Chapter 43
EMBERLINE
Breaking into Rocco Demente’s snow-covered mountain stronghold was, without question, one of the worst ideas I’d ever had. Or rather, the worst one of mine that Nico had ever gone along with.
Which was really saying something.
Two days had passed since Dante ravished me in the garden—and twice in the bedroom—and I still didn’t have any answers. He’d deflected every question, shut down my theories, and I was currently entertaining about twenty of them, none of which were even close to sane.
Maybe… I didn’t see what I thought I saw.
Maybe my husband didn’t have a big, scary alter ego that was made of fire.
“This is a terrible plan,” I whispered, crouched behind a jagged outcrop of rock as the fortress loomed above us, all black stone and razor angles carved into the mountainside like a threat. “I just feel like I should be proactive and point out the obvious before everything goes to shit.”
Nico adjusted his gloves and gave me the side eye. “You’re just saying that so you can pin the blame on me when this goes south. I know how your mind works, principessa. But blame away, I’m always happy to be your whipping boy.”
Yeah, I wasn’t touching that comment with a ten-foot pole.
“That’s because all the bad ideas are your ideas, Nico.” I batted my eyes for emphasis. “I only have the very best ideas.”
“And yet,” he said lightly, indicating the snow-covered mountains, “here we are.”
“Here we are,” I agreed, peering up at those insurmountable walls again through a sheet of snowflakes. Guards patrolled the upper parapets, every movement disciplined, timed to the second. Red, blinking lights shone from the gargoyle’s eyes, watching every last square inch of the rocky terrain.
“Gabriel is going to kill us,” I muttered.
“Nah. Dante will first,” Nico corrected.
Wisps of dark shadows spilling out around us like ink over the snow. One of these days, I’d work up the courage to ask him what they were. Why I could see them, but no one else could. Why he had been inside my dream. Unless that had only been my dream and a figment of my imagination?
“Gabriel will just finish the job.”
Despite my nerves, a faint smile tugged at my mouth. “Well, at least we won’t have to listen to his boring lecture.”
“Gabriel does like to talk,” he observed, never taking his eyes off that facade. Then he huffed a quiet laugh, his gaze sharpening as he scanned the perimeter. “Which is how he’ll keep Rocco busy for three hours. Should give us plenty of time.”
“Looking at the size of this place, we’re going to need every minute.”
He picked snow out of my hair, fingers brushing across my temple with the gentlest of touches. “Come on, Em, don’t lose faith now. Think of this like a date. You. Me. Fifty armed guards, instructed to kill on sight. Should be fun.”
Yeah, not touching that one either.
After that, we fell into silence, both of us watching, counting, waiting for the guard to change at the turn of the hour. Once we slipped inside, there would be more guards and…
“Tell me why we ever thought this was a good idea?”
“Because after we blew it at Emilia’s, Rocco is the next logical suspect.
” He slanted me a look, “Are you going to be like this the entire time? Because you’re starting to freak me out.
Once the Basin is in our possession, and your uncle is shit out of options, he’ll blame Rocco for losing it, and while they spend their energy fighting, we position ourselves to bring them down. Simple.”
“Simple, right.” I rolled my eyes. “That meeting you saw between my uncle and Rocco. They could have been planning this.”
“Possible.” He thought about it. “But the Basin’s been gone longer than a couple of days.”
“And what about the DiSangue magic you found at the scene? If not Emilia, then who? One of the priests?”
“One of her sons?” Nico countered, tipping his head to the side before he flicked more snow off the end of my nose. “Gabriel’s been positioning himself to take Marcello’s spot for decades. Why not Vincenzo or Paulo? Their mother’s been in power for a long time.”
“It would be Vincenzo,” I decided, perking up as the next patrol of soldiers emerged from the fortress. “He’s the ambitious one.”
And he’s the one who's been acting out of character these past few months. Drinking too much. Running his mouth. Acting like he’s already in charge.
The new patrol mingled with the old, all eight of them lighting up cigarettes. Maybe not so disciplined after all.
We used the opportunity to move, slipping from shadow to shadow until we reached the wall. The climb wasn’t easy, but after a lifetime spent on rooftops, it was easy enough—plenty of rough stone edges and narrow footholds, enough to pull myself up without making noise.
I hauled myself over the top and dropped silently onto the other side.
Nico landed beside me a second later.
