Is he having a fucking laugh?
Sid clicked on the attachments. The first was a form that told Sid nothing he was interested in save the name of his new sidekick: Dante Pope.
The second was a photograph for the ID laminate all Wilburn employees were required to wear at all times, though Sid had long ago lost his.
Sid’s laptop was ancient enough that it took a minute for the image to coalesce as anything remotely human. He diverted his attention to his weed tin and rolled a joint fat enough to take the edge off his daily dose of pain. Sorry, Mum.
He sloped outside to smoke. While he’d been indoors, the manor house had wound down for the evening. Off-site employees had gone home, leaving behind the small collection of residential staff. Most lived in apartments in the old house. Only a couple of the bungalows near the gardens were occupied, and no one cared that Sid smoked weed. They knew why. Everyone does. Sid pulled harder on his smoke, willing unwanted images of his last relapse not to swamp his mind, but the taste of mud lingered on his tongue all the same. “We don’t know how long he was down. He was alone when he fell—”
“Fuck’s sake.” Sid snuffed out his smoke and stomped back inside. Brain fog was his least favourite symptom, and yet somehow it had never clouded the memories of the worst moments of his life.
Irritated, he returned to the couch in a daze and sat down. With his mind elsewhere, it took a moment to remember the photograph now lighting up his laptop. Then tousled chestnut hair came into focus. Pale skin, sharp cheekbones, and a face that was too young for the gleaming caramel eyes that were somehow flat and furious at the same time.
Eyes were Sid’s obsession. He leaned forward, lost in the man’s complex gaze, diving headfirst into it without stopping to make sense of what it meant. He stared at the long, silky eyelashes and the tiny lightning bolt tattoo that completed the perfect face. The man was . . . damn, he was beautiful, and a different heat crept over Sid, a pooling warmth he hadn’t felt in a long time. A warmth he had no business feeling for . . . what was his name again?
Danny?
No.
Dante.
Dante Pope.
Your new assistant.
Right. Fuck. Sid sat back and forced himself to broaden his gaze. To take in the prison-issue sweatshirt and the dull grey wall behind Dante Pope and remember why he’d lit up Sid’s inbox in the first place. But despite Sid’s frustration with Dante Pope’s very existence, his honey-brown eyes were so compelling Sid couldn’t look away. He stared and stared and stared, and the warmth in his blood began to manifest as something deeper.
Something he couldn’t ignore in case it was the last time it ever happened.
Sid closed his eyes, but Dante Pope’s entrancing face didn’t go anywhere. He was right there, in Sid’s mind, with his arresting gaze and full lips.
Those lips.
Those eyes.
Sid’s imagination—the one part of him that reliably still worked—got away from him. More heat spread through him, merging with the slow, welcome buzz of the weed he’d smoked. In his low-slung harem trousers, his dick hardened, the first real boner he’d had in weeks. And wasn’t that just fucking biblical? Two nights ago, an hour on Xtube had brought him nothing. Now one glance at his soon to be co-worker had lit him on fire.
Blame the disease.
Sid’s heart thumped.
Blame the medicine.
Because the alternative was too bizarre to contemplate—
No.
Just no.
You can’t wank over your new employee. That shit’s just weird.
Groaning, Sid slammed his laptop shut and opened his eyes to his empty living room. His other hand had somehow found its way to his crotch. He let it linger a moment, squeezing the stone column his cock had become. It felt like sacrilege to ignore it, but . . . fuck. Sid had morals somewhere.
Didn’t he?
2
“That’s it, Pope. Off you fuck.”
The screw grinned, pleased with himself.
Dante gave him a flat look and brushed past him to the open door. The big, wide world lay on the other side. He stepped one foot out, and then the other, bracing himself for a grand sense of change—fear, hope, grief—but as fresh air hit him, nothing happened. He felt nothing, not even relief at leaving the forbidding walls and barbed wire of HMP Manchester behind.
On numb legs, he crossed the road and faced the Hogwarts-style building. Strangeways. The old name suited it better, and as he stood alone, a flicker of emotion finally rattled him. A silky web of guilt and pain spun across his heart. Luis’s handsome face, softened by warmth and affection, flashed into his mind, but Dante pushed him away. His baby brother wasn’t here, not just today, but maybe forever, and that wasn’t going to change unless Dante did. Move on. He has.
As the thought completed, across the road, the prison door opened again. A screw stepped out, narrowed gaze fixed on Dante, eyebrows raised. He made a gesture with his thumb and mouthed two words: fuck off.
For a long moment, Dante stared him down, rooted to the spot, clinging to the unchanging world of routine and forced company. Then he sighed and walked away without looking back. Because if he had, it might’ve hurt. And he wasn’t ready for that pain, not yet. He had the rest of his life to be lonely.
The unfamiliar city swallowed Dante whole. The thundering traffic made him think of London, but the trams were new monsters. Quiet and deadly—compared to the buses, at least—he jumped every time one ghosted past. Damn. Fen had warned him the outside world would unsettle him—that whatever he thought he remembered, his new life would throw up something different—but Manchester was more than different. As far as Dante was concerned, it might as well have been the moon.
Fen had arranged a bus ticket to take him out of the city and into the countryside. Dante found his way to the right stop and took a seat at the back of the bus, alternating between people-gazing and watching the alien landscape turn from grey to green. Busy roads became moors. On the horizon, a reservoir broke up the fields and fields and fields of who the hell knew what, and the water was deep blue like Dante imagined the ocean to be. He’d never been to the beach.
Eventually, the water gave way to rolling hills. The Wilburn Peaks.
The name stirred something in Dante. He dug through the canvas bag the prison had given him to carry the few sets of clothes he owned and the work boots Fen had found in the charity donation box. The pack from the employment scheme was buried at the bottom.
He pulled it out and unfolded the page that held his location: Wilburn Manor, a trust-owned stately home that would give him work and accommodation for as long as it took for them to realise they didn’t like him. A week? A month? Who knew? Lots of people didn’t like Dante.
Beneath the employment pack was an envelope containing a dated iPhone, wiped clean by the police before they’d handed it back to Dante through the prison. A rehabilitation charity had gifted all inmates being released that spring a SIM card preloaded with credit. Dante manoeuvred it into the phone and turned the phone on. Changed his mind and turned it off again twice before he settled on leaving it on, though why he couldn’t say. The only number he possessed was one he shouldn’t have, sent him with a caveat that made his stomach churn.
Don’t call me unless you’re someone I want to know.