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The shadow of a sigh left her nostrils. “It would have been. And I commend you for thinking so.”
Dread seized Enzo. “But…?”
“But,” she echoed, “it seems all possible witnesses against Nascimbene have somehow perished. We have no evidence to go on save the word of dead criminals. There is nothing to support your case.”
“Our staff bore witness—”
“Any jury will assume they’ve been paid off to testify in your favor. Any suit you bring against Nascimbene now will reek of corruption. You have no case.”
Enzo stared at her. “So he is never to answer for his crimes?”
Lucrezia met his eyes with a look that outmatched him in severity. “If that answer disappoints you, perhaps you ought to have thought the matter over before you murdered all three of his criminal contacts without a trial.”
It would’ve stung less had she taken up a cat-o’-nine tails and scourged his actual flesh. As matters stood, the truth of her words struck Enzo like a knife to his heart. It left him quite unable to reply.
Something softened in her gaze. She laid a princely hand on his shoulder. “I do not mean they shouldn’t have perished for their crimes. Only, the moment of their execution might have been better chosen.” She paused. “I am sorry.”
Still Enzo couldn’t speak.
Lucrezia clapped his shoulder and departed the alcove. A courtier approached her. Soon she was engaged in conversation, leaving Enzo as far behind as the antipodes.
Enzo continued staring in her direction long after the crowd of courtiers surged in to fill her wake and hide her from his view altogether. Uncounted moments passed before he could force his hands to unclench. He had no one to blame but himself for this injustice.
“Carlotta,” Enzo spoke into the aether.
He knew not in which particular shadowy corner she lurked in just now. But he doubted she’d wandered far out of earshot on so auspicious an occasion as this.
And, true to form, she emerged from somewhere in the crowd off to his left within two shakes of a sail.
“The gondola, please,” he told her.
She summoned it without question. Hardly a quarter of an hour passed before Enzo was poised to enter it.
“Ca’ Scaevola, your grace?” Ippolito asked.
Enzo shook his head. “Teatro Novissimo.”
If this directive surprised them, neither Carlotta nor Ippolito questioned it. At least not aloud.
Enzo entered the felze. Carlotta followed swiftly behind. He rapped his knuckles against the roof’s ribs. The gondola slid silently through the canal. Glinting lights and festive clamor permeated the woven wicker screen. Enzo thought only of what lay ahead.
He heard the theater district before he saw it. The queer echoes from all the disparate opera houses mingled in the air. All the more haunting now that he knew the horrors endured to create the sound. The gondola drew up to Teatro Novissimo. Enzo disembarked.
“I won’t be long,” he told Ippolito.
Carlotta followed him into the opera house. Enzo wondered if she suspected his true purpose here. He didn’t have his sword on him. He didn’t need it. Not yet.
The performance had already begun. Most late-comers would be refused entry. Enzo’s family crest opened doors regardless.
“Where may I find Maestro Nascimbene?” Enzo asked the usher.
The usher led him up several grand flights of stairs to a private box at the top of the theatre. There sat Nascimbene, enjoying a brilliant aria amidst several admirers of diverse sexes.
Nascimbene, in Enzo’s opinion, was foolish not to leave the city the very moment his murderous scheme failed. Perhaps, like Fiore at the ball, he thought it would appear more suspicious to run. If it in any way alarmed him to see Enzo now, he hid it well.
“What a remarkable surprise!” Nascimbene stood to bow. “Welcome, your grace. Do tell us if there’s anything we might do for you.”
“Name the time and place of our meeting,” said Enzo.