“Gods, you’re slow.” I grinned. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
“Because I’m not a fucking lizard.” He grinned back. “What do you have, suction cups for fingers?” I waggled my definitely not-suction-cup fingers at him.
“You’re just salty because you’re bad at climbing. Like… really bad.” He just chuckled, shaking his head. Clearly, he didn’t have a good comeback, and I’d won this round.
The guards broke apart and headed in different directions. Nico and I used the cipher to slip in a side door, Rocco’s impenetrable wards crumbling like rotten ice. The interior was dark, cavernous, and cold.
A pang of jealousy flashed through me as I pictured Valeria in her gold dress draped over my husband like a boa constrictor. I shook off the memories and followed Nico down the main hall, his shadows wrapping around us.
“We should start in his office. It would be just like him to display the thing right out in the open.”
The office was stuffy from being closed up, ash left in the fireplace, a stale smell soaked into the books and papers spread out over every flat surface.
“If Giovanni swayed Vincenzo, then Emilia could be in danger.”
His jaw tightened slightly. “Yeah. Good luck warning her, now that we’re dead to her.”
“We fucked that one up, didn’t we?” I crouched down, peered under the enormous table, then headed over to the bookshelves and started looking for a hidden latch. Rocco would definitely have a secret room.
“We did. Though, to be fair, she seemed like a good suspect at the time.” He rifled through a stack of papers on the desk, frowned, folded one in half, and stuffed it into his pocket.
“We’re looking for the Basin, remember?”
“I never miss an opportunity to get dirt on Rocco Demente. He’s a slippery fish, and it never hurts to have something incriminating on the old bastard. Ask your husband; I’ll bet he’d agree.”
While I doubted Dante would agree with him on anything right now, I couldn’t argue with that logic. Our search turned up nothing. We worked our way through the first floor, then the upstairs, every opulent bedroom glaringly empty.
“Where does Rocco even live?” I looked around the tenth bedroom we’d found, perfectly appointed, fit for a king, yet there were no vampire scents, no indication they’d ever been used, just the bland smell of fabric and wood.
“Rumor has it he has a house in the city and an island, but no one knows where, exactly.”
I glanced at him. “You really think he’s infiltrated the Brotherhood?”
Nico didn’t hesitate. “Rocco has people everywhere. Spies in every household. Be glad you were there the night he met with Luca, or your brother could be facing a very different future.”
“Let’s say he had a Draconi soldier… or two, on his payroll.
He gets Vincenzo to drop the wards, plant the illusion of the Basin in its place.
Then he… brings the Basin here for safekeeping,” I talked my way through the scenario.
“Except that doesn’t sound right. Rocco pulls strings. He doesn’t get directly involved.”
“He does like to keep his hands clean.” Nico stared around the hermetically sealed room.
“This place is like the set of a play,” I said. “All for show. There’s nothing of substance here.”
“Clearly, you should have been a detective. I’ll start calling you Signorina Marple,” Nico teased. “I heard there’s a basement. Want to check it out?”
I glared at him. “If we die, I’m haunting you forever and making sure you never get a good night’s sleep again.”
The fucker just winked. “Totally worth it for the look on your face right now.”
Rocco’s basement was… well, at least it wasn’t full of water.
“This is a waste of time,” I complained as we slipped into what looked like another storage room, concrete walls lined with flimsy metal shelves and plastic ledgers. “We should head back, cut our losses.”
Except Dante was going to go ballistic when we got home, and I was in no real hurry to have my head chewed off. I turned away from the door, scanning the storage room with new eyes.
Something about this was… messily real.
Not carefully staged like the rest of the house, but a room Rocco had actually used. One old, sturdy chair in the center. And to the right… scratch marks on the stone floor… like from a silver-tipped cane.
My gaze landed on stacks of sealed envelopes stuffed between the plastic binders, like someone had meant to shove them inside, but had been in too much of a hurry.
Or gotten sloppy.
I pulled them out, the hair on the back of my neck rising as I flipped one over and studied the broken seal. A single crown. An official Dynasty seal. Not one of ours.
“What’ve you got?” Nico asked from across the room.
“Probably nothing.” I ran my thumb over the mark I didn’t recognize, wax edges cracking and falling to the dusty floor.
I looked down, and the floor was covered in the same red wax, an odd shade, like the color of dried blood.
I scanned the first few lines, then I wished I hadn’t, my stomach dropping.
