This is messy.Erratic.Letters carved in anger.
“The betrayal came from blood. The King will die by a son’s hand.”
The words slam into me like a punch to the ribs.
The ledger slips from my grip.
A cold wave rolls through me so viciously my vision goes spotty.
He knew.
He knew he wouldn’t die old, comfortable, adored.He knew it wouldn’t be a rival.He knew it wouldn’t be some outsider hungry for the crown.
He knew it would be one of us.
My breath stutters—harsh, uneven, too loud in the suffocating vault.
I stagger back until my shoulder hits the cold stone wall.
My father predicted his own murder…and he blamed one of his sons.
The truth sinks claws into my spine.
“Jesus…” I choke. “What the fuck did you do?”
Did he confront the wrong person?Accuse the right one?Provoke the betrayal he feared?
Or worse — did he set a trap and fall into his own?
My hands won’t stop trembling.
All his life, Giovanni made loyalty sound simple.
Family.Blood.Obedience.
But here—hidden in his own hand, buried in a vault he meant no one to open — is the truth he refused to say out loud:
The danger wasn’t outside the family.It was inside it.Inside us.Inside me.
And now that I’ve opened this vault, there’s no going back.No unseeing.No unknowing.No pretending.
The red slash burns at the corner of the page.
The words echo like a curse: The King will die by a son’s hand.
My breath fractures.
Because suddenly the question isn’t which Rivas betrayed him — it’s what he was planning to do to stop it…
…and whether the one who killed him simply struck first.
The Name He Never Expected
My pulse is still hammering from the last revelation when another thought wedges itself between my ribs.
Romeo.
His voice.His warnings.His fucking fear every time I got too close to the truth.
