Page 58 of Dark Reunion

I wanted to save you. I ran because he would have bred you or made us marry. I left you because I thought it was safer. I watched from the edge like a ghost. I tried to warn you, to save you.

But, he knew there was no sentence that made any of this better.

He took one step toward her, hands open, palms empty. “Isabella…”

“Don’t,” she snapped, flinching like the name was a slap. “Don’t call me that. I’m not that little girl anymore.” She rolled out her shoulders and pride filled him. She was strong…good, she was going to need it.

“Maeve,” he said, forcing the syllable through a throat that wanted to close. “I⁠—”

A clap cut him off. It wasn’t a polite applause, but something theatrical.

“Oh, this is good. I loved every second of watching that. What do the American’s say…priceless.”

Carlos swept in with the flourish of a man walking onto a stage he’d been building for years. He wore a crisp, clean suit with a fresh white bandage around his palm that flashed like a priest’s cuff. He filled the doorway with a peacock’s certainty, eyes bright, mouth already curving for the applause he would give himself.

“Qué maravilla!” He sang, spreading his arms like an impresario unveiling a masterpiece. “At last. Family night, we have been reunited at last.”

Carlos crossed the room in three long strides and circled Maeve like a curator admiring a stolen painting. He didn’t touch her. He let the almost-touch be threat enough.

“Isn’t this great?” he asked the room. His joy wasn’t sane. It fizzed like a live wire sparking. “Stop glaring at me Mercurio, this is how things were always supposed to be. My son. My future. My past. My property. Mine, mine, mine. All mine.”

Maeve’s lip curled. “I’m not your anything.”

Carlos’s eyes shone with an insanity honed to a knife’s edge. “You have always been mine, pequeña. Even when you were lost. Lost dogs always come home when they hear the right whistle.”

Dean stepped forward, and the men holding Maeve tensed. Did they know who he was, what he was capable of? He didn’t know them, but assumed they’d be prepared for his skill.

Matteo’s hand slid to his belt then stopped, a deliberate choice not to reach for what wasn’t going to save anyone. Carlos would think it was to save him, but Dean knew better.

Dean purposely put himself between his father and Maeve.

“Back away,” Dean said quietly to Carlos

Carlos laughed and leaned around Dean’s shoulder as if to better admire the prize. “Hear him, niña? So gallant. So…righteous.” He tilted his head, not taking his eyes off Maeve. “Yet, you look at him like you want to eat his heart.”

“She looks at me exactly as she should,” Dean said.

Maeve’s chin lifted, defiance spilling through the tremble in her jaw. “I remember enough to know that I don’t trust either of you.”

“Oh, good,” Carlos purred. “Then you will remember that I keep what I take. I also don’t take kindly to those that take what is mine.”

Dean’s voice cut like wire. “She was never yours. You stole her from her family. Feud or no feud, that is low, even for you. I couldn’t let that stand. And if you had any honor, you wouldn’t keep anything you didn’t bleed for yourself.”

Carlos turned his head at last, slowly the way a cat savors the second mouse. “Oh, Mercurio…always with the moral compass trying to ruin my fun.” He lifted his bandaged hand and waggled the fingers. “Don’t worry. I have decided that this one will no longer be for you, but for me instead. Not like the girl last night…no, that one was to quiet the noise in my head.” He smiled, and Dean ground his teeth together.

A cold, steady sound started in Dean’s head. Not a roar, a tone. The one that always came right before he crossed a line he could never come back from.

He kept his hands at his sides as he said, “there are better ways to quiet the noise in your skull.”

Carlos’s smile turned into a laugh.

“Maybe, but you won’t get to do that.” He flicked two fingers at the soldiers, and they jerked Maeve around Dean. She stumbled, caught herself and straightened without looking at anyone for help.

Dean moved to intercept them and glared. “Stand down soldier,” he ordered. The two men looked at one another unsure what to do. He squared his shoulders. “I out rank you, now stand down.”

A man slid around Carlos’s shoulder at that moment. He was all tidy beard and neatly pressed casual…Mr. Keene. “Actually, I out rank all of you. Keep doing what Carlos orders. Mercurio is no longer part of our organization.”

Maeve looked at Dean as the soldiers moved as a unit, pulling her around him.