Chapter 55
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I’d always assumed when the end came, I’d go out fighting.
That was the fantasy, wasn’t it? The bold, brave version of yourself you constructed in your head, the one who faced the worst possible outcome with her chin and her middle fingers up and something appropriately clever on her lips.
Who made their enemy’s victory cost them something, even at the end.
The reality was, my limbs were so weak, I could barely walk.
Dried blood stained my face, my head ringing from Blackwood’s torture, a deep, resonant ache behind my skull that pulsed with every heartbeat, grew worse with every step, the guards yanking me forward as we followed the narrow, rocky path down to the dock.
I was so out of it, I wondered if Blackwood had damaged me permanently.
He might have. After all, I was going to die in a few hours. Who cared if my brain still worked when I was going to be fed to the Drax? A slow, agonizing death. Oh, I’d heard my uncle’s gloating little speech, just like he’d wanted me to.
The iron shackles cut off the blood to my hands, slicing deeper every time I stumbled or the ground dropped out from under my feet, which was often, given I could barely function.
Dante was ahead of me, five guards surrounding him to my two, his hands locked behind his back in a complicated tangle of heavy chains.
He’d looked at me once when the guards hauled us all to our feet—one long, sorrowful look, even though none of this was his fault.
He was naked, courtesy of the ifrit, his ass clenching with every step, as I tried to focus on the fact we were about to be loaded into prison boats and carted to Venice.
But damn, he did have the nicest ass.
I supposed, if I was going to die in a few hours, I’d rather look at my husband’s second-best asset than my uncle’s sniveling expression face or my brother, taken over by Blackwood, or Rocco, so supremely confident he’d won this round.
Not that he was wrong; he just didn’t have to be so godsdamned… delighted about it.
Dante’s hands worked at the shackles. The chains. Twisted and strained against the sharp edges until blood coated the metal, and all I smelled was copper. From the heavy blood scent in the air, I knew behind me, Nico was doing the same. So was Gabriel.
If just one of us could get free, the tall, rangy guard at the head of the line had the keys.
I’d watched him slide them into his pocket, and once we had those keys, we’d be up and fighting again. Not that the odds were in our favor.
Drax lurked on every surface, Ashbound burning between them.
Even if we could get free, there was nowhere for us to run.
Behind us, the villa was a pile of rubble and smoking beams, bodies strewn around the grounds. Gia and the healers who had tended my brother’s wound and ours. The soldiers who guarded us while we slept. The cook in the kitchen. The staff that made every day easy.
All of them gone.
Valeria had the look of someone who’d given up, that empty, expressionless look of a female who’d seen too much and had stopped processing everything. And her fucking father… she’d saved Rocco’s life, for fuck’s sake, and he was gleefully handing her over to these monsters for execution.
The sick bastard was even going to fucking watch.
The dock lights came into view, illuminating three dozen guards and two long, black boats, riding low in the water. I squinted. The gleaming hulls were forged from sheets of metal. Rivets marked every seam along their sterns, and the scent of iron grew stronger.
“Iron prison boats,” Nico explained softly from behind me. “Amplify the nulling magic in these shackles. When they take you on board, you’ll feel sick. Sicker than you already are. Take deep breaths now, get yourself prepared.”
Ah, so maybe my brain wasn’t mushy soup after all.
Maybe this was just the effects of the iron shackles. And the pin in my shoulder.
Not that I had magic, but the guards had been thorough.
I expected that’s why we hadn’t seen Dante’s fire demon or the Emissary, and once they hauled us onto those boats… With every step, my fantasies of escape dwindled down to nothing. We weren’t getting out of this.
We would be executed in the morning.
I’d been building up to that realization ever since we’d been shoved to our knees. I’d just thought there was a way out.
A loophole.
A miracle.
But as we marched toward that reinforced boat and the metallic taste in my mouth intensified, my hopes faded away. My biggest regret—one that sat in my chest like a heavy stone—was that I hadn’t killed Giovanni sooner.
I’d had a thousand chances over the years.
So many times, I could have slid that knife between his ribs and ended him.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t know he’d sinned.
I’d been a child, and he taught me to kill.
A teenager, and he’d taught me to twist a businessman’s words against him and take everything he owned.
As an adult, he’d planted me inside his enemy’s empire and expected me to bring it crashing down around them.
