Back to my face.
“You’re doing a beautiful job proving him right,” he says.
Pia makes a sound behind me. Not fear.
Fury. Grief. The awful, choking realization that no matter how far we run, Giovanni’s hand is still on our throats.
“You’re not taking her,” I say.
The words don’t feel like speech.
They feel like something carved.
Emiliano studies us. Me in front, Pia behind, still shaking, still standing. His eyes don’t soften. They just… assess.
“I didn’t come to take,” he replies. “I came to collect.”
My stomach knots.
Pia swallows, the sound small and vicious in the quiet.
“Collect what?” she whispers.
Emiliano looks at her like he’s measuring the exact size of the grenade she is.
“Debts,” he says. “Promises. Loose ends. The pieces Giovanni scattered all over this continent when he thought being a king meant he could rewrite fate.”
His gaze pins me again.
“And the trouble you dragged back into his house when you came home wearing a collar and thinking it made you clean.”
Rage flares up my spine, red-hot.
“You weren’t here.” “You didn’t see what he did. You didn’t watch him—”
“Die?” Emiliano cuts in softly. “Yes. That’s the one thing I missed. Everything else?” He gestures lazily to the walls, to the darkness, to the blood. “I know exactly how he played this game.”
A sound scrapes behind us.
Stone against boot.
Not Guido.
He’s too light.
This is heavier.
Older.
Pia’s fingers touch my back, just for a second.
We’re not alone down here.
Not by a long shot.
Emiliano hears it too. He doesn’t turn.
He doesn’t need to.
