“You are my son. My blood. My heir in charm, if not in discipline. You were meant to be my diplomat, not my executioner.”
Heat crawls up my spine.
Heir in charm, not discipline. Of course, he wrote that. Like my brother was in a miscast role in his private theater.
“But if you cross me,” I read, “if you continue feeding information to our enemies for your own little games, you will be the death of this family. You will be the one who kills his King.”
The words smear at the edges.
I blink hard, but the page still goes soft around the ink.
Pia steps closer, her shoulder brushing mine, quiet and solid. She doesn’t tell me to breathe. She just stands there like a pillar I can lean against if I’m stupid enough to admit I need one.
I drag in a breath that tastes like dust and old rage.
“You carry my secrets without understanding the cost of them,” I read. “If you keep working behind my back, the blood spilled next will be mine, and it will be on your hands.”
I stop.
Not because the letter’s over.
Because the room suddenly feels smaller, like the walls leaned in to hear the verdict.
You will be the one who kills his King.
Romeo’s face flashes through my head — laughing at the bar, rolling his eyes in the confessional, shoving me out of the wayonce when Giovanni threw a bottle and misjudged the angle. Bloody knuckles, crooked grin, stupid loyalty.
My stomach turns.
“There’s more,” Pia says quietly. Her fingers curl around my wrist, light but steady. “If you stop now, he wins.”
I huff out something that might almost be a laugh if it didn’t scrape on the way out. “You realize you sound like him.”
“Yeah, well,” she mutters. “I plan to be the upgrade.”
I keep reading.
“I write this not to absolve you, but to warn you. The Vescari are not your friends. They are using you. They know you crave freedom from my shadow. They see your weakness.”
The page trembles just slightly in my grip.
Of course it’s the Vescari. There’s always a viper coiled just offstage, waiting for the bloodline to crack.
“If I die,” I continue, “Santino will judge you. He will be the only one strong enough. And if he is smart, he will end you before you end us all.”
Silence falls over the room like a sheet over a body.
No signature.
Just a date.
Three days before Giovanni died.
Three days before the bullet. Before the church. Before the blood on the marble and Zina’s scream and my hands in my father’s shirt trying to hold in pieces that didn’t want to stay.
My fingers go numb around the paper.
Of course, he wrote it like this. Not as a father. Not as a man afraid. As a king securing his legacy. Giovanni Rivas, playing God right to the edge — naming one son traitor and the other executioner in a single paragraph.
