“It’s neither.” He cups my face in his hands, forcing me to meet his eyes. “It’s just what happened. You survived. You adapted. You became someone who could protect the people she loves. That’s not weakness, Scarlett. That’s strength.”
“Then why does it feel like I lost something important?”
He doesn’t answer. Maybe because he doesn’t have an answer to give or because he lost that same something so long ago he doesn’t remember what it felt like to have it.
Around us, the gunfire is dying down. The last of Isabella’s forces are falling or fleeing, my ears picking up the scattered shots and shouted orders as Dante’s surviving men finish the job. The cathedral is finally going quiet for the first time since this nightmare began.
I look around at the destruction surrounding us. Bodies everywhere, too many to count. Blood coating the stone floors in pools and rivers. Smoke still drifting through the shattered windows where the stained glass used to be.
This is what victory looks like in this world. It’s not triumphant or heroic. It’s just death and exhaustion and the hollow feeling of having survived something that should have killed you.
“Luca,” I say suddenly, panic cutting through the numbness. “I need to see him. I need to make sure he’s okay.”
“He’s safe. The men are bringing him up now.”
“But I need to see him. I need to hold him. I need?—”
“I know.” Dante takes my hand. “Come on.”
We walk through the carnage together, stepping over bodies, avoiding the worst of the blood. My legs are still shaky, but Dante keeps me upright, his grip firm and warm.
Somewhere behind us, Isabella’s body is cooling on the cathedral floor. I don’t look back.
The nineteen-year-old girl I used to be would never have imagined this moment. Would never have believed she could survive something like this. Would never have thought she could pull a trigger and take a life.
But that girl is gone now. She’s been gone for years, replaced piece by piece by someone harder, someone fiercer, someone capable of violence when the people she loves are threatened.
I don’t know if that makes me stronger or just different. Don’t know if I should mourn the girl I was or be grateful for the woman I’ve become.
All I know is that my son is alive and safe, the woman who threatened him is dead, and somehow, against all odds, we survived this nightmare.
36
DANTE
Scarlett insists on going to get Luca herself. I’m not even surprised, that woman never listens.
I want to argue and tell her to let the men bring him. Insist on going with her, because I can’t let her out of my sight after all we’ve been through. But the look in her eyes stops me.
She insists she needs to hold her son. Needs to feel his small body against hers and know that he’s real and alive and safe. I understand that need because I fell it too.
So I let her go.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, her voice still shaky from what she’d just done. “I need to see him.”
“Go. I’ll get the ledger.”
She nods and disappears through the doorway that leads down to the catacombs, leaving me alone in the cathedral with the bodies and the blood and the deafening silence that felt louder than the gunfire had been.
The ledger. I left it in the side chapel when Isabella’s forces attacked, hidden behind the statue of St. Sebastian where Antonio had concealed it all those years ago. I need to retrieve it before someone else finds it.
I make my way through the destruction, stepping over fallen soldiers, avoiding the worst of the carnage. The cathedral looks like a death hole because that’s exactly what it became. Bodies and blood everywhere.
My men. Isabella’s men. Viktor’s men. All of them dead or dying, scattered across the floor. I try not to look at faces. There’ll be time for that later, for the grief and the guilt and the cold accounting of lives spent.
The side chapel is quiet. Untouched by the worst of the fighting, like a small pocket of peace in the middle of hell. St. Sebastian still stands in his alcove, arrows piercing his stone flesh, face turned toward heaven in eternal suffering.
Where the saint watches the sinners.
