The Losing Game (25 page)

“How many people have you killed?”

Dante sat motionless, like a statue crafted in bronze, except for the slow heaving of his chest against his jumper. Lucas waited. He held his breath. He wished against futile odds to be wrong.

“Dante?”

“Is that what you think? That I make a habit of murder whenever it suits me? That I get some sort of thrill out of killing people? That everything I said to you when you first came to see me was a lie?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“I’ve killed one man.
One man.
A long time ago.”

Lucas’s heart hammered in his chest, and his vision blurred. It was as if the months were flying past him in reverse, back in time. Or perhaps time stood still and it was Lucas hurtling back in time. To Avery. To that night in the bar when she’d given Lucas a gilt-edged business card that had led him here, then to Adam, then to madness.

“Avery knew.”

“
No.
She didn’t.”

“Then why…? How…?”

Dante aged a decade in the time it took him to face Lucas. “She knew I could plan a crime. That’s all.” His brows furrowed, further darkening his eyes into two pools of infinite sadness. “A long time ago, before I got Lois and Kit, I used to plan burglaries for a gang on the mainland. Avery wasn’t a part of it, but she knew what I did.”

Dante, part of a gang? Lucas didn’t buy it, but he didn’t say so.

“What do you mean, before you got Lois and Kit?”

The depth and length of Dante’s sigh seemed to span an age.

“Tell me.”

“Why? Why tell you anything when you’ve already decided I’m a psychopath? When you’re going to leave anyway?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You will.”

“You don’t know that. For Christ’s sake, give me some credit.”

“All right,” he said, again more quietly. “All right.”

Dante stood like his bones were lead and returned to the drinks cabinet, where he refilled his tumbler. He kept his back to Lucas, and it was plain to see the weight of the burden he carried pressing on his shoulders. He drank a long mouthful of the liquor, refilled again, and returned to the sofa.

“When I was nineteen, I met a man called Flynn. He owned a nightclub on the mainland. Also, he and his crew robbed jewelers, stately homes, and anywhere else that took his fancy. We were already lovers when he recruited me.”

Dante looked at Lucas, searching his face. Lucas nodded for him to continue.

“For seven years—more—I loved every minute of it, and I loved Flynn. Planning crimes was a game. A riddle to be solved. An escape from the inevitable.”

“The inevitable?”

Dante cast his eyes around the room, to the ceiling where the rose motif had been continued from the shop, in the cornices and the plaster molding around the light fitting.

“Inevitably, one day, I was going to inherit this business. The shop.”

“I thought you liked the shop.”

“It’s grown on me, with time. But back then, I had other ideas. I wanted excitement and glamour.” He shook his head. “I was young, and I worshipped Flynn. He was forceful, charming, and he used to tell me he couldn’t do without me. I was his right-hand man.”

Lucas sensed bitterness—that it had been an ugly parting. “You were his right-hand man? Not the love of his life?”

“He loved me. In his way.”

“But not as much as you loved him.”

Dante took another sip of his drink. “No. Not as much. Not until I stopped loving him.”

“What went wrong?”

“My father died.”

“What’s that got to do with…? I don’t understand.”

“I made a promise to my father, before he died, that I wouldn’t sell Le Plaisir. Running the business on my own left me less time to work for Flynn. We argued, and I thought he might be finished with me. To try to keep him, I agreed to plan riskier jobs.”

Lucas tried and failed to picture this younger Dante, in his twenties, a little younger than Lucas. Desperate to please his lover. Prepared to do anything to keep him.

Dante continued, “A businessman from the north end of Roseport Island wanted to take out some of his competition. The goods to be stolen were undocumented. Uninsured. But Joon Kim didn’t have the cash to pay Flynn upfront, so he signed over ownership of four terraced houses in Roseport, with the rest in cash to follow after the job.”

“Bloody hell. That must have been some job.”

“It was worth several million.”

As Lucas’s eyes widened, Dante downed the last of his liquor. “I thought I’d hit the jackpot. I was supposed to get half of the proceeds.”

“Supposed? What happened?”

“Joon Kim was killed a week after Flynn got the deeds. The official word was a car accident.”

“Unofficially?”

