Dante’s Girl (27 page)

I decide that as I’m jostled about by the crowds overlooking the Bay of Valese.  I’m still tired, even though I slept for hours.  Even though I’m standing here with the sun on my shoulders surrounded by a festival-like atmosphere and anxious to see Dante.  In spite of all of that, I’m still tired.

I’m so lame. 

But I’m excited, too. I can’t help it.  Everyone around me is excited and their excitement is contagious.

Apparently, the Regatta is a big deal thing here. There are streamers and signs and balloons and street vendors.  It’s a huge party and everyone is happy. 

Hundreds of boats have signed up for the big race.  I can see all of their sails billowing in the breeze as the boats line up for the start.  Apparently, the winner gets $10,000 and the annual trophy, which is a huge sailboat made from crystal. 

It’s sitting on a giant pedestal now on the edge of the beach.

I can see it from here, glittering in the sun.

“There’s Dante,” Mia tells me, nudging my arm.

I look and sure enough, there he is. 

The Daniella
is floating out in the middle of the bay, although it is moving just a little closer to shore.  I can hear the metallic sounds of a microphone being tested.  And Dante just stepped out onto the deck of the yacht.  He’s turned around now, talking to his father. 

I look around, at the happy faces, and I’m glad that I’m here.  There is a band playing happy music.  I can’t understand the words of the songs because they’re singing in Caberran, but the music sounds happy.  People are dancing in the streets and a little boy next to me tugs at his mother’s arm until she buys him pink cotton candy from a street vendor.  I smile at him and then for some reason, I look past his mom, into the crowd.

And on the edge of everyone, through the sea of strange faces, I see Vincent. 

He’s standing alone, observing the festivities. 

I shake my head. 

“Hey look,” I tell Mia.  “It’s Vincent.”  She hasn’t heard from him since the night on the boat.  He hadn’t even answered any of her texts.  And she deserves to know why. 

“Jerk!” she snaps, glaring at him.  “I’m not wasting my time, Reece.”

I start to say something else, to encourage her to confront him, when another face appears next to Vincent. 

A face with white-blond hair and ice-blue eyes.

Nate.

I suck in my breath.

Vincent drops his head to say something in Nate’s ear and it is clear that they are together.

Again.

There is something strange going on here.

My mind immediately starts spinning, trying to fit pieces together.  Nate and Vincent.  Vincent and Nate.  They shouldn’t be together. They have nothing in common.  Yet, they must.  But what?

My mind spins.

What do they have in common?

What?

The Regatta?

Mia?

Me?

And then my gaze brushes across the
Daniella
and I know.

Dante.

Of course it’s Dante.  They were whispering on the grounds of his estate.  They are together now at the Regatta that he is hosting.  Vincent is probably who Nate was talking to that day on the beach when I overheard him talking about Dante.

What are they planning?

What the eff are they planning?

I look at Mia and she is staring at them too.  And I can see on her face that she is also trying to figure it out.

“What’s going on?” I ask her.

She shakes her head.  “I don’t know.”

I look back at them and they are gone now, disappeared into the crowd.  And then I catch one glimpse of Vincent’s back. He’s headed down to toward the beach.  And before I can think, I start shoving through the crowd to follow him.  Mia is close on my heels.

“Excuse me,” I tell people as I shove them. “I’m sorry.  Excuse me.”

Vincent doesn’t notice me because he’s still far enough ahead of me.

I wind my way down to the beach and I see Vincent ducking down in a secluded area about fifty yards away. 

As I run toward him, I look at the
Daniella. 
Dimitri, Elena and Dante are all on the stern of the ship and I hear Dimitri begin talking into the microphone.  Dante and Elena are waving at the crowd. 

And I no longer care if Vincent sees me, because I can feel in my heart that something is very, very wrong here.

Vincent bends down, kneeling on his knees in the sand and I see wires in his hands. 

Wires.

He looks up and sees me at the same time as I see something small and black in his hands.  And it is attached to the wires.  He’s alarmed and starts to get up and I whirl around. 