But I’d made my excuses and called him uncle.
And now fucking look at us.
Marching to our deaths. My brother possessed by a monster. My husband—and Nico—about to become Blackwood’s… slaves or something even worse.
We were all going to die, and Luca was going to die too, just more slowly than us, and…
“You always thought you were so clever.”
Giovanni’s sniveling voice stopped me mid-step. A short, stocky guard shoved me out of line, and I stumbled, missed my footing, and went down, rolling on the rocks and sand. Bones bent, muscles tore, the side of my face scraped along coral rock so rough, it might as well have been a saw blade.
Dante turned, tried to reach me, but the guards swarmed around him and pushed him forward, then Nico, keeping everyone moving toward the boats. They were still fighting as I struggled to my feet, which was awkward as fuck with your hands behind your back.
“Even as a child, you were difficult,” he said conversationally, the way he used to lecture me about missing a fact I’d memorized or messing up my footwork during training.
“Of course, Enzo only saw your potential and none of your failings. And there were so very many. Failings.” He tilted his head.
“You never once considered I was always ten steps ahead of you.”
Oh, I’d considered it, all right.
“The bomb that killed my mother. Did you plant it?”
If I was going to die, then I was godsdamn well going to get the truth before I did. At least let me go to my grave having gotten something out of him, even if it was as pitiful as a little honesty.
He froze, mouth opening, then closing like a fish. All the blood drained from his face.
Which was answer enough, but I wanted to hear the words from his own lying lips. Wanted to hear him say he’d killed Ottavia and sentenced us all to a lifetime without our mother while he sat at our table and drank our wine and pretended to be part of the family.
“Ottavia was an accident,” he said softly, something like regret softening his face. “She wasn’t supposed to be home. She was supposed to take you and Luca to…”
“The beach. Yes, I know.”
He went completely still as he stared down at me, hardly breathing. “There is no way for you to know that. Even Enzo never discovered I planted that bomb. How could you possibly…”
“Ottavia told me herself.” I didn’t look away, watching his face change as the truth sank in—disbelief to fear to a terrible realization that had him stepping back, putting distance between us.
“She’s told me many things, Uncle. Father has, too.” I advanced slowly, and even bloodied, with my hands bound behind my back, fear flashed in his eyes. “My only regret is, I should have figured you out sooner and slit your throat in your sleep as soon as I knew how to handle a knife.”
“You don’t know…”
“Ah, but I do, Uncle. I know how you hunger for power. How you’ve sold your soul to the devil, and how you fear even that sacrifice will never be enough. You might buy a few weeks or even months of power with our deaths, but you won’t last a year as Don. That I can promise.”
“You’ll be dead in the morning,” he hissed, his movements frantic.
“And your brother will die in months, or a year, after Lord Blackwood has squeezed every ounce of use out of him. For what it’s worth, this outcome was always inevitable.
Neither of you were meant to survive.” My uncle looked past me toward the far end of the dock, and when I followed his gaze against my better judgment…
The others were being loaded onto the boat, every one of my males fighting for their lives, Dante knocking two guards into the water.
Good.
I hoped they fucking drowned.
“Someday, you’ll get what’s coming to you. I won’t be around to see it, but maybe my husband will. Or Nico. Or even Luca. You can kill me, but you will never erase who I was.”
Giovanni raised his hand, and two guards grabbed my arms and started dragging me toward the boat.
“Oh, and as far as me being difficult? Sticks and stones, uncle. Sticks and stones.”
The closer I got to the boat—to all that cold iron—my body began to rebel. Bile clogged my throat, and my stomach clenched, muscles twitching of their own accord until nothing was working right. They tossed me over the side, and I landed on the metal deck. I managed to lift my head.
Luca was standing beside Giovanni.
His eyes were fully black.
And they’d never again be that warm brown again, full of life and humor, his lips curved into that perpetual smirk, always on the verge of telling some awful joke that wasn’t really funny.
He looked right at me, and there was nothing of my brother left, except for the skin.
I looked away as they lifted me and carried me over to the bench.
My shackles were chained to the bench through a ring that had no give. Gabriel was on my left, Nico to my right, Dante and Valeria across from us. My husband stared at me with such intensity, if there wasn’t so much godsdamned iron, I’d probably burst into flames.