Chapter 12
GAbrIEL
Memories stirred from years ago, Emberline’s accusation hanging between us.
Yes, I had heard all about Giovanni’s thirst for power, but…
“My father did not hold any grudges against Enzo DiRavello.” I insisted firmly. “Whatever feud you’re talking about is gossip dreamed up by your uncle.”
“Dreamed up a well-known feud?” She didn’t give an inch, bandaged hand braced on the table between us, temper blazing in her eyes.
“I’ve heard the story so often, I can recite it in my sleep.
It must be nice to pretend you don’t remember our history.
That you can wreck people’s lives, then speak so pridefully of honor and laws.
My father was a good male; he was merciful. ”
“Laws keep us all alive,” I snapped, my temper fraying. “You speak of mercy as if it’s a virtue in our world, when it’s a weakness that gets people killed.”
“I know exactly what gets people killed,” she hissed, and for the first time, her composure cracked. Grief flashed in her dark brown eyes, and sorrow bled across her delicate features, making her look… wounded.
Vulnerable.
Young.
“I found my father with his throat torn out in our own palazzo. His chest ripped wide open. His heart missing. No sign of a struggle. No broken wards. Do you know what that means?”
“Please,” I drawled, knowing I was acting like a stone-cold bastard as I turned over this new information in my head. “Enlighten me.”
“It means whoever killed him had permission to enter,” she hissed. “It means they wielded enough authority to walk through our protections like they did not exist and had enough power to erase their trail. There is only one vampire in this Dynasty who wields that much power. Your father.”
I exhaled slowly. “Rocco Demente controls the underbelly of this city,” I pointed out. “Emilia DiSangue controls the magic. Severin holds the Draconi in the palm of his hand. Perhaps you should take a closer look at your uncle, given his untrammeled access.”
She was already shaking her head, unable to entertain—even for a second—that her uncle could be the true culprit.
The fact that she could recite the story of this supposed feud in her sleep made me certain Giovanni had put that story into her head in the first place.
I felt nothing but pity. Emberline was a convenient pawn, nothing more.
Yet for some ungodly reason, I also felt compelled to keep her alive.
“Rocco needs our trade routes for his smuggling operations. Emilia needs our financial connections to continue operating in the shadows. Severin follows orders; he doesn’t make them.
And my uncle…” Her jaw clenched. “My uncle served my sire faithfully. He was like a father to my brother and me. He and I stood over Enzo’s corpse until the DiSangue priests arrived to perform final rites. ”
Her eyes hardened. “Your father had mine killed. You will never convince me otherwise.”
“You’re making a convenient leap,” I argued, “basing everything on this supposed feud of theirs, when no feud ever existed.”
She paced away from me, long skirt whispering over the carpet, before whirling back.
“Then explain this.” She looked at me with all the regal poise of a queen. “Why was someone spying on us the night of his funeral? I tracked them from our island, straight to the Sala del Giuramento. If you can explain that away, I’m all ears.”
Wisely, I kept my mouth shut.
If Emberline had the slightest inkling she’d followed my father that night, all bets were off. I wouldn’t put it past her to get close enough to Marcello to finish what she’d obviously started.
But I was seeing her in a new light. She was smart. Determined. Too stubborn for her own good. There was more to this princess than met the eye, which created an enormous problem.
Because if I couldn’t convince her to drop this, she was going to die.
I would have to kill her.
“And if you’re wrong?” I asked quietly. “If you’re being used? If someone fed you half-truths to point you toward the wrong target?”
“Nobody fed me anything. I know what I saw, and I know what happened. My father deserves vengeance.”
“You mean your father deserves justice, don’t you?” I challenged, harsher than I intended. “You saw blood and ruin. You did not see who wielded the blade.”
“No,” she whispered. “But I know who benefits. Who always benefits. Your father sits on a throne built from other people’s bones. He takes what he wants—like stealing the title away from my uncle, ruining lives in the process. And he’ll ruin a thousand more to stay in power.”
I studied her.
Ember was dangerous, no question. Not just because she’d publicly invoked Arbitration, but because she believed every word she was saying. This wasn’t an act or a ploy for attention. Her certainty was keener than the blade she’d sliced her own skin with and cut even deeper.
