My own heartbeat faltered.
Darkness crept in at the edges of my vision.
I didn’t know if I had passed out.
Or if I was dying.
All I knew—
Was that I was lying on a frozen floor.
Holding my newborn son.
And he wasn’t crying.
His tiny, perfect face rested against my chest—still, silent, rimed with frost.
The last thing I saw—
Before everything went black—
Were the words carved into the walls around us.
Again.
And again.
I AM A BETRAYER TO THE BLACK VEIL SOCIETY
They burned into my vision.
Into my mind.
Into the last fragment of awareness I had left.
And then—
Everything disappeared.
Chapter 28
VINCENZO
Five hours.
Five endless, suffocating hours.
Since I’d given the order.
Since I’d told Ciro to lock Elena inside the industrial cold room.
The thought shouldn’t have changed anything.
But it did.
I hadn’t sat once.
My study felt like a cage.
