Page 80 of Dishonored

“You left a trail for him to find, didn’t you?” Aria asked.

Nico sighed. “I did, but I still think that might be a bad choice. Caesar is unpredictable—you can’t plan for every single one of his moves, but especially when they are against you.”

“And yet, even when he moves against me, he still seems to work for me, doesn’t he?”

Nico didn’t reply to that statement. “You need to be careful with that—”

“I need to use what I have, and Caesar Accardo is one of those things.”

She couldn’t possibly lose.

Not now.

ELEVEN

A CHAOTIC ACCARDO home was one Caesar knew well, and could handle. A tense one was even more familiar to him, especially if the cause of said tension was him. A sad Accardo home, however … one silenced with sadness and grief was not one he cared to be inside, or anywhere near, for that matter.

It reminded him far too much of being four years young again, and watching person after person file into his childhood home dressed in all black. He’d been a small child—even for his age—and people towered over him with their apologies, red-rimmed eyes, and sad faces. Some had bent down to give him a hug, and apologize for the woman who rested in a shiny white casket in the middle of the living room.

His mother, that was.

Caesar had never understood why his father allowed the viewing of his mother’s body to be in their home—he’d never cared to ask, either. All he knew was that here he was over two decades later, and he still couldn’t walk into that living room without seeing the pale alabaster face of his mother resting in white silk.

His father had never told him before that day or the years that followed how his mother died. Or why she had to wear a purple dress in her casket with sleeves that covered her wrists. He’d heard enough that day, and those words had stuck with him over the years, for him to know exactly why.

Shame she lost the baby, some had said.

Couldn’t get over it, someone else whispered.

The worst kind of sin.

Slit her wrists.

Angelo had found Caesar’s mother in what would have been the baby’s nursery. Although, apparently, his mother hadn’t quite got far enough along in her second pregnancy to even know the gender of the child. None of that had made a difference, as the apparent depression she fell into after losing the baby had hung on despite everything she had around her. Despite her marriage, her four-year-old son, and even her life full of wealth.

None of it helped.

None of it brought her back, either.

That was the thing about loss, though.

It didn’t matter how small.

Or how insignificant.

Loss was still loss.

The loss of Caesar’s mother had been small in the grand scheme of his life—at least, to the appearance of others. A death that happened when he was young, and when most people believed he probably wouldn’t remember a lot about his mother.

How wrong they were …

He remembered her smile; how she smelled first thing in the morning when he crawled into bed beside her. He remembered the sound of her voice when she read him books; how much she enjoyed singing in the shower. He couldn’t possibly forget that she liked wearing white the most, even when she wasn’t supposed to.

And he never forgot how she loved him.

Or rather … how she was supposed to love him.

Then, she left him.