We’d been fighting thewrongwar. This wasn’t a civilized mafia power play, entailing proof and the council and reasonable people playing this sometimes-bloody game. We were fighting for our godsdamned lives, and if I hadn’t wasted the day having an existential crisis at my father’s deathbed about whether or not I was up for this task…
I would have never known what was coming.
Giovanni wanted the Basin.
That’s what he was after, that night he met with Severin.He’d asked for a tour, sure, but I’d bet my left fucking nut he’d tested every ward, every single defense when he was there. And being Marcello’s son and heir to the throne, I was one of the few people who knew where the Basin was stored.
At the Draconi fortress.
I pushed to my feet. This changed everything.
But… I still had a chef to interrogate.
I pulled out my phone. Nico was nowhere in godsdamned sight, even though I’d texted him twice. What happened with Ember at the Fossa had rattled him, but I needed him right now.
He’d get into this asshole’s head and dig out every last detail of the orders Giovanni gave him.
I eased out of my father’s room, nodding to the two Dominico soldiers who snapped to attention the second they spotted me. “Where is he?” I asked softly, handing one of them my coat and unbuttoning my sleeves.
“We put him in the room off the kitchen, Signore. The walls are thicker.” His gaze strayed to the room where my aunts were holding their death vigil. “We thought it would be better.”
“Good thinking. You two are with me. Stand guard while I find out what this bastard knows about the person who hired him.” I already knew the answer to that question, but I needed every last, dirty detail, and I couldn’t wait to start cutting pieces off this fuck. I checked my phone one last time and cursed.
Nico ghosted me tonight. I was on my own.
“You sure you don’t want one of us in there with you?” one of them stammered, my coat folded neatly over his brawny arm. “In case things get… messy?”
“Do I look like I care how messy this gets?” Icocked an eyebrow, and a bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. “That fuck poisoned my father, and I will carve on him with his own knives until he tells me everything I need to know. You want to be helpful? Be ready to dispose of the body.”
The male swallowed. “Very good, Signore.”
33
EMBERLINE
Two days had passed since we’d escaped the Fossa, and the quiet felt wrong. As if the city was holding its breath, waiting to see which of us cracked first.
No rumors of a penal colony being blown to bits or a spectacular helicopter rescue. Not that we needed the recognition; it was just…that rescue had been pretty badass.
Gabriel remained on his family’s island, taking a never-ending stream of visitors extending their condolences, just so he could keep his finger on the Dynasty’s pulse.
Marcello was still clinging to life by his fingernails, stubborn until the end.
Ever since Gabriel returned from the family island with blood splattered all over his shirt—not mine, he’d assured me—we’d waited for the inevitable, but the old Don was stronger than he’d looked.
Or too evil to die,Nico had corrected, shouldering past me in the kitchen to grab a beer from the small refrigerator.
That part was true, but Marcello’s condition worsened every day. His son, the ever-loyal heir, remained at his side. And so far, Giovanni was keeping his distance.
There had been no messages, no visits, no formal condolences extended from the DiRavello court, not even from Luca, and worry for my brother was eating me alive.
But we had a bigger problem.
I sat cross-legged on the floor of the safehouse,surrounded by books stacked in precarious towers around me. Ancient leather spines. Cracked vellum. The night after he questioned the chef, Gabriel had brought them to me at dawn, his mouth set in a grim line as he told us, almost verbatim, what the Overseer had told Dante.
And hinted at to me.
The Basin was a tool to enslave us all.
