I tried to keep my voice steady, but it pulsed with fury. “We won the war. We were victorious.”
“A victory built on a mountain of corpses you led to their deaths.”
He jabbed a finger into my chest—hard enough to bruise.
“No matter how many times I beat you, shaped you, bled you,” he spat, “I knew. Deep down, I knew. This day would come. That you’d fucking break.”
He leaned in, his voice a blade pressed to my throat.
“You’ve done it, Salvatore. You’ve completed your fucking failure.”
For a second, I thought he would strike me. Gods, I almost wanted him to. A blow would have been easier. Simpler.
But instead, he only stared, his gaze colder than iron, as if he were looking at filth scraped from his sandal and couldn’t believe it had dared speak his name.
“You’re a worthless motherfucker,” he said at last, his voice steady, every word striking bone. “I strip you of your title. Of my name. Of everything that ever made you more than the dirt beneath my feet.”
He circled me like a vulture, eyes glinting with disgust. “You are no lord. No son. No heir. I revoke your lands, your gold, your bloodline. You’ll have no home, no power, no roof to crawl beneath when the cold comes. You’ll eat with the rats you’ve become.”
He paused before me, his gaze cold. “You always envied that peasant boy you call a friend,” he said, a bitter smile twisting his mouth. “Now you are his equal—poor, nameless, and crawling in the dirt. You’re finally worthy of his friendship.”
His voice dropped to a hiss, quiet and cruel. “You have nothing now, Salvatore. No coin. No command. No legacy. Only shame that bears my name.”
The brazier spat and threw his face into relief—every line a canyon, every canyon a verdict. My throat burned. My hands ached from holding myself rigid. Rage and shame knotted until breathing was a fight.
“I’m your son,” I whispered. The words shredded me. “Your only surviving son.”
His lip curled like I’d spat in his face.
“I buried both my sons in battle,” he said, flat and final, as if closing a book.
“Father—”
“Get the fuck out of my sight,” he said, voice rising, and trembling with fury, not grief. “Before I kill you myself.”
“Please.” My voice scraped the air. “Just listen. I?—”
“Ten thousand souls!” he bellowed, arm cutting the air like a blade. “Ten thousand men marched under you. You led them to the slaughter like a child chasing sparks. You fed them to the enemy. You burned their names with your vanity.”
“I can explain?—”
“You will explain nothing!” His roar rattled the plastered walls. “You want forgiveness? You want understanding? Julian died a hero. You are a curse in my bloodline. A mistake I failed to strangle in the cradle.”
Something inside me broke then—not a cry, not a sound it could name, only a fissure that would widen for the rest of my life. I did not fall to my knees. I did not beg. I felt the world sharpen and split.
He pointed—the gesture small and final—toward the door. My punishment was spoken without words—exile to the dust, disgrace in every whisper of my name, and the silence of a house that would never again claim me.
“Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
My voice stuck. “I fought. I killed. I slayed, Father?—”
He did not wait. His sandaled foot slammed into my ribs; the air was punched from me. I folded like old parchment under pressure. Another strike—my face—another to my side, my belly. I clawed at the floor, hands scraping grit, crawling toward the threshold like a wounded animal. Every movement burned.
“How about you go to Helena now?” he spat, voice full of bile. “Cry to your dead brother’s widow—maybe fuck her again for comfort.”
I shoved myself to my feet, breath catching painfully. My knees nearly gave out beneath the weight of it. He knew about my affair with Helena.
“You thought you could hide your filthy secret,” he spat, each syllable a stone. “You thought fucking your dead brother’s widow would go unseen. I have men in every courtyard and ear in every room. Servants talk when the coin clinks. Your little fucks don’t stay a secret.”
