Pia’s thumb strokes once along the inside of my wrist. I didn’t realize I was shaking until she tried to steady me.
“This doesn’t say he killed him,” she says softly.
I stare at the ink.
“No,” I say.
My voice sounds flat. Hollowed out.
“It doesn’t say he killed him.”
I fold the letter once, carefully, like it’s a relic instead of a bomb.
“But it says he could have.”
The truth lodges behind my ribs — jagged, heavy, impossible to spit out or swallow.
Giovanni saw Romeo’s weakness. The Vescari saw his hunger. And I’m standing in the wreckage of a kingdom, holding proof my brother didn’t just flirt with betrayal.
He fucking danced with it.
And my father expected me — planned for me — to decide whether Romeo walks away from that dance alive.
Pia’s eyes search mine. “What are you thinking?” she asks.
I let out a breath that shakes once before I cage it. “I’m thinking he never stopped using us as weapons,” I say. “Not even now.”
I slide the letter back into the envelope with slow, deliberate care and look toward the safe.
“And if he left this for Romeo…” My gaze drops to the flash drive, small and ugly against the dark lining.
“…then whatever’s on that is worse.”
The dread that settles in my gut isn’t vague. It’s sharp. Focused.
Because letters accuse.
Footage convicts.
And if Giovanni took the time to write to his charming son about treason, then somewhere in this room there might be a record of the night the King actually fell —
and exactly how deep my brother’s fingerprints run in his blood.
Security Footage and the Accident in the Shadows
I slide the letter back into the envelope and shove it into my jacket like a live grenade I don’t trust on the table.
The flash drive waits in the safe. Small. Plain. Harmless in the way a bullet looks harmless before it’s chambered.
I take it.
The plastic is cold against my fingers, edges biting into skin. Giovanni didn’t keep anything useless. If this stayed here, buried in his private tomb, it’s because he wanted someone like him to find it.
Or the son he trained to replace him.
Back at the broken desk, I yank one drawer the rest of the way out. Something knocks against the back with a dull clack. I reach in and drag out a thin, dusty laptop, casing cracked, one corner dented like someone threw it once and then decided not to finish the job.
“Of course,” I mutter. “Couldn’t just leave a simple, clean trail, could you, old man?”
