Both he and Tristan took a steaming mug each and sipped. It was bitter but damn if it didn’t taste incredible.
“Did your father finally tell you? Is that why you’re here?” Alpha asked, relaxed in his chair. The fact that he was relaxed, that there was no security, that he and Tristan hadn’t been stripped of weapons before meeting him told Dante exactly how lethal the man before him was. Unlike his father who had relied on his army of security to keep him safe, this man was a warrior king, who had amassed his army by fighting and winning.
“What do you mean?” Dante asked, taking a sip of his brew.
The man’s golden eye sharpened on him. “We share a father, Mr. Maroni.”
Dante’s hand paused on the way to his mouth, his eyes honing in on the other man. “Excuse me?”
Alpha laughed. “The bastard didn’t tell you.”
Dante felt his fingers flex on the mug. He set it down on the table and leaned forward, his jaw clenching. “Explain.”
The other man took pity on him. “My mother was a sex worker in Los Fortis, sending her younger sister to art school and keeping a roof over their heads. Lorenzo Maroni saw her one day on his visit to the city about thirty-three years ago, raped her, and left her pregnant. He also kidnapped her sister and took her with him. He married her.”
Dante felt his heart cracking open, the ground beneath his feet shifting. He looked at the other man, truly looked at him, and saw the similarity – the dark hair, the jawline, the cheekbones, the nose, the build. He was looking at his half-brother.
The fucked-up stories of his father’s selfish, monstrous actions made him want to raise the man from the grave and kill him again. One man’s monstrosity destroyed so many lives and counting.
Fuck.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Dante shook his head, still trying to wrap his head around everything.
Alpha tilted his head to the side. “I thought you knew when I got the request for the meeting. Especially since one of your soldiers recently came to confirm the story with me.”
“Nerea?” Dante asked. “She was here because she knew this? How?”
Alpha shrugged. “She said she was looking into your mother’s past and came across me. I never had any intentions of telling you.”
That brought him up short. “Why not? And why didn’t you ever contact me?”
Alpha huffed a laugh, without amusement. “Oh, I did contact Lorenzo Maroni. When I was thirteen, on the streets, and my mother was dying, I needed money for her surgery, and as a last resort, I contacted him.” He put the mug down on the table. “And I got nothing except confirmation that he was a rotten asshole and we were better without him.”
Dante felt his teeth gnash, his hands fisting. All this time, he’d had an older brother, a true heir to the empire he’d never wanted, and his father had fucked him up.
“Anyways, why are you here, if not for a family reunion?”
“Do you own any property near Tenebrae, Alpha?” Tristan spoke up for the first time, his voice tight. Dante took a deep breath and walked to the edge of the terrace, needing to wrap his head around everything.
“No,” Alpha answered. “I never wanted to get anywhere near Maroni territory.”
Dante didn’t know what to believe. While he could be telling the truth about his father, it could also be something to manipulate him and Tristan. If this man was in cahoots with the Syndicate, he could very well misdirect them.
“Do you know anything about the Syndicate?” Dante turned, pushing his hands into his pockets, focusing on the reason for their meeting.
Alpha stared at him evenly with one eye. It would intimidate a lesser man. “They trade children. But I have nothing to do with them. Why come to me?”
“Because we found a house registered in your name where the Syndicate was initiating new members by raping a little girl,” Tristan stated, his hands fisted on his thighs.
“Which name? Alpha or Alessandro?”
“Alessandro,” Dante chimed in.
He shook his head. “That’s not possible. Nobody in the underworld knows my given name. Everything I have is under Alpha or Alpha Villanova. Nobody knows Alessandro except my sentinels.”
“You told Amara both your names,” Dante chimed in.
Alpha’s eye came to him. “Ah, she’s yours. Good woman, but I gave her both the names thinking there might be more there.”
Dante’s gut burned. Fuck, no. “She’s mine.”
Alpha grunted. “Point is, I don’t know why anyone would buy a house in my given name and why the Syndicate would use it. I’ve heard of them, and in my business, we hear things. But I’ve never had contact with them.”
“What is your business?” Dante asked, curious as to how a boy from the street with no money had amassed the compound he was standing upon.
“Security and retrieval,” Alpha left it at that, and Dante almost smiled. Reclusive bastard.
“The Syndicate is responsible for a lot of shit we’re just getting to know about,” Dante walked back to the seat, taking off his suit jacket in the warm weather. “Our father was working with them in some capacity, I don’t know how yet.”
Pushing his jacket to the side, he leaned forward, looking his older brother in the eye. “Can I trust you, man to man?”
Alpha’s eyebrow went up. “As long as you’re not like your father, I have no problem with you.”
Dante nodded. Good enough. Any man who hated his father had a point in his book.
“Twenty years ago,” he began, “twenty-five girls were abducted from Tenebrae. One of them was Tristan’s sister, Luna. We know Lorenzo Maroni and Gabriel Vitalio gave the kids to the Syndicate, but we don’t know where she was sent. That’s who we’re looking for.”
He saw Alpha’s eyes go to Tristan, softening slightly. “That’s hard. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there is a high chance she’s not alive. A lot of kids who go with the Syndicate don’t survive. You have to be prepared for that possibility.”
Tristan nodded, his jaw tight. “I am. But I want answers.”
“And I want to know which motherfucker found my name and used me,” Alpha stated.
“We have a hacker who can track that,” Dante informed the older man. “In exchange, you give us a lead. Deal?”
Alpha considered him for a long second. “Okay, I’ll see what I can find.”
Dante stood up, taking his card out of his pocket, handing it to the other man, hesitating. “My mother slit her wrists open in the room she used to paint in with our younger brother there. He has Asperger’s and he’s living a great life far away from this world. I had to sacrifice seeing him to protect him and now he doesn’t want to come back. I get that. He’s found a good woman and works as an architect from home, and has told me to keep myself and this world away from his life. We talk on the phone sometimes but we’re acquaintances. In protecting him as a brother, I failed him too. My point is, if you are my brother, I get why you didn’t tell me anything, but going forward, you decide how we operate – as brothers or as acquaintances. The choice is yours.”
With that, Dante gave the bigger man a nod and walked to the stairs, Tristan on his heels.