Dangerous Melodies - Chapter 60: Chapter 60

DANTE
The desk lamp flickered in the low light, shadows deepening around me as I took a slow sip of whiskey. My mind didn’t just drift to the years I’d spent hunting Marcos. It pulled me back further, to the day my father taught me what it meant to be ruthless.
I’d been sixteen, old enough to understand when my father captured the men who butchered my mother. It was our first lesson together. Hands-on retribution. A memory etched into me with blood and screams.
He’d strapped them to wooden tables, their bodies taut with panic, eyes gleaming with terror. I still saw it. The way light caught the steel ax in his hand. The way their screams cracked through the air. The way blood sprayed, hot and wild, with every swing.
"Watch closely, Dante," he’d said. His voice was flat, cold. "You’ll need to be ruthless one day. Power comes from fear. Not mercy."
I stood frozen as he raised the ax. My heart slammed against my ribs. Sweat slicked my palms. But I couldn’t look away. The first swing cleaved through fingers. The scream that followed stabbed straight through me.
He didn’t stop. Fingers, then hand, then forearm. Every swing measured, mechanical. Blood dripped in a slow rhythm, pooling thick beneath the table.
It was a ritual. Deliberate. Cruel. Joint by joint, limb by limb, until only torsos remained. Heads slumped. Eyes dull. Shells of the men they used to be.
Then he handed me the ax. "Your turn," he said. His voice left no room for argument. I stared at the weapon, its weight biting into my hands. If I didn’t swing hard, it wouldn’t sever clean. It’d be messy. Weak. A failure.
I looked around the warehouse. Eight more men, lined up like cattle, strapped tight, waiting for the blade. Each one was responsible for her death. His voice echoed in my skull. Hold onto that. Remember her mutilated body.
I locked eyes with the first man. His terror bled into me, but I clung to the fire roaring inside. My grip tightened. Sweat coated my hands. My stomach churned. Think of her body. Think of what they did. I swung. Hard.
The blade crunched through bone. Screams ripped from the man’s throat, sharp and broken. I realized I’d need more force for the bigger parts. Otherwise, it’d tear, not cut.
"You need to understand power," he said, watching me work the ax with brutal precision. "One day, you’ll lead. Weakness doesn’t survive in our world. Neither does love."
With each swing, the horror drained from me. Numbness took its place. Rage hardened in my chest, calcifying my grief. By the end, fear wasn’t even a memory. Something darker had taken root.
I didn’t know then that he planned to leave me alone in it. The grief swallowed him whole. Within weeks, he took his own life, and I inherited the legacy he carved in blood.
But I remembered. The swing of the ax. The screams. The way blood speckled his face. I remembered how men became torsos.
Now, sitting in dim light, whiskey burning in my throat, I felt just how much that day had shaped me. I had become the man he wanted. Ruthless. Powerful. Feared. But that wasn’t the end.
Running the Kincade cartel through drugs and weapons was just the beginning. I evolved. I left brute force behind and built something more dangerous: technology. I auctioned off territories to the highest bidders and moved into high-end systems, cyber weapons, and control.
Technology gave me the best of both worlds. A clean business for elite clients. And a shadow empire where I reigned through code and chaos. My name became a warning whispered in every syndicate.
One cartel underestimated me. They tried to take me out with hired guns. I let them come. Then I erased them.
With one click, explosives at every one of their bases, safe houses, and headquarters detonated in unison. Nothing left but smoke and silence. No escape. No mercy. That was power.
For the first four anniversaries of Marisol’s death, I returned to that room. Each year, a limb. First an arm. Then a leg. Then another. Four years. Four wounds. Each was carefully treated so Marcos could survive the pain.
The fifth year was different. Only his torso and head remained. He was strapped to a chair, a grotesque relic of agony. I had a choice: finish it or send him home like that.
When I stepped into the basement, he barely moved. His eyes were hollow. Death wasn’t a threat anymore. It was a gift.
"This ends today, Marcos," I said, my voice low. Controlled. "But I’m giving you a choice."
He lifted his head with effort. That scar sliced across his face like a final insult. He was barely a man.
"Option one: I’ll end it now. Fast. A bullet to the head. Just like you gave Marisol." I let the words hang in the air. "Option two: I’ll send you home. Let you live like this."
Silence. Then a broken whisper: "Death. Please... death."
I nodded. "Cremation or burial?"
"...Ashes."
He still had enough shame to hide from his family.
I turned to the camera in the corner. The stream went live. Dark web. Just as planned.
Marcos was bound to the chair, head low. I stood in the frame, dressed in black, expression blank.
"This is what happens when you cross me," I said. My voice was calm, venom beneath the surface. "When you try to take what’s mine."
I stepped closer. I knew Antonio Montoya was watching.
"For five years, you wondered what happened to your son," I said. "He wasn’t missing. He was here. Paying."
I tilted the camera down, showing the ruin of what was left of Marcos.
"Look close, Antonio. This is the cost of crossing Dante Kincade."
My gaze hardened. "He asked for death. I gave him a choice. A mercy Marisol never got. That makes me the better monster."
I turned back to Marcos. The gun was already in my hand. Cold. Heavy. Like the weight in my chest.
"This is for Marisol," I whispered.
The shot cracked through the room.
His body slumped. Blood painted my face.
I faced the camera. My voice was soft.
"I’m sorry for your loss, Antonio. I’ll send the ashes."
A pause.
"To everyone watching: remember. This is the price of crossing me."
The screen went black.
DANTE
Back in the present, I shook myself from the memory. The house was too quiet. Maria and Felix kept their distance, unsettled by the change in me. I wasn’t the same man they once knew. I was colder now. Darker. A ghost of who I used to be.
But one presence never left me. Mr. Buttons, Marisol’s little dog, seemed to feel everything I carried. He followed me from room to room, always close, like he understood what I’d lost.
I sat in my office, staring into nothing. The weight of everything pressed down. Revenge hadn’t given me peace. If anything, I felt more lost than ever. Mr. Buttons whined and looked up at me, his eyes wide and full of something I hadn’t seen in a long time: concern.
With a heavy sigh, I reached down and lifted him into my lap. He curled against me, warm and light, the only comfort I had left. I stroked his fur, my hand moving without thought, while my mind kept replaying the past three years. Over and over.
History was cruel. My father couldn’t save my mother. I couldn’t save Marisol. The difference was, he gave in to grief. Took his life. I hadn’t.
Marisol was gone. The only light in my life was extinguished in the cruelest way. All that remained were memories and a heart that refused to beat for anything but the past.
As Mr. Buttons pressed against my chest, I felt it—a flicker. Fragile. Real. Maybe it was enough. Maybe it would keep me going.
But even the dog’s warmth couldn’t chase away the cold inside. The emptiness stayed. I’d sacrificed too much. Become something else. Something hollow.
I looked toward the window. Outside, the world moved on, unaware of what had shattered inside me. But everything had changed.
I wasn’t living. I was surviving. Haunted by a love I couldn’t protect.
Still, something tethered me. Maybe the legacy. Maybe that flicker of hope, buried deep beneath guilt and ash, refusing to die.
In that moment, with Mr. Buttons nestled against me, I let myself feel it. Grief. Raw and merciless. An old wound that never truly healed.