After taking a moment to enjoy his handiwork, the blond man turns to the last Dervishi, who’s cornered and on his knees with both hands clasped together in prayer.
“You’re a devil. God save me,” the man screams.
The blond puts the blood-covered blade between his teeth, grasps the man’s head, and viciously snaps it to one side. The body slumps to the ground.
Then the only sound is my rapid, terrified breathing. Blood is pooling around my feet. Memories of past slaughter are overlapping with this one, pressing in on me.
This can’t be happening again.
The blond monster takes the knife out from between his teeth. Those beautiful, emotional blue eyes that touched my soul a moment ago are dead and cold. His gleaming white teeth are stained red with blood.
He’s still smiling like a psycho.
Heisthe devil. I don’t know why I believed he needed my help.
I pivot and run, but my foot slips in blood, giving the man enough time to tackle me. We crash to the floor with him on top. I thrash back and forth, drawing enough breath into my lungs to scream, but it does me no good. No one’s coming to save me.
I feel his hot breath in my ear as he says, vicious and mocking, “Where do you think you’re going, my pretty little savior?”
His right hand is braced by my head, and I see what I didn’t notice before. The detail of the tattoo on his forearm.
An ominous midnight raven with its wings spread.
Even before I knew what a scorpion tattoo meant, I knew the deadly significance of a raven tattoo. When I gave this man a knife, I thought I was saving a victim of Dervishi violence. Maybenot an innocent victim, but at least someone who would thank me for saving him from a deadly beating in a laundromat.
I was wrong.
This man’s a Vici.
If he finds out I’m a Montoni, I’m a dead woman.
2
Vincenzo
“No more death.”
That’s what Don Agnello Montoni promised my family, his voice as smooth and solemn as the vast, polished mahogany table we sat around. “It’s only right that our families mend what is broken.”
The Montonis and the Vicis have long been at war, and he promised to end the slaughter with a marriage. As son of the Vici don, I would marry his daughter, Adora Montoni, and forge an alliance, sealed with an engagement ring. The old Malus, city of violence, betrayal, and heartbreak, need not be the new Malus. No more weeping widows. No more blood spilled on the streets that cross the borders between Montoni and Vici territory.
Don Agnello made all the right gestures, said all the right words, and we, with foolish hope, gave him the perfect chance to gut us.
Six weeks ago, I walked through a lavishly decorated ballroom, strewn with bodies and blood. Don Agnello Montonihad spared no expense for his daughter’s first meeting with me, her future husband. I arrived late. Too late to prevent the slaughter. The Montonis were gone. I never even saw my future bride’s face.
I flip the struggling woman onto her back and press her down onto the bloody tiles with my body. Her honey-blonde hair is mussed, and her warm amber eyes burn with a furious promise that I’ll pay for every indignity.
“Let me up,” she spits, still thrashing about. I feel every curve of her slender body, and her efforts to get away from me feel like a joke.
I seize both her wrists and pin them above her head. This woman thought she was going to help me get away from the Dervishis, and I’d be, what? Grateful? That I’d whisper some meaningless thanks before melting into the shadows like a fading dream?
“What am I going to do with you?” I wonder aloud, running my eyes over her. She’s probably a college girl who’s been up studying into the late hours, and hasn’t realized how dangerous Malus is at night.
Her eyes flash with anger, and she stabs me with her words. “Do with me?Do with me?You’re going to get the hell off me, and I’m going to walk out of here and forget this happened. I’m not interested in whatever was going on here tonight. I should never have cared in the first place.”
My eyebrows lift in surprise. She’s trapped beneath me, and yet she’s giving me orders. “Who do you think you are?”
Fear thrills through her eyes. “I’m no one. I’m not worth your time.”