“Someone took his head off with a meat cleaver.”

“Flynn?”

“No. Not him personally. He never got his hands dirty. I didn’t know what happened, and I didn’t ask. As soon as Joon Kim was last week’s news, Flynn sent me to check over the houses. He planned to sell to a developer. It was the easiest money he’d ever made, and he couldn’t wait.
I
couldn’t wait.”

Joon Kim was a Korean name. Lucas’s mind started to leap ahead. He reined himself in. Dante’s speech was slow and slurred and raw with emotion. The firelight illuminated his skin, like flames on burnished metal. Lucas longed to touch him, to reach out to him, but he was scared that if he moved, Dante would stop talking.

Dante returned his tumbler to the coffee table and eased back, his eyes still fixed far away on the past. “All four houses should have been unoccupied, but two children were living in the fourth, alone. Their mother had gone out a fortnight before and never come home.” A look of desperate sorrow passed over his face. “At the time, Lois was nine and Kit eight.”

“Lois and Kit?”

“Yes.” Dante cleared his throat. “They hid in a cupboard when I entered the house. I wouldn’t have known they were there, except when I was standing in the kitchen about to call Flynn, Lois pushed open the door and reached for me.” His expression softened. “She told me afterwards, she didn’t mean to. Kit had wriggled and accidentally pushed her out.”

“They must have been terrified.”

“They were. But they were also hungry. I took one look at them, and I don’t know. I was twenty-nine. I wasn’t thinking about children. But at that moment, I had the strongest, overwhelming thought. Flynn was never going to settle down with me. He wasn’t even faithful anymore. If I stayed with him, I was never going to get to have children, and I wanted them.” His voice broke as he said, “I wanted to rescue those frightened girls and keep them safe.”

“Did you bring them home with you?”

“No. I called the police, and they sent an ambulance. Social services took them.”

“Was their mother ever found?”

“No.”

“So you adopted them.”

Dante nodded. “In time. Initially they went into foster care. I was a single man with no previous experience with children, let alone ones who’d suffered neglect. It took me almost six months to prove I was serious. Then there were visits and counseling and weekend stays and a year before they were mine.”

Lucas couldn’t begin to imagine how Dante had coped, raising two traumatized children. Running a shop. Planning crimes.

“How did Flynn react?”

“As soon as I was sure I wanted to adopt the girls, days after I found them, I tried to break away from him. We each had enough on the other to walk away without having to look over our shoulders. Quid pro quo. Only Flynn wouldn’t hear of it. He’d cleared over a million from the houses, and he was hungry for more. He threatened to keep my share of the money if I left him.”

“What did you do?”

Lucas slipped back onto the soft seat cushions on the sofa, as Dante’s shoulders relaxed and his chin lifted. This was the man Lucas recognized. The man he was falling in love with.

“I told him I didn’t want the money. I also made the mistake of telling him why. I thought… I hoped he still cared enough for me to let me go and have the family he didn’t want.”

The clock on the mantel chimed, and Dante paused for it to finish. “I was wrong. He threatened to have the girls and their foster parents killed. He said he had a man who could do it. Who’d done it before. That’s when I realized he’d arranged the hit on Joon Kim.” Dante clutched the back of his neck and frowned deeply. “I was very scared. Up to then, it had always been burglaries, the old-fashioned way. No one had ever been hurt.”

Barely above a whisper, Lucas asked, “What did you do then?”

“I followed him to his latest twink’s place, on a run-down council estate in Maldon, and I cut his throat in the alleyway running along the back of the houses.”

The words were said and done before Lucas could process them. Dante had killed Flynn with a knife to his throat.

Each silent second echoed louder than the last.

“Did you hear what I said, Lucas? I killed Flynn in cold blood. I killed him, and I walked away.”

“I heard you.”

“And if I had my time over, I would do it again.”

His tone sounded like a warning.

Lucas bristled at the same time as his heart broke. He understood. He understood as clearly as if the black words that marked Dante’s heart were also written in neon on his sleeve.

“You did what you had to do. But you know, there’s no need for you to keep on doing the stupid things you do. You don’t have to keep on paying for what you did to Flynn. You don’t have to save everyone to save yourself.”

