It is coming from the shortwave emergency radio console built seamlessly into the teakwood wall near the kitchen. A red light blinks frantically on the dark panel.
The island is completely off the grid. The frequency is heavily encrypted, known only to the pilot, to me, and to the highest-ranking members of my inner circle. The pilot was ordered to maintain absolute radio silence.
Which means only one person could be transmitting.
I slowly, agonizingly slide my right arm out from under Sybil. She stirs, murmuring softly in her sleep, but I gently shift her weight onto the cushions, entirely avoiding waking her.
I push myself up from the sofa. The pain in my shoulder is a dull, throbbing ache, the antibiotics finally beginning to fightback the infection, but my legs are leaden. I stagger across the dark living room, completely bare-chested, my heart executing a heavy, terrified rhythm against my ribs.
I reach the console. I press my thumb against the receiver button, opening the channel without speaking. I will not broadcast my voice until I confirm the identity of the threat.
The static clears, replaced by the heavy, distorted sound of a man breathing.
"Thayer."
The voice completely freezes the blood in my veins.
It is Don Castiglione.
The head of the Commission. "I know you're listening," the rival Don says, his voice a thick, gravelly rasp dripping with arrogance. "The Feds raided your safehouses. They froze your accounts. Your Capos are turning state's evidence. The Syndicate is gone, boy."
I do not press the button to reply. I stare at the blinking red light, an absolute, murderous rage entirely consuming the remnants of my fever.
"But that isn't why I'm breaking the silence," Castiglione continues, a dark, bitter laugh echoing through the radio."You thought you played me. You thought setting Bastian up was your masterstroke. But you forgot one crucial detail, Thayer."
My knuckles turn bone-white as I grip the edge of the console.
"Arthur Vance didn't just give the FBI the files on your father," Castiglione whispers, the words dripping with a toxic, catastrophic poison that threatens to completely annihilate myentire universe."He left a secondary file with the Commission. A file detailing exactly what you did the night her mother died."
A profound, violent shockwave completely rips through my nervous system.
The air evacuates my lungs. The ground entirely drops out from beneath my feet.
"She thinks you saved her," Castiglione taunts, his voice echoing loudly in the silent, dark villa."She thinks you're the hero who burned the world to keep her safe. But if she ever finds out that you were the one who—"
I slam my fist onto the console, completely smashing the receiver button, instantly shattering the plastic and permanently killing the transmission.
The radio dies in a shower of sparks, plunging the room back into absolute, terrifying silence.
My chest heaves with ragged, jagged gasps of air. I stare at the broken electronics, my mind violently short-circuiting.
I turn around slowly.
Sybil is sitting up on the white linen sofa. The shadows completely obscure her face, but I can see the rigid, terrifying stiffness of her posture.
She is entirely awake.
And she heard every single word.
CHAPTER 26 THE GHOSTS WE FEED POV: SYBIL
The shower of sparks raining down from the smashed radio console illuminates the dark living room in violent, dying bursts of orange and blue.
Then, there is only the absolute, suffocating darkness.
The silence that crashes down over the villa is not empty. It is a heavy, physical entity, pregnant with the catastrophic, toxic poison of Dante’s final transmission. The words hang in the hot, humid air, completely paralyzing the oxygen in my lungs.
A file detailing exactly what you did the night her mother died.
