A Madness of Crows: Mafia University #3

30. Day 90 - Stefano

“You threw it all away, nipote.”

My uncle lingers at the front of the cage, his arms threaded through the bars as he leans his elbows on the iron strip. It runs horizontally to the solid metal bars, bars that keep me here.

From my own position against the far steel wall, I stare through him.

“Don’t you want to know how long it’s been?” He tilts his head. “Quite a while.”

I know exactly how long it has been. Know the routine of the guards that toss food through the bars, the girls that move in and out of the cages around me with dead, lifeless eyes.

“Forty-six days.” The words are hoarse, gruff from disuse.

Forty-six days since they separated us. And Cat… I know well enough what has happened to her, in the days since.

Dried blood still cakes my hands from trying to break through those bars to get to her as I waited for them to finish it, to come back and put a bullet in my head.

Instead, they left me.

Not dead after all. Just… forgotten. Left to rot down here.

I would choose death, if they offered it.

He studies me. “You seem remarkably well-adjusted, considering. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. You would have made an excellent heir, if you had been raised correctly from the beginning.”

“There is nothing wrong with the way I was raised.”

He snorts.

“How is Iliana?” I keep my words as level as possible.

He stiffens at that. We never speak of her, never openly acknowledge the existence of the sister he ruined and then locked away.

“Do you ever visit her?” I stare at him, those ice-blue eyes, so different from my own. An inheritance from his own father, my grandfather, who by all accounts was cut from the same cloth as the evil facing me. “Do you ever look into her face, Salvatore? Ever face the consequences of your own actions?”

My mother told me once that I have my grandmother’s eyes.

We face each other, the last two full-blooded Asante men. There are no others. Fertility issues and various incidents marred our direct family line until it dwindled to the very last dregs. The only reason he kept me around, I’m sure.

And yet I see nothing of myself in him, and I am glad of it.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” He tries to swing the discussion as it slips from his hands, attempting to claw back the power he craves with silky, poisonous words.

“How disappointed Caterina will be. She appears to be missing you greatly. What a shame that you don’t return the sentiment.”

He forgets that he was the one who taught me how to be cold. I keep my face blank, my lips closed.

I make sure every single glimpse of the agony is buried deep, deeper than he will ever bother to look for it.

He grows bored of my silence, pulling his arms back from the bars and stepping away. “You will be released from here today. I have need of you.”

“Go to hell.”

But he only tilts his head. “Not even for my wife? Perhaps there’s hope for you yet.”

My heart ceases to beat.

“She is… proving difficult.” The frown that slits across his face lends credence to his words. “There will be an event here tonight, and I want her present. You will ensure her behavior is appropriate and reasonable. Guards will be accompanying you at all times.”

My brows crease at that, even as my heartbeat bursts back into life, leaping into my throat. “Why me?”

Why let me anywhere near her?

He doesn’t bother to answer.