“It’s not that.”

Lucas reached for Dante, and—fuck—he hadn’t thought about how much stretching across the width of the sofa was going to hurt his shoulder. “Then what?”

Dante shook himself free and stood. Backed away. Lucas had never seen him so scared.

Lucas repeated, “Then
what
?”

Dante paced, the tendons in his jaw pulled tight, his fists clenched. “I want you to be happy and safe. I want you to mourn your sister and Avery and not let the loss destroy you. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you’ll keep away from Shaw, because you know inside here—” He slammed his fist to his chest, over his heart. “—that if you don’t, you’ll lose every good thing that makes you who you are. I want you alive. I want you to live.”

“But what do you want for
yourself
? Do you want me? Do you want
us
?”

Dante covered his face with his hands. Lucas went to him. He wrapped his one good arm around Dante, but Dante slipped down through his grasp to his knees. Lucas went with him. He kissed the top of his head, his ear, anywhere he could find skin, until Dante slipped his arms around Lucas’s waist and kissed him, gently, oh so gently, in return.

Then, between his stuttered breaths, like the words in his throat were strangling him on their way out, Dante spoke his quiet plea into Lucas’s neck. “I don’t want to lose you. I
can’t
.”

With Dante shuddering in his one-armed embrace, Lucas whispered, “You’re not going to lose me. I’m not going anywhere.” He tipped Dante’s chin upward. “You don’t scare me. I see you, and you don’t scare me.”

DANTE COULDN’T
remember the last time he’d cried. Not real, sobbing tears. The night he found Lois and Kit, maybe.

Until he was done, and for a long while after, Lucas held him in the cradle of his legs and one arm. It was there on the floor, strangely enough, when the mantel clock chimed the hour, that Dante remembered.

“There are two envelopes, each containing over a thousand pounds, behind that clock.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m going to give them to Lois and Kit for Christmas. They’re moving out in the New Year.”

Lucas dropped a kiss on the top of Dante’s head. “That’s nice. You’ll miss them, though, when they’re gone.”

“Yes. Every day.”

The admission hurt less, saying it out loud.

They sat together some minutes more, then Dante carried Lucas’s holdall upstairs and took him into the kitchen to meet his family.

After a plate of Lois’s curry and a glass of sweetened soy milk, a faint wash of pink returned to Lucas’s cheeks. Dante watched him eat while his own appetite eluded him. He felt as if he could sleep for a hundred years. Maybe he could, if Lucas really would stay by his side.

Lois and Kit got up to clear the plates. Dante made an attempt to help them, but Lois placed her hand firmly on his shoulder.

Lucas poured himself another glass of water. “Time for some drugs, I’m afraid.”

The medi-pack was attached to a line that went directly into his left arm. Dante had seen him self-administer the human growth hormone and analgesic in the hospital. A few presses of the buttons and he was done.

Dante tilted his head to one side, motioning that they should leave. Lois and Kit remained diplomatically silent as Lucas followed Dante from the kitchen to the first-floor landing.

Away from their eager eyes, Dante held out his hand, and Lucas took it. Dante’s heart raced.

They went up the stairs, past the second floor, where Kit and Lois had their bedrooms and bathroom, and on to the attic floor, to Dante’s bedroom and bathroom. They had to pause twice, for Lucas to catch his breath.

Lucas sat on the edge of the bed and drank in his surroundings while Dante switched on the bedside light and closed the curtains.

“This is a gorgeous room. Can you see the sea from your window?”

“On a clear day.”

Dante undid his laces and toed off his shoes.

Lucas sighed. “I feel like there hasn’t been a clear day in months.”

Dante sat to Lucas’s right and laced his fingers through his hand.

“I’ve been losing my mind,” Lucas added. “But I’m getting better, and I’m going to take care of you.”

It should have seemed a strange thing for Lucas to say, but Dante only felt the utmost relief. A harsh breath escaped, and he fell back.

Lucas swiveled around and carefully leaned down on his good elbow, aligning his body next to Dante’s. “Will you trust me?”

“Yes.”

Lucas leaned in closer. His breath was a caress. “You’re the handsomest, cleverest, bravest man I have ever known.”