I’m no victim. They aren’t going to make me into one.I focused through my anger, breaths coming fast, the room swimming in front of me, as I hissed,“You cannot be serious…”
“That is all I ask,” Giovanni interrupted, satisfaction glimmering in his eyes as he straightened. “You are wise,Don. Wiser than those who would drag us back into the dark ages of clan wars and vendettas.” He shot me a stern look, and it was all I could do not to lunge over the table and stab him in the throat.
Instead, my hands curled into fists in my lap, nails biting into bandaged flesh. I forced them to relax, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me bleed again.
I had come here today with a plan carved into my bones—kill Marcello Dominico. Sink my blade into his heart before anyone could stop me. End the Dynasty by removing its rotten head.
Instead, I’d invoked the law my father believed in and gambled everything on justice.
And now, sitting in a room full of predators, listening to men who’d never loved Enzo turn his death into a bargaining chip, I realized the truth.
I hadn’t come as the executioner.
I had come as the offering.
I would not bleed Marcello out on the altar of the Right of Arbitration.
They would bleed me out on the altar of marriage. My future was gone. My body lay across the crack between our families as a living bridge, a pretty sacrifice in a white dress.
17
EMBERLINE
One moment, I was in the Don’s private office, the Basin humming with power, Giovanni’s smug proposal hanging over my head like a blade.
The next, I was swaying on my aching feet in the marble foyer of our palazzo, the silence ringing with a finality that rattled the glass chandelier, Luca staring daggers at me.
The glamour of our wards still rippled from where we’d passed through, the illusion that masked our home from mortal eyes sliding smoothly back into place. Outside our walls, Venice glittered like gold—laughter and music drifting faintly across the canal.
Inside, the quiet was more ominous than death.
I tore off one sandal, then the other, flinging them at the console table. They bounced off the antique, sending a priceless porcelain vase wobbling in a precarious dance toward the edge.
Luca caught the vase automatically, his loose hair falling over his eyes. The new cut across his palm showed starkly against his skin, already pink and healing.
“Why aren’t you at the banquet?” I snapped, knowing he didn’t deserve my anger. “When there were at least thirty females salivating over you?”
“Because I was too fucking worried about my sister being locked up in a holding cell,” he shouted, voice rough. “Or dead.I thought…” He bit off his next words, breathing fast. “What the fuck were you even thinking?”
“This wasn’t all me.” I sighed, just wanting to go to bed and be done with this clusterfuck of a day.
“I wasn’t speaking toyou,” he bit out. “I was speaking to our uncle.What the fuck have you done, Giovanni?”
Giovanni paused just inside the doors, calmly undoing the rope belt at his waist. He shrugged out of the brown habit like it was a costume, revealing dark trousers and a simple black shirt beneath. That quickly, the monk vanished; only the shark remained.
“Cara,” he said, draping his robe over his arm, “I did exactly what I promised your father I would do. I kept Luca’s position secure and the family fortunes safe, as your father would have wanted.”
And I was the price of that safety, I wanted to scream.
The foyer smelled the same—beeswax, old wood, the faintest hint of father’s cologne caught in the silk of the heavy curtains. The chandeliers glowed softly. The mosaics in the marble floor still depicted the DiRavello swan crest in gleaming onyx and pearl.
Giovanni’s soft footsteps echoed as he headed toward the corridor, the end of his robe dragging, and my eyes went to the hem snaking across the marble floor, remembering how he’d dragged a track of wetness over the stones outside the night of Enzo’s Nightfire.
Had he gone outside that evening, near the canal?
“You are not walking away from this,” I warned softly. “If you’re trading my life away, I deserve a godsdamned explanation.”
Giovanni paused, hand resting on the frame of the double doors leading deeper into the house. He turned his head just enough to peer over his shoulder.