“Dante!” I scream.  Mia starts screaming too and we’re screaming at the top of our lungs.  But so is the rest of the crowd.  Everyone is clapping and screaming and whistling and Dante can’t hear us over the rest of them.

I look over my shoulder and Vincent isn’t chasing us. 

Weird.

And the look on his face is weird, too.  It’s almost happy. And he is messing with the little black thing in his hands. 

Everything is in slow motion now. 

I turn, screaming for Dante again and this time, his eyes meet mine.  He’s standing on the stern of the
Daniella
and his beautiful blue eyes meet mine. 

And then his boat explodes. 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Fire is everywhere in the bay.

The
Daniella
is in pieces.

Mia and I are screaming and everyone around us is running. 

Vincent is gone.

And I have to find Dante. 

I run toward the water and plow into it, pushing away a piece of fiberglass that is floating next to me.  It’s charred and jagged and I know it’s a piece of Dante’s boat.

I start crying as I plunge into the water and I try to swim but someone is holding onto my foot.

And then they’re pulling my foot.

I turn and find a security guard.  He’s pulling me out of the water and telling me that we have to go.  We have to go right now.

Apparently, Dante had a security detail assigned to me after all.

I argue and struggle because I have to find Dante.

But the security guard won’t let me go. 

“Mia!” I scream.  “Find Dante.”

She looks dazed and confused and I know she’s in shock.  And so am I.  And Dante hasn’t emerged from the water.  Neither has his father or Elena.

In my panic to find him, I start fighting against the security guard again. I’m hitting him with my cast and I’m so afraid and hysterical that I don’t feel the pain.

He scoops me up and throws me over his shoulder.

And he carries me away from the water. Away from where Dante must be.  He steps over the shattered remains of the crystal Regatta trophy.  The tiny pieces glimmer in the sun like jewels.

“You don’t understand,” I cry.  “I have to find him. Please.  Please put me down.”

But he doesn’t. 

I twist around to look behind us and now I don’t see Mia.  And I still don’t see Dante.  And I can hardly see anything because tears are blurring my vision.

The bay is in shambles.  All of the boats that were lined up for the race have caught fire from the explosion and there is mass panic and chaos as some people evacuate and others try to extinguish the flames.

I squeeze my eyes shut and bang my hands uselessly against the security guard’s back. It doesn’t help.  He acts like I’m not even there.  He just continues to carry me through the crowds and up to the street where a black car is waiting.  He speaks into his earpiece and then deposits me into the backseat of the waiting car.

He looks down at me as he’s fastening me into the seatbelt.  His eyes are kind and through my panic and confusion, I almost feel badly about hitting him so many times.  But he doesn’t seem to mind.  Maybe, in all of the chaos and hysteria, he didn’t even notice.

“It will be alright,” he tells me.  He slaps the top of the car twice and it speeds away.

And they’re taking me away from Dante.

“Please stop,” I beg the driver.  I know from his black suit that he is a member of the security team, too.  “I have to hunt for Dante.  Please.”

“I can’t, miss,” he tells me, without taking his eyes from the road. “I have orders. This is your evacuation plan.”

Evacuation plan?

I have an evacuation plan?

Through my confusion and tears, I stop and try to think.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.  “Back to Giliberti House?”

The driver shakes his head.

“No. This is a Code Red Evacuation.  You are to be taken to a plane immediately. You’ll use the Prime Minister’s private jet and it will fly you to London.  We’ll be at Heathrow in less than four hours.”

“We?” I meet his eyes in the rearview mirror. 

“Yes, we.  You and I.  I have orders to not leave your side until you are with your father.”

I feel numb.  This can’t be happening.

“How do I have an evacuation plan?” I ask simply.  I can’t think of anything else to ask. This is happening so quickly. 

“Everyone close to the Prime Minister has one,” he tells me. 

“Where is Dimitri?” I ask. “And Dante?  Did you see them?  Are they okay?”

“I don’t know, miss.” The security guard averts his eyes and I don’t want to think about what that might mean.

