Page 89 of Heir of Darkness

She turned to him with a murderous glare. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Then shut the fuck up and let me worry in silence,” she spit out.

He obliged. Luna watched nurses and doctors run around the waiting room. Her heartbeat sped up every time she thought they were finally bringing some news about Valerio, but it was always a false alarm.

“When did you fall in love with him?” Dante asked suddenly.

She sighed. “Far earlier than I thought I would.”

“I had someone like that once.” He looked at the hallway in front of him as if he was remembering something beautiful. “He was the love of my life. He was bright-eyed, with the whitest hair I had ever seen. I swear to God he had to have been bleaching it or something, but he denied it.”

“He sounds beautiful.”

“He was,” Dante said, a small smile on his face. In an instant, the smile was gone. “Until I found him with a bullet in his back, tossed in a bathtub like he was a piece of trash.”

Horror struck her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You didn’t kill him. My father did,” he said.

“Why are you telling me about this?” Luna asked, her voice shaky.

Dante turned to face her. He leaned in close, his voice a low whisper. “Reece Kingsley trying to kill Valerio makes sense. Too much sense. It’s almost the perfect cover-up, don’t you think?” He shook his head. “There is one man I know that hides behind the easy kill, that has a specific specialty: my father.”

Luna swallowed harshly. “What are you saying?”

“Cesare Vitali prefers his enemies be killed with a bullet to the back to blindside them, to make them regret turning their back on him. The minute Valerio chose you over our father, that was exactly what he did; he turned his back on the Vitalifamily in my father’s eyes. But he wouldn’t kill Valerio unless the bloodline was secured and continued.”

Luna’s mouth dropped open. “A baby.”

“Exactly. Your pregnancy secured an heir without him needing Valerio around. The baby would be someone he could manipulate, and by blaming your own father for it, you would have no choice but to trust the Vitali empire.” Dante let out a laugh of disbelief. “Even though Valerio told you not to trust our father, you still jumped on your father as being the culprit. It’s genius. Both sides targeting their own children so they have a reason not to unite, so they can continue their wars.”

“He tried to kill Valerio,” Luna whispered. The thought made her nauseous. How had everything become so twisted that there wasn’t a single soul they could trust anymore?

“You have more worth to my father as long as he believes you are pregnant,” he said. “But only until the baby is born.”

“There is no fucking baby,” she whisper-screamed. The guilt tore through her body.

“Do you see the problem now?” Dante muttered.

“How do you even know all of this?” Luna asked. “What if you’re wrong?”

“Maybe I am,” he said. “But as it stands, Valerio is lying in an operating room clinging onto his life. Someone is responsible for it and there are two people who are at the front of this chaos.”

She finally understood what Dante was saying. For the longest time she had been thinking they had to unite the families in order to stop the madness between them. But that wasn’t what they needed.

No, they needed to do the opposite.

“You want to get rid of Reece Kingsley and Cesare Vitali?” Luna asked, her voice slow, making sure he heard every single word that came out of her mouth. What they wanted was a betrayal they couldn’t turn back from. It guaranteed them deathif anyone found out or if they didn’t succeed. But if any of them wanted a chance at a normal life, if they wanted to start their families and avoid their children living in the same generational trauma as they all did, then they needed to change who ran things.

“I want them dead,” Dante clarified. “And so do you.”

Before Luna could say another word, the girls were walking toward her with a bag of clothes. They practically dragged her to the bathroom where they washed the blood off her arms and legs and put her into a pair of sweats and one of Valerio’s hoodies.

She was numb, but when she came back to the waiting room chair, something changed. There was a different energy in the air, signaling change was approaching. They could either get on it, or they could miss it and end up with bullets in all of their backs.

Whatever it was gave Luna something to focus on, something to set her mind to. Valerio would pull through; he would. And when he did, they would start taking control of their lives.

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