“Emberline?” Nico’s voice sharpened.
I handed it to him without a word and opened the next one.
He skimmed it—and went still. “Holy shit,” he breathed, and in the quiet, I heard the pounding of his heart. And mine as we both skimmed through the letters, filled with detailed payment schedules. Instructions.
Timelines.
Everything my uncle was planning was laid out, plain as day.
“The Bellamorte Dynasty seal,” I said quietly. “These are from Lord Blackwood himself.” I checked the dates beneath the signatures. “They go back months.”
Nico’s eyes flew over the writing. “Rocco’s offering him full control. Over the entire D’Immortali Dynasty, once the council is disbanded. He’s selling us out.”
“This one seems to indicate Blackwood paid to have my father killed.” I swallowed down the taste of bile, the paper crushed between my trembling fingers.
“So… they get Enzo out of the way. Stealing the Basin discredits Severin, so he can be removed. They’ll be targeting Emilia next. We have to warn her, Nico.”
“She won’t believe us.”
“But still, we…”
He caught my arms, a wild intensity burning in his eyes. “I know her. She won’t believe us.”
“Then we bring her these letters, we show her the proof, and then she’ll have to believe us. I’ll tell her one of her sons is…”
“What?” Nico shook his head. “Her precious boys are plotting against her and have formed an alliance with Rocco and Lord Blackwood to assassinate her and take over the council? She will not believe you. Not even with those letters.”
“She will.”
“We can’t take those.” He spun in a slow circle, narrowing his gaze on the walls, the doorway.
“Everything in here has a tracking spell on it. We cross that threshold with so much as a single piece of paper, every guard outside will swoop down on us.” Nico blew out a low, almost maniacal laugh, “Blackwood is involved. Fucking Blackwood. I didn’t see that coming. ”
He paced away, and I watched how badly his hands shook. I didn’t know what history there was between Nico and Blackwood, but there was something there. And while my uncle was mentioned throughout these letters, every negotiated term was between Rocco and Blackwood.
“Once the rest of the council is gone, they’ll take out Giovanni. And Luca.” I looked from the letter in my hand to the door, weighing my chances of making it out. Nico stepped between me and a very bad decision, and I hated him a little bit.
“Leaving Rocco as the last D’Immortali Pentarch standing. Free to run this Dynasty as he sees fit, so long as he answers to Blackwood.”
“I can’t believe Rocco’s selling us all out,” I muttered. “Betraying the Dynasty itself. I thought he believed in something, for fuck’s sake.”
Not that I held onto any lofty ideals of honor these days, but damn. Lord Cesare Blackwood was more treacherous, more violent, and more ruthless than even my uncle. I’d only met him once, and that was enough.
Along with a coalition of our business partners, Enzo and I had negotiated a new trade agreement in Rome with the Bellamorte Dynasty, and after meeting Blackwood, I’d begged father to return to Venice as soon as the meeting was over.
The high-ranking members of the coalition who stayed in Rome vanished that night, and Severin hadn’t made a single charge stick against Blackwood.
Like he was untouchable.
I glanced at Nico. Wondered if he’d been part of that investigation, and the fact that the lord had slipped between his fingers still rubbed him the wrong way.
“Giovanni, Marcello, the Bellamorte Dynasty in Rome…” Nico shook his head. “This is so much bigger than we thought.”
Suddenly, the missing Basin took on even more ominous tones.
“So, where does the Basin fit in? What if Rocco handed it over to Blackwood?”
Even Nico shuddered at that. “Then we are truly fucked because while Giovanni is a cruel, self-aggrandizing prick, Blackwood is something far, far worse.”
“And what is that?” I asked, stuffing the letters back where I found them.
“He’s sadistic in ways you cannot imagine, Em.
And while almost everyone in this world has someone they care about,”—his pale eyes caught on mine—“Blackwood killed his own son when he thought the boy was getting too ambitious. And he didn’t send an assassin; he slaughtered him at his own coming-of-age party, in front of the other guests. ”
“Gods, that’s…” Heavy boot steps trod across the floor overhead, cutting me off.
Hidden by Nico’s shadows, we slipped back upstairs, along the shadowed corridors, moving faster now—but quieter too, every step measured, every breath controlled.
Once we reached one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, we closed our eyes and dematerialized, slivers of red wax still stuck to my sweating palm.