I’m getting frantic again.  I stare out the tinted windows of the car and we’re speeding away from the coast, away from the bay, and away from the last place that I’d seen Dante.

“I can’t leave here.  Don’t you understand?” I am practically shouting.  “I can’t leave Dante.”

“You have to,” the security guard tells me. “You don’t have a choice.  It’s not safe here. This is what Dante wants.  He approved this plan of action for you.”

“He wanted you to take me away?”

I am shocked.  And I sit limply as the security guard nods. 

“In the case of an assassination attempt, yes.  He approved this plan to remove you from Caberra.”

Assassination.

Attempt.

I am stunned.

Because it happened so quickly, I hadn’t had time to think about it.  Vincent tried to assassinate Dimitri.  And Dante was with his father.  And Nate had to have been in on it.  That’s why Nate and Vincent have been together lately.  That’s the connection. 

That’s who Nate had been talking about on the phone that day. 

And this was all about Dimitri. 

It wasn’t Dante at all.  Dante was collateral damage.

Dante was. 

I’m already speaking of him in the past tense. 

I gulp. 

“Is Dante dead?” I whisper. 

The security guard looks at me through the rearview mirror and then looks back at the road. 

“I don’t know.”

And then I can’t speak anymore because I am crying.  I try to cry quietly so that I don’t get hysterical again.  I curl into a ball on the seat and I cry until we pull into the airport hangar. 

The security guard opens my door and unfastens my seat belt, then helps me from the car. 

“I’m Daniel, miss.  And I’ll be by your side until I hand you off to your father.  We’ll call him en route.  I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I nod and my eyes are red and burning and the tears are still running down my cheeks.  You would think that I would run out of tears but I haven’t.  My feet move numbly on their own accord as Daniel escorts me onto the plane.  I walk past the lone flight attendant without saying a word. 

Ordinarily, I would be astounded at the lavish airplane. I would be in awe of the luxury that surrounds me here. But right now, in this moment, I don’t care.  I curl up on a leather sofa and cry some more.

Daniel covers me with a soft blanket and he sits across from me.  He stares out the window and he lets me cry.

I can’t think of anything other than Dante.

I see his face, his smile, his hands.  I hear his voice.  I hear his laugh.  I see the look on his face as he balanced above me in the pool house.  And then I see the look on his face right before the
Daniella
exploded.  His eyes were soft, because he’d just found me in the crowd.  I’ll never forget that look.

It was probably the last time that I’ll see it. 

I know it. 

And the last thing he’d said to me this morning was
I love you.
 

That makes me cry all the harder.

This can’t be happening.

Yet it is.

All of those times that Dante tried telling me how complicated his life is… I didn’t listen.  I got frustrated and annoyed.  But he was so right.  His life was complicated.

And now it’s over.

OhMyGod.

I’m not going to think like that. I’m not going to think that Dante is dead until someone tells me the actual words. 

But the fire.  There was so much fire. 

And my heart knows that no one could survive that.

I picture the piece of fiberglass that floated past me in the bay and I remember how jagged and charred it was. And Dante had been standing on top of that.  And if it is in pieces then so is…

OHMYGOD.

I can’t think like this.

I can’t.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to think of nothing at all. But it’s hard.

Impossible.

And so I torture myself with images from the explosion, Dante’s face, his smile and pretty much everything about him for the entire four and a half hour flight.

The plane lands at Heathrow International Airport and I watch sightlessly as we taxi into the hangar.  Because it’s a private plane, I get to bypass customs and security and I walk down the tunnel into the terminal. 

And my dad is standing there.

And I start running. 

He grabs me and holds me and I cry onto his shirt.

“Daddy,” I whimper.

From behind me, I hear Daniel. 

“You’ll be fine now, miss,” he tells me.  And he turns to get back onto the plane. 

I let go of my father and grab Daniel’s arm.

“Thank you,” I tell him simply. And then I hug him.  He seems surprised, but then his arms close around me and he hugs me back.

“I’m sure they will contact you as soon as they can,” Daniel tells me solemnly.  “They’ll let you know what is going on.”