the house and he switches off the motor, I make no move to exit the car, so engrossed am I in watching every little emotion on his face.

“It’s not easy for me to talk about him.” Dante stares through the windscreen, but his mind is trapped somewhere in a past he cannot let go of. And even though he says he doesn’t like to talk about it, I feel like I have to talk to him about this. I want to know, need to know. With every fiber of my being, I need to know each and every event that’s shaped his life and made him who he is today. How can I not?

“He was older?” I ask him. He nods, swallowing past a lump in his throat as he tells me that Rollo had been four years older than him. He exits the car and comes around to my side, opens the door and holds out his hand to me.

“Come on,” he smiles, and I’m disarmed by his beauty as I stare up at him, watching him push his hair back off his forehead. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries to style his hair back, it somehow always seems to make its way across his forehead to fall in a jagged streak over one eye.

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