I wave my hand at Noah. “Get out. Girls only. Feminist empire-building going on here.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt this very important meeting,Imperators,” Noah says with a cocksure quirk of his lips. “But Eli’s just had a call from Livvie. Nero is giving testimony at Walter Hart’s appeal. For the defense.”
I leap to my feet. “What?”
Fuck. In all the mayhem, I’d completely forgotten that the scumbag Walter Hart is appealing his sentence. And I know George’s evidence is airtight, but if Nero’s involved… that’s not good.
Why is Nero getting involved in this? Hart’s relationship was with Dio and Brutus, not him. He knows that hitching his cart to the Memories of the Hart horse is a PR nightmare. Too many gangsters trusted Walter Hart with their loved one’s remains to welcome him back with open arms.
No, this is personal. Nero’s only doing this because Walter is Eli’s father, because he knows it will get to me. For some unknown reason, he’s obsessed with Eli’s family.
This is his next move – an indirect assault on my alliance with Cali, an attempt to undermine the solidity of my tribunes. I just don’t understand why he’s chosen Walter Hart to be his pawn. Is it because we already blew up Senator Marlowe’s life? The guy is rotting in jail, waiting for his own trial while the press gleefully digs through his company records and reveals all kinds of nasty secrets. Noah’s holding it together by swinging a sledgehammer around the rage room every night.
“Eli?” I ask Noah, my heart stuttering in my chest. What’s this news going to do to my Golden Boy?
“He knows. He’s not great.” Noah’s dark eyes cloud over as he fists one of my knives. Nero is lucky he’s not within stabbing distance, because Noah’s ready to go nuclear. Despite the shittiness of the situation, my chest swells thinking that this guy won’t hesitate to draw blood for anyone in this family.
I slide out from beneath Cali and go to find my broken Sherlock Holmes.
* * *
I locateEli in my rage room, throwing a set of Alberto Pinto china against the wall. I touch his shoulder and he whirls around, a gravy jug raised above his head like a weapon. His face crumples with misery when he sees me. I wrap my arms around him.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“Nothing’s okay when Nero Lucian is involved. Why can’t he just rot in jail like he’s supposed to?” Eli yells. “Because he’s Walter fucking Hart and even though he did everything George says he did, he still seems to expect the world to treat him like he’s God’s gift to the death industry.”
I look over at Noah, who hovers in the doorway. “What grounds does he even have for an appeal?”
“Fuck knows. We remortgaged the house to pay our useless lawyer, Sanderson, to come up with some kind of case. I expected to spend a fuckton of money and lose, because Dad’s guilty as sin and George’s evidence supports that. I don’t give a shit if we’re destitute – that money was dirty, anyway. Why is Nero involved? It makes no sense. What’s he going to be able to do for the case? He’s not exactly a convincing character witness.”
“He wants to fuck with me,” I growl, thinking of the planted evidence Nero created to condemn Constantine. As for the seal on my father’s death contract, I didn’t know if it was real or not, but it didn’t matter anymore. Brutus was dead. Constantine was dead. My father was well and truly avenged. Everything is about my family now. “Somehow, Nero is going to use this trial as a stage for whatever drama he wants to play out against us. I have no idea how you still have a job with him, or why Livvie is still talking to you if you’re public enemy number one, but we have to use that. We have to find out what the fuck is going on.”
34
Claudia
I’m attending school now only to keep up appearances. Noah and Eli are finishing most of my assignments, Ms. Drysdale gave me top marks in her classes since I saved her ass, and Antony and Tiberius are letting us all skate in their classes with little work. It’s a pointless waste of time. I have no intention of going to college. Why do I need a high school diploma when I already manage one of the most complex supply chains in the world?
To be fair, I’m not exactly doing a bang-up job. This shit is complicated, and Noah and my accountant David have to explain things to me over and over again. It’s hard to focus on the actual business stuff when my precarious situation with the Triumvirate and Mackenzie’s continued existence weighs on my mind.
Not to mention the fact that the streets of Tartarus Oaks are running red with blood. It’s no longer safe to walk my city alone, with random fights and shootings breaking out every day.
The media is blaming the recent violence on the ‘tough-on-organized-crime’ senator awaiting trial, but I know the real reason – there are many in our organization who don’t approve of my appointment, or Nero’s slaying of Constantine, or Cali’s claim to the Dio empire. There’s an undercurrent of dissent running through my city, and if we don’t quash it, it will burst its dams and sweep us all away.
All of this swirls around in my head as I move through the halls toward History. I wave to Eli, who is walking in the other direction. “You skipping class? Can I join? We’re just going to be watching Citizen Kane again and I didn’t understand that film the first time—”
“You can’t come with me.” Eli shifts uncomfortably. “I… I have a meeting.”
My eyebrow arches. “Like with the police? About the trial? Don’t you want me to be there?”
“No. It’s a meeting with Berkeley about… about their law program.”
His eyes dart away.
“Eli, you got into Berkeley? That’s amazing.” And it is. Itis. But the words drop from my tongue like lead weights. I know this is what we discussed, that legal experience would be an asset to our family. But with this new violence and Cali in charge of Dio and Nero inserting himself into the trial… I don’t think he should be so far from us.
He nods. “And Yale. And Harvard.”