And my own father’s words—his warning—kept playing in my head, over and over.
Watch what happens when jealousy is allowed to fester for too long. See what poison truly looks like.
Had he known Emberline would invoke the Right? Or had he been rambling, lost in his memories as he often was these days?
It takes a monster to twist something beautiful into a weapon filled with hate. Dread gnawed at my insides. He’d uttered those very words just moments ago. He, more than anyone else, knew what happened in the shadows of this city.
And today—of all days—he’d bled into the Basin.
And the Basin had judged him worthy.
“Do you think Marcello is careless?” I demanded, shoving everything aside except the problem at hand.
She blinked. “What?”
“My father,” I demanded roughly. “Do you think he’s careless enough to assassinate a Pentarch head, then stand before the Basin and drip his blood on the stone?
The runes sense every lie, Emberline, every single one.
You say your father was a saint? Well, then, killing your father would be in direct opposition to the Compact.
Yet the Basin accepted Marcello’s blood and deemed him worthy. How do you explain that?”
She hesitated. It wasn’t much. A breath, a falter.
But I saw her doubt, written across her beautiful face.
“I think,” she hedged, “that arrogance makes people sloppy.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Well, too fucking bad,” she hissed. “Because it’s the only one you’re getting.”
I rounded the table, closing the space between us. She held her ground, tilting up her head to meet my eyes. She stood almost a foot shorter than me, but she didn’t feel small. Not with that backbone of tempered steel and those eyes spitting hate.
“You understand that by invoking Arbitration, you’ve placed your fate directly in my father’s hands.
” I couldn’t explain the tight, almost painful pressure in my chest right now, but she had to understand what she was up against. “He will be your judge and executioner. If you cannot prove your claim, he will erase you. Your brother. Your entire line.”
It had been almost two centuries since a true Purging had last occurred, and my father had sworn that in his lifetime, he would hold this Dynasty together by sheer will alone.
There had been outliers, of course, my eldest brother being one of them, but the extermination of an entire foundational bloodline…
even the Council of Shadows would have something to say about that decision.
“Ah. But you’ve forgotten one important detail.”
I frowned. “Enlighten me.”
She leaned in, close enough to see the faint, pale scar along her temple, half-hidden by a strand of dark hair. “You, Gabriel,” she whispered, pure wickedness dancing in her eyes, her mouth partly open, the tips of her fangs showing beneath her full upper lip.
The words landed low in my stomach, then settled lower still, like her fingers were already wrapped around my cock, stroking, and a growl built deep in my throat.
“What about me?”
“You said it yourself,” her satisfied smile sent a tremor of dread through me. “The Right of Arbitration demands a fair hearing. And that means someone must oversee the proceedings. Someone… trusted.”
Her smile sharpened.
“Someone exactly like you. His heir, his enforcer, his conscience.” Her voice was a soft, lethal thing. “If Marcello wants to prove his innocence, he will ask you to stand in judgment over me. Over him.”
“That’s not how this works,” I argued, though I already saw the truth. She’d outmaneuvered me.
“Isn’t it?” she asked. “Tell me, Gabriel. If what you discover incriminates your own father… after all your talk of honor and the law, will you lie for him? Will you cover up Marcello’s sins?”
The question sliced deep, down to the decent part of me that still existed, the part of me I liked to believe was still good. “No,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
Her eyes searched my face, as though she was weighing the worth of that single syllable.
“Good,” she nodded. “I can live with that.”
A knock sounded on the door, sharp and authoritative, echoing through the ward.
My father’s aura pressed at the edges of the room a heartbeat later, ancient and heavy, followed by a second, more familiar presence—Nico’s quicksilver magic, coiled and ready, then Severin’s, tainted with repressed fury.
Emberline didn’t flinch.
I faced the door, the last threads of our conversation still tangled around my throat.
This should have been simple. Instead, I’d locked myself in a room with a viper and promised, out loud, that if my father was guilty, I wouldn’t save him.
“Time’s up, piccola.” I forced my voice back to neutral as I dropped the wards. “Let’s see if your faith in the law is as strong as your belief in my father’s guilt.”
“And if your faith in the truth,” she countered quietly, “is as strong as your belief in Marcello’s innocence.”