Page 129 of His Eternal Claim

“She’s dead, Zagreus!” I howl into the storm, my fingers clawing at the skin of his throat, trying to tear through reality. “We’re all dead! Papa is waiting downstairs! Let me go down the stairs!”

Through the haze of my screaming, I feel a pinch on the side of my neck.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps, his grip tightening until it almost crushes my ribs, holding me so close I can feel the frantic, agonizing fracture of his heart against mine. “I’m so sorry, Dolcezza…”

The screeching voices of Mama and Crystella fade. My flailing limbs lose their strength, my fingers slipping from his collar as the adrenaline drains entirely from my veins.

“Zagreus…” I whisper.

My head falls heavily against his shoulder, my eyes rolling back into the dark as my body goes limp in his arms.

Chapter 48

The Colour of Your Sins

THE MAESTRO | Past

The smell of a hospital is always the same. It’s a smell I’ve associated with victory my entire life, the scent left behind when my enemies were dragged into the ER to die.

Today, it smells like my own execution.

I am sitting on a chair in the private wing, the knees of my trousers stiff with dried blood. My Mother’s blood. It coats my palms, flaking beneath my fingernails, reminding me of the moment she threw herself between my wife’s knife and my chest. Across my jaw, the blood has stopped. I refuse to tend the wound because my wife has given it to me.

Marcus walks out and doesn’t have to say a word. The look on his face tells me everything.

“We couldn’t stop the internal hemorrhaging, Don Vitale,” Marcus whispers, his voice cracked with exhaustion and defeat. “The blade severed the thoracic aorta. She… she didn’t make it.”

I don’t move a single muscle in my face. The world around me ceases to spin. My Mother. Killed by my wife.

I guess this is the universe giving me what I sowed.

“You did this.”

A violent shove slams into my shoulder, and I don’t look up as my younger brother steps into my space, his face twisted into fury mimicking mine. But his is superficial. Mine is internal. His chest is heaving as his hands tremble.

“You brought that rabid bitch into our house!” Corvin slams my chest. “She ruined our family and killed our Mother!”

“Corvin, lower your voice.” Massimo steps forward from the waiting area, his hand reaching out to restrain my brother, but Corvin slaps his hand away.

“No! Shut the hell up!” Corvin shrieks as he points a finger at my face. “Look at him! The great Don Vitale, sitting in his own Mother’s blood, completely silent! She stabbed her, Zagreus! She butchered Mom right in front of you, and what did you do?”

How did this happen?

Why didn’t I see it coming?

Everything was okay a month ago. We were in the penthouse. She was laughing. She was looking at me with those beautiful, clear eyes, demanding transparency, demanding a life built on something other than corpses. We were planning a future. I had a son growing inside her.

And in the span of a few weeks, the entire foundation of my existence has turned to ash. I let Hannah slide into our perimeter. I let those pills slowly dissolve my wife’s mind until there was nothing left of my Dolcezza but a living corpse. I thought I was protecting her by bringing her to the house. I thought I was keeping her safe.

My protection is what killed my Mother. My protection is what broke my wife.

“If you don’t put a bullet in her head by morning, Zagreus, I swear to God, I will do it myself,” Corvin growls, leaning down until his furious face is inches from mine, his knuckles white as he grips the arms of my chair. “She is a parasite. If she stays alive, you are no Don. You are a traitor to our blood.”

Slowly, I raise my head.

“If you mention her name again,” I rasp, “I will bury you in the same cemetery we are preparing for our Mother. Do you understand me, Corvin?”

He steps back, his jaw tightening with raw hatred, but he doesn’t speak. He knows me. He knows that the monster currently sitting in this chair has nothing left to lose.