Besides, hostile negotiations were my specialty.
“You aren’t the only one with an axe to grind,tesoro.Marcello sent me away to die, remember? Stole my life from me, and I came back to make him pay for that.” He considered me for a moment, hand braced on the wall above his head. “I was thinking we might form a partnership.”
“I’m listening.”
Dante’s wry amusement edged into something keener as I dragged my chair closer to the fireplace, where the weapons werealmostwithin my grasp.
“First, we set the terms of our ceasefire. Then we figure out how to convince the vultures outside that we’ve honored our marriage vows. After that…” He shrugged one bulky shoulder.
“I had a plan in place,” I snapped. “It involved marrying your brother, getting close to your father, destroying your Dynasty from the inside, then killing everyone who had anything to do with my father’s murder.” My fingers curled into fists. “You wrecked all of that tonight.”
He eyed me for a moment, something like respect flickering in his gaze.
“Good,” he said simply.
I blinked. “Good?”
He stepped closer, slow and deliberate, until the candlelight brushed over the hard lines of his cheekbones, the long white scar kissing his jaw. Up close, I studied the faint edge of those strange tattoos marking his throat, the dark smudges beneath his eyes that spoke of years without real rest.
The light kissed his skin with a gold glow and for a second—so fast I was sure I imagined it—flames exploded around those blue irises in a ring of orange fire, body heat rolling off him in waves.
“Because your plan was stupid. You were going to get yourself killed, and that…” His voice trailed off, eyes darkening to storm cloud blue as that intense gaze settled fully on me. “That would have been a terrible waste of talent.”
My spine snapped straight.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Everyplanincludes an escape route. There wasn’t one tonight, was there? Your dear uncle didn’t give you a way off this island. Tonight, you were nothing but a DiRavello lamb dressed up for slaughter.”
“I am no lamb,” I snapped, trying to sound vicious when I was curled into this chair, shoeless, weaponless, and completely out of options.
“No,” he agreed, eyes dropping briefly to my mouth. “You’re not. But eventually, Marcello would have discovered your intentions and made you bleed for your betrayal, and my brother would not have been able to save you. And I highly doubt your uncle would have come to your rescue.” The smile fell off his face.
“Your brother, on the other hand, would not have hesitated and would have died in the process. Then, yourplanwould have wasted two lives.”
Oh gods, Luca.He was probably losing his shit.I’d been trying to reach my brother, but nothing got through Dante’s wards. And I couldn’t exactly ask the bastard to lower them so I could speak to my brother, mind to mind, when that was our little secret.
“Why do you even care?” I demanded. “You were free of this—the Dynasty, your father, the politics. Humiliating your father tonight stirred up a hornet’s nest, and …” I narrowed my eyes. “What, exactly, do you expect to gain out of all of this?”
His gaze held mine, unwavering.
“A future,” he said quietly. “Marcello doesn’t get to decide how my life ends. He doesn’t get to rip me out of the world and sentence me to death on a fucking whim. He’s stolen too much from me already, just like he stole from you, Emberline.”
For a long moment, all I could do was stare, my pulse roaring in my ears.
Was he confirming Marcello killed my father?
Just the implication dragged up the image of my father’s body on the stone floor of the gardens. Blood pooled beneath him, his heart gone, his chest an empty hole.Much the same way Gabriel had ripped that vampire’s heart out in that alley.
“You claim you know who killed my father,” I whispered, replaying everything that happened in those frantic moments with the priest. “Not a suspicion or a theory… You really know who did this, don’t you?”One word. One name. Give me a fucking name, right now, and I will finish this.
“I told you I knew Enzo’s killer. I never lie,” Dante’s jaw flexed. “You help me, and I will tell you everything I know.”
Enzo. Not Signore DiRavello. Not even Il Ducadi Venezia.
Only father’s inner circle called him by his first name… those who knew him best.
A chill went through me, an awareness that took my breath away in its utter, obvious simplicity.
