The only good thing about becoming an adult was moving out of the main house and into his own wing. And although his brother at fifteen wasn’t allowed, Dante sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him behind.
Not a lot of people outside of the compound knew about Damien. The reason for that was pretty simple – Damien was Lorenzo Maroni’s imperfect child. Somehow, he’d had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck during his birth, which cut off his supply of oxygen for a few precious seconds, a few seconds too many. That had cost Damien his ability to gauge the world. Dante was sure he was on some spectrum of autism, especially because his mind was too high-functioning for his age while his social skills weren’t good. It had never been properly diagnosed though, so he couldn’t be sure.
Bloodhound Maroni could not accept that his younger son could have a mental condition that required some help. While he had the abundance of resources to get Damien help anytime, he turned a blind eye to his younger son. Even though he was a great kid, Dante knew he had issues expressing himself, certain behaviors that were not appropriate in the world but appropriate for him. Dante knew that Damien would never, ever find acceptance and love in the world he lived in, and he deserved both those things.
Dante wasn’t even sure exactly what it was – trauma from his birth or the fact that he had been in the room when Dante found their mother pooled in her own blood or just one of those things. Some of that blood had been on a five-year-old Damien, and Dante at all of eight-years had stepped into the blood, scooped up his brother, and walked out of the room. Somehow, he had known his mother had been dead just by looking. Some days, he hated her so much for abandoning her children like a coward.
Dante took a deep breath, his fingers itching to pull out a cigarette but he refrained. Flexing his fingers, he watched the building from behind his expensive shades, taking measure as his pink-haired girlfriend, Roni, clung to his arm.
Morning Star Home for Lost Boys
He had heard about this place through the grapevine. One of their soldiers had a nephew who had been diagnosed with a low-functioning spectrum of autism and he said this place had helped the boy. While Dante was old enough to take care of his brother as he had been for a long time, he wanted Damien to get the help he needed and deserved. More importantly, the compound was not a good place mentally for any of them. Dante had already started going out of the city for trips and business, and every time his mind kept going back to Damien and his safety. Even though it lodged a rock on his chest, this was for the best.
“This place is creepy,” Roni muttered, her delicate fingers curling over his bicep. She wasn’t entirely wrong. Even though the place was a well-kept stone mansion with manicured lawns, it looked like something out of a thriller movie. Or maybe it was just the fog coming in with the approaching winter.
“Let’s go,” Dante shook off the feeling, pushing open the wrought iron gate with one palm, the cold of the metal sending a little shiver down his spine.
With the other hand, he guided his girlfriend of three years over the threshold. Roni was a little thing, like a pixie almost. Barely came to his neck, hair colored a bright pink and cut short, full of life. She was an outsider who knew about him and his family, and somehow she didn’t care. Maybe it was the rebel in her, thrilling at the idea of him. Dante knew that’s what it was for him.
He had spent so many nights sneaking out to see her, sneaking her into the compound. One time one of his father’s men had caught them and he’d given him a finger, laughing the incident off. Had it been immature? Yes. Had he cared? Not really. He cared about Roni, felt affection for her, definitely loved having sex with her, but he wasn’t in love. Roni was a way of rebelling against his father, and she knew it too, having accompanied him more than once as he’d sneaked her into the compound. Theirs was a relationship of mutual rebellion.
Walking down the small path towards the main entrance, Dante looked around with sharp eyes, noticing a few kids in the windows, all of different ages, peering down at them – some with curiosity, others with mild hostility. Dante wondered the kind of picture he must make to them – tall, ripped, dressed in an all-black expensive turtleneck, leather jacket, and jeans, hair carelessly around his face, with a pink-haired pixie on his side.
He smirked at the mental image as the door opened and an elderly woman greeted them, already expecting them, and took them on the tour.
One of the best parts about having his wing on the compound was privacy. Zia always came to the house once a week with staff to stack groceries and clean everything up, mostly when he was out training or in the city learning the business. Apart from that, he lived alone, and he liked it that way.
He’d set up the top floor of his house as his art room, just like his mother had done in the main house. The view from there was pretty fucking spectacular. He had a direct view of the lake, Tristan’s cottage, and the sprawling hills covered with the woods beyond that. This early in the morning, when the sky was a fiery shade swallowing the black night, he loved to come to the room.
Setting his steaming mug of coffee on the work table, Dante looked at the pieces he had made over the last few years. The earliest pieces were pottery, practice pieces until his technique was refined. He started to play with masks after that; people’s faces that he had seen, those that had somehow caught his attention. Most were pretty terrible and he wanted to smash them, but seeing them was an exercise in improvement. And Dante was determined to improve.
Sitting down on the bench, he got out the new box of clay he had bought from a supply store in the city and started to wet it as the audiobook for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince played in the background. He enjoyed working at the early hours of the morning to the sound of words and the natural light of the sun filling his studio, in nothing but his boxers.
And he fucking loved Harry Potter. He hadn’t read it for the longest time but finally gave in, and now he was hooked. One of the things he liked most about the series was how human it was, even in a magical world. Like Harry and Hermione’s friendship, for example. It actually reminded him a lot of the relationship he saw between young Vin and Zia’s daughter. For years, he’s seen her accompany Vin whenever they trained in the open, and he was envious of that friendship.
He wanted a friend like that for himself. Even though he was surrounded by people, Dante didn’t have one person who was his. His brother, though he loved him to pieces, wasn’t his friend. Neither was Roni. And even though he’d been working on Tristan for years, neither was he. Tristan tolerated him at best, was indifferent to him at worst – although after breaking his nose, he had mellowed down a little where he was concerned. His last name didn’t allow him any friends on the compound. Kings, as his father constantly reminded him, didn’t have friends. They had enemies.
Fuck, he sounded like a sorry little bitch.
Shaking his head, Dante put a pile of wet clay before him, before kneading it with his hands, focusing on the stretch of the mass between his fingers. It was still too tight, and gauging when it got loose enough to mold was one of the most important things.
A knock on his backdoor had him pausing. There weren’t many people who would come to his door that early in the morning unless it was an emergency. Getting up swiftly from the bench, Dante washed his hands and grabbed a pair of jeans before making his way down.