“I kept you safe after,” he insisted, voice rising, desperation bleeding through the cracks in his control. “I sent you away because it was the only way to protect you. Everything I did—everything—was for you.”
I tilted my head slightly.
Studying him.
The lie wasn’t in the words. It was in the conviction.
Men like him always believed themselves.
“I deserve—” he began.
I moved.
The blade drove forward with brutal precision.
Not for his heart—that would have been mercy.
The dagger punched through his left cheek, steel slicing flesh with sickening ease, grinding against bone and teeth before bursting out through the other side.
A wet, choking sound exploded from him.
Blood sprayed.
Hot. Violent.
It painted the air between us in a fine red mist.
I stepped back smoothly, just enough to avoid it, my movements calm and controlled.
His body convulsed.
Violently. Uncontrollably.
His hands jerked behind him, useless, bound, his entire frame writhing as his mouth tried to form a scream that could no longer exist.
The blade remained lodged through his face.
A grotesque bar forced between his jaws.
Every attempt to move—every attempt to breathe—only tore the wound wider.
More blood. More pain.
He buckled forward, shoulders heaving, choking on his own breath, thick red spilling onto the stones beneath him.
Pooling. Spreading.
Staining the mountain like it had always belonged there.
I watched him.
Silently.
For a long moment.
This... was Ottavio Orsini.
The man who once ruled men with a glance. The man whose name had opened doors—or closed coffins.
