“The bleeding has slowed,” I observed, dunking the cloth again, sweeping it between her fingers.
They were delicate, perfectly formed, with tapered, unpolished nails. And this close, I saw she didn’t wear makeup, only a fading blush on her cheeks, those rosy lips close enough to kiss. She stayed quiet the entire time I worked, just stared at me as if cataloguingmyreaction.
“That cut is deep enough to sever tendons. You should be screaming,” I observed.
She just shrugged. “High pain tolerance. And facingpotential death has a way of numbing you to everything else.”
I looked up, watching her face carefully. “Why do you think you’re facing potential death? Unless youwereplanning to stab my father with his own knife.”
As expected, she obstinately pinched her lips together as I finished washing her fingers, then tossed the rust-stained wet cloth back onto the sideboard.
“I invoked your own laws, which I am well within my rights to do,” she demurred, deciding it was safer not to answer my question. “Even your father is bound to honor the Right of Arbitration. He’s not a god, and he will face the consequences of what he’s done.”
I wrapped the cloth tightly around her hand, methodical motions practiced over decades of tending wounds. I needed to do something with my hands while I wrestled down the urge to slam her against the wall and shake sense into her.
Or sink my fangs into her throat.
“You realize,”—I was having trouble keeping my voice steady—“that accusing the Don of breaking the Blood Compact is the same as inviting the erasure of his entire line. Including me.”
“Really?” Her eyes went comically wide, pools of the blackest obsidian surrounded by long, silky lashes. “Thanks for telling me because in all my hours of planning, I hadn’t thought that part through.”
“Careful, Emberline,” my eyes narrowed at her sass. “You’re beginning to sound awfully bloodthirsty for someone who claims she only wants justice.”
“Why?” she asked, with terrible calmness, her unhurt hand digging into her skirt. “Will you kill me where I sit? Tear my throat out? Are we done pretending to be civilized?”
“I’m trying,” I growled, “to keep you alive long enough to realize how wrong you are about everything. Perhaps you can still salvage this situation and survive.”
Her fate shouldn’t matter to me in the least.
Before the other night, I couldn’t have even picked Emberline out in a crowd, but now… now the thought of her death had my stomach churning.
“Wrong?” She barked out a humorless laugh. “You honestly expect me to believe your father is innocent?”
“Yes.” The answer came without hesitation, and something flickered across her face—something like weary pity, gone in an instant.
“You really do think he’s innocent. That’s very… sweet,” she scoffed. “Such a good, loyal son you are.”
“Explain your reasoning, then.” I tied off the clean bandage and stepped away, feeling noticeably colder without her warmth touching mine. “Why my father? Why not one of the others? Rocco Demente. Emilia DiSangue. Severin.” I paused, gauging her expression at my next words. “Your own uncle, perhaps.”
There was nothing.
Only a flicker of annoyance that I dared suggest such a thing.
“Because Marcello despised my father and has been plotting his revenge for years.” Her voice sharpened, losing its languid edges. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I have no earthly idea what you’re going on about.”
“Marcello and Enzo’s feud that’s lastedcenturies,” she clarified spitefully. “The fact that my uncle was favored to become Don before your father stole the title and the power that should have belonged to our family.”
“Salvatore never meant for the title to go outside ourfamily. Giovanni is dreaming if he thought he had any chance of becoming Don.”
“So says you.”
“So says me.” I leaned closer until our lips almost touched. “And let me remind you, I am heir to that throne, just as my father was. Whatever stories Giovanni told you… they were lies.”
12
GABRIEL
