Page 26 of A Dangerous Bargain

I think of my hideous portrait in Casa delle Volpi’s foyer. How Father sometimes lingered before it, grinning like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, and I stood next to him twisting my hands and staying silent because it didn’t feel like I had a right to be upset. “You can say whatever you want. I don’t care.”

His response is instantaneous. “A family affair, then. Your house needed a repair.”

Why is my throat getting tight? I quickly stoop to gather up our fallen art supplies. For some reason, I can’t look at him any longer. “All right.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Happy birthday, my boy. Eighteen at last!”

Mamma’s kiss is too hot against my frigid cheek. I smile, trying to hide how my stomach slinks to the floor.

This is my last birthday.

I will never be nineteen years old.

The candelabras glitter around the opulent dining room, molten wax dripping down their golden arms like tears. The scent of citrus and browned herbs fills my head, but the sumptuous meal tastes like ashes. My family’s voices wash over me. Mamma is thinking of redoing the garden. Elisabetta would rather take sword lessons than dance lessons, and why won’t anyone listen to her? Giovannia has found a new bookstore with poetry from Venice. I try to take it all in, knowing it could be the last time, but the restless truth that’s whispered through me all day grows louder and louder until it’s a shout.

They don’t know Niccolo is alive.

Keeping the secret from them feels terrible. But every time I try to say something, fear snatches the words back. I’ve let my family down before. What if I’m wrong about this, too? I couldn’t stand seeing their hurt and disappointment.

The chime of silverware pulls me from my thoughts. Mamma lifts her goblet toward me, smiling widely. “Volpacchiotto, your father would be so proud of the young man you’ve become!”

I start choking. My father? Proud? I doubt he’d be happy if I married a Medici, sired two dozen sons named Niccolo, and made a mountain of gold tall enough to fill the duomo’s great red dome. I half expect his corpse to burst from its grave and shamble inside to say so.

“It’s Virgil, Mamma,” Giovannia says sternly as I get the coughing under control. “Only Niccolo can call him little fox.”

I shoot her a grateful, surprised look. Is this the witchery of having a sister? They annoy you to the point of despair every day until they’re fourteen, and then they’ll go to war for you forever?

Mamma’s mouth thins, but she doesn’t push back.

The meal ends without dolci—I told Mamma I didn’t need any so Giovannia could buy another one of her books—and more empty words about how promising my future will be.

A seasick feeling storms in my stomach, the few bites of food I’ve eaten churning and threatening to heave-ho. Even if I did have a future, it’s not like it would be the one I wanted.

When Giovannia follows me outside after our goodbyes, I swallow back a wave of bile. “Did I forget something?”

Her eyes flick to the windows. We’re beyond the stone foxes guarding the steps, far away enough for no one to overhear us, but her voice is barely above a whisper. “I have a gift for you.”

Generally, I’m in favor of birthday gifts, especially since no one’s given me any yet, but the way she’s being all furtive makes me suspect this gift is among the Trojan horse variety that’ll come back to betray me in some underhand manner. “No thanks. Seeing you today was all the gift I needed.”

She pulls a wrapped parcel from the folds of her cloak. “Too bad.”

It takes me longer than it should to tear the paper. Beneath is an exquisite red-leather-bound copy of Dante’s Inferno. The gold leaf pressed into the illustrations glints from the closed book’s edges. I bite my bottom lip. “Strange, I don’t remember giving you a small fortune recently.”

“It’s not from me.”

Holding my breath, I flip back the cover. My pulse stops at the handwritten dedication.

Happy seventeenth birthday, Volpacchiotto!

Ti voglio bene, Volpone.

Niccolo.

My fingers trace over the letters. Each one is a memory, a marvel, a message for a past version of me who died a little when his brother disappeared. There’s a splotch of ink around the exclamation point, as if Niccolo had been writing in a hurry, so eager to get the words down, he didn’t care if he made a mess of things, because he knew I wouldn’t mind.

Volpone and Volpacchiotto. Big fox and little fox. Our names just for each other. I liked being half of something with my brother more than I liked being a third of something with our father. Mamma refuses to call me Virgil, but every time she uses the name that my brother gave me, another bit of my soul burns off and blackens. I don’t want anyone to call me Volpacchiotto ever again unless it’s him.