65
EMBERLINE
Silent as a cat, I landed on the roof of my childhood home, just as the sun fell behind the buildings.
Every tile was like an old friend, every beam creaked beneath my boots with the same, familiar tune. I knew the bones of this old house as well as I knew my own body, and I paused, letting myself remember everything good that had happened inside these walls.
Watching boats sail past through the upstairs windows.
Father showing me how to read a map for the first time.
Laughing as Luca and I chased each other around the garden in our bare feet.
Tonight, there was no laughter. Just the weight of steel at my thighs and the cold reassurance of the gun pressed to my spine. The enemy I had to face, alone, in order to get to the truth.
I took a breath of Venice, tasting the far-off Adriatic, the petroleum in the air, someone boiling pasta. Crouched at the roof’s edge, I counted the guards in the courtyard below—two by the fountain, one making a slow pass along the far wall—then slid down the sturdy copper spout to my old bedroom window.
The broken latch gave way, and I was inside.
For a moment, I listened. The house breathed in and out with a heavy, familiar silence I knew all too well. Nothing but the distant tick of the clock in the hallway downstairs.
I slipped through the door, boots whispering across polished marble floors and thick wool rugs, and for a second, I was a child again, sneaking downstairs for a midnight treat, pulse racing for fear of being caught.
Nothing had changed.
The same gilded mirrors lined the walls, catching slivers of moonlight. The same ancestors watched from the walls with their judgmental scowls and prim smiles.
But over everything hung the unmistakable smell of smoke, and I grinned.
Dante and his fire demon didn’t fuck around, and it must have cost Giovanni a fortune to have everything restored so quickly after the inferno. Even imagining this place burning down didn’t hit me like it once would have.
This had been the only home I’d ever known, and now it was just an empty shell, thanks to my uncle. He’d taken a lifetime of happy memories and twisted them into something I couldn’t stand the taste of, and I hated him for that.
More than for everything else put together.
But I’d come here for a purpose.
He may have stolen my childhood memories. He may have killed my father, imprisoned my husband, and he might have Gabriel locked up, but he would not take anything else away from me. I was done fucking around. Tonight our score would be settled, and if I had my wish, only one of us would be walking away.
I strode down the corridor toward Father’s old study, not afraid of being caught, now that I was inside. The servants had the night off. Giovanni was two blocks away at a private celebration, enjoying the sycophants fawning over his newfound power, fighting to keep that humble smile on his face. My hand brushed the hilt of one of my knives as I turned the knob on the study door.
Memories washed over me when I stepped inside, my body betraying every resolution I’d made. My throat tightened, eyes tearing up as I swept my gaze across papers and paintings and his old desk where Enzo should be sitting right now, hunched over with his terrible posture, not noticing me because he was so absentminded.
But my father was gone.
And I had my own demons to confront.
“Emberline.”
An hour later, Giovanni crashed to a halt in the doorway, mouth falling open, eyes bugging out, making him look more like a frog than a spider as he took me in.
Tipped back in father’s chair, boots up on the desk, a pile of presumably important papers crumbled beneath my heel.
A grin on my face.
“Your powers of observation are keen as ever,” I observed, “You’ll make a fine Don, I’m sure.”
His teeth ground together. “There is a five-million-gold bounty on your head, niece.”
