He Died for His Lover, Then Returned to Win His Trust novel · Chapter 2 of 40

Chapter 2: The Empty Car

Dante reroutes the convoy so the old ambush hits an empty car, tells his mother everything, and she takes the head seat for six months and warns him not to bring Javier home.

Dante did not move for the first four seconds.

His hands were on his knees, and they were not shaking.

That was the strange part.

For a week they had shaken so badly he could not hold a candle, and now they were steady and warm and entirely his.

"Boss?" the driver said again.

"Pull over."

"Here? On the harbor road?"

"At the next turn-off. Now."

The car slid onto the gravel beside the sea wall, and the second car, the one with the guards, stopped behind it.

Dante got out and stood in the cold salt wind.

In his old life he had taken this road every Tuesday for two years.

At 8:40 a gray van would pull across the lane at the tunnel mouth, and four men would come out shooting.

Dante had taken a bullet through the left shoulder and run into an alley near the medical college.

A student had found him there.

That was how it began.

"Call the head of the guard," Dante said. "Put him on speaker."

The head of the guard answered on the first ring.

"Boss."

"Take the black car we are in now, and the second car behind it. Put two men in the front seats and nobody in the back. Drive them to the tunnel as if I were inside."

"Boss, you're not going?"

"I'm going somewhere else. Do not let anyone in those cars die for me. Tell the men to leave their seats at the last bend and take the service path."

There was a short pause on the line.

"You expect trouble."

"I know there is trouble," Dante said. "Park the cars in the open and have everyone else wait at the old customs house with the long rifles. Do not touch the van until they open fire."

He had never given an order like that.

He had always sent men in front of him.

The head of the guard breathed out, slowly.

"Understood."

Dante and the driver went the long way, up through the forest road, in a plain gray sedan from the estate garage.

It took forty minutes.

He sat in the back seat with his hands pressed flat against his thighs and made himself look at the trees.

Green. A deep, tired green, with gold light coming down through it in coins.

The mountains beyond looked exactly as he had left them.

At 8:43 his phone rang.

"The van came out," the head of the guard said. "Four of them. They emptied their magazines into an empty car."

"Is anyone hurt?"

"No one on our side. Two of theirs are alive. The other two ran."

"Keep the live ones. Do not hurt them yet. Ask who sent them, and write down every word."

"Boss." The man hesitated. "How did you know?"

Dante looked out at the trees.

"I had a very bad dream," he said.

At the estate, the gates opened without a sound.

The house was as big as he remembered, pale stone with dark shutters and an olive grove down the slope.

He stood in the hall for a moment with his hand on the wall.

In the old life this was where Javier had fallen.

There was a clean floor there now, and a vase of white flowers, and a housekeeper crossing it with a tray.

He had to put his hand over his mouth and breathe through his fingers before he could walk on.

His mother was in the study.

Maria Rossi sat behind his father's old desk, as she had every morning for the four years since his funeral, with the household accounts open in front of her and her reading glasses pushed up into her hair.

She was fifty, straight-backed, in a gray dress with a single pearl.

"You are home early," she said without looking up. "I heard there was a shooting on the harbor road."

"There was. No one was hurt."

"Good." Now she looked up. "Then why is your face so white?"

He shut the door and locked it.

He crossed the room, and knelt on the carpet in front of her chair.

"Dante."

"Mama," he said. "Please listen to everything before you decide I have lost my mind."

He told her.

He told her all of it, in order.

The year with Javier in the house.

The bullet in the hall.

The week in the church.

The terms too, one by one, and he watched her count them on her own fingers.

When he stopped, the clock on the wall was the only sound in the room.

Maria did not say anything for a long time.

She took off her glasses and folded them and laid them on the ledger.

"That is a fine story," she said at last. "I would like proof."

"The harbor road."

"Anyone could have been warned."

"Then listen." Dante's voice dropped. "The night Papa died, you sat in the kitchen after everyone left. You took your shoes off and put your feet on the cold tile. You said, he has your stubbornness and none of your patience, and I do not know which of you I am more angry with."

Maria stopped breathing.

"You said it to the empty room," Dante said. "I was on the stairs. I never told you I heard."

His mother's hand came up over her mouth.

He saw her eyes fill and not fall.

"And the next attack is in nine days," he said. "On the estate gate, at night. Rodrick's men will not wear masks, because he thinks nobody will survive to describe them."

"Rodrick," she said. Her voice was very flat.

"I do not have the proof yet. I have a feeling that I paid for with my life."

For a moment the study was entirely still.

Then Maria reached out and put her palm against his cheek.

"My son," she said. "What do you want from me?"

"Hold the family for me."

"For how long?"

"Six months." He caught her wrist, and let it go. "I am going to find him, Mama. I am going to start at the beginning and earn it properly this time, and I cannot do that from behind a desk."

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then, slowly, she smiled.

It was the first smile he had seen from her in nine years that reached her eyes.

"I have been telling your father's brothers for four years that I could do your job in my sleep," she said. "Go. I will take the seat for six months, and not a day more, you understand?"

"Yes."

"Go and ask the boy properly." She stood, and pulled him up by both hands. "And Dante."

"Yes, Mama?"

"Whatever that man in the wine-colored coat told you, he was right about one thing. Do not bring him home."

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