Dante laughed. "Ooof. Right for her pride? That's so sneaky and manipulative."
"And that is why he has always been the heir, and we were just the spares," Dario chimed in, gesturing to him and Leo.
Rodrigo managed a small smile at their nonsense. "I haven't found any magical relics in Gabriella's collection to offer Kon, but tell Athena I'll let her have the pick of Gabriella's swords if she gets up."
Kon's obsession with artifacts wasn't mere collecting. After everything they'd discovered about Serapis and the Aurora, gathering magical objects had become a survival strategy for both Kon and Athena. Knowledge was armor against enemies who could wield magic and occult forces with impunity.
Dante winked at him. "Now, swords are excellent bait. Bribery will work on Cub every time if shiny blades are involved. I'll go bang on their door and hope that Kon doesn't try to shoot me."
"If he does, he'll regret it," Leo said, the assassin back in his eyes.
Dante shot him a wink and headed up the stairs.
Rodrigo turned back to the screens. The image of Giana, hurt and hooded, was burned on the back of his eyelids.
All those years he had watched Giana, he had been so controlled that she had never seen what lay underneath his cold exterior. Now, he would be the monster he really was to get her back.
He would tear Izmir apart, stone by stone, and would burn it all to the ground if he had to.
Aspettami, anima mia,he thought, a silent vow across the distance.
Wait for me.
I'm coming.
4
Giana had always known it would end like this: violently and at the hands of an enemy. That was the way of their world.
The only question had ever been the method. Blade, bullet, or babies. Those were the options for women like her, born into blood and bound by the cruel bonds of power and vengeance.
She had figured it would be a bullet like the rest of her family. Quick, clean, followed by a sudden darkness. Or maybe a blade in the dark, a slick, cold kiss parting skin and sinew.
The 'babies' option, being traded like breeding stock to secure some alliance or erase some debt, had always seemed the worst fate. It would be a slow death of the soul. She vowed long ago, teeth gritted against the taste of her own fear, that she would choose the bullet or the blade over that every time.
To die dehydrated in an actual cage was a new scenario she had never considered. It was a fucking insult added to the list of injuries currently assaulting her nervous system. She was in a dog crate with heavy-gauge steel bars, just wide enough for her to curl into a fetal position if she ignored the screaming protestfrom her ribs. Too low to sit upright. A humiliation tactic as much as a restraint.
Giana had been shoved in there after the first round of 'questioning,' leaving her to marinate in her own blood, sweat, and the cloying, metallic scent of fear and urine. She had pissed herself on purpose when they took her in the hope that they would be too disgusted to try and rape her.
The floor was cold concrete, gritty against her exposed skin. Her shirt and wide-legged pants were torn and stiff with dried blood.
There was a scent like old copper and burnt sage that didn't match the concrete and filth. It reminded her of the incense Gabriella had sometimes burned during her private meetings. Giana had never been invited to those, but the smell lingered after meetings with clients affiliated with some kind of dark magic.
Giana's father had been a fool in many ways, but even he had known to keep his distance from certain clients. The Sorrentinos dealt in guns and territory, not whatever the Aurora traded in.
"Never touch the old blood's money," he told her once. "They pay in ways you can't afford."
Gabriella had been up to her neck in those kinds of people, and trying to kill one of them had been what finally sent her over a cliff. Giana didn't feel an iota of pity for her. She had it coming a million times over, and it had given her back her freedom.
Freedom. The word echoed in her throbbing skull like a bitter punchline.
Giana had thought that being free of the shadow of the past was going to be the answer. She thought she had outrun them all and that she had finally won.
Look where winning had gotten her. Hooded, bound, chloroformed in a sun-drenched café, and delivered like a package to this concrete hellhole.
Giana shifted minutely, trying to ease the pressure on her left hip. White-hot agony lanced from her mangled hand up her arm, stealing her breath. She clamped her teeth together, biting back a whimper. Whimpering was for the broken, and shewasn'tbroken. Not yet. Not completely.
She focused on the pain, studying each piece and cataloging it like she would a Renaissance masterwork. The throbbing ache radiated from the empty sockets where two of her back teeth had been. The raw, exposed nerves screamed from the fingertips of her left hand, where four fingernails had been removed with pliers that had gleamed under the single, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling of the adjoining room.
