Chapter 17
EMBERLINE
One moment, I was in the Don’s private office, the Basin humming with power, Giovanni’s smug proposal hanging over my head like a blade.
The next, I was swaying on my aching feet in the marble foyer of our palazzo, the silence ringing with a finality that rattled the glass chandelier, Luca staring daggers at me.
The glamour of our wards still rippled from where we’d passed through, the illusion that masked our home from mortal eyes sliding smoothly back into place. Outside our walls, Venice glittered like gold—laughter and music drifting faintly across the canal.
Inside, the quiet was more ominous than death.
I tore off one sandal, then the other, flinging them at the console table. They bounced off the antique, sending a priceless porcelain vase wobbling in a precarious dance toward the edge.
Luca caught the vase automatically, his loose hair falling over his eyes. The new cut across his palm showed starkly against his skin, already pink and healing.
“Why aren’t you at the banquet?” I snapped, knowing he didn’t deserve my anger. “When there were at least thirty females salivating over you?”
“Because I was too fucking worried about my sister being locked up in a holding cell,” he shouted, voice rough. “Or dead. I thought…” He bit off his next words, breathing fast. “What the fuck were you even thinking?”
“This wasn’t all me.” I sighed, just wanting to go to bed and be done with this clusterfuck of a day.
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” he bit out. “I was speaking to our uncle. What the fuck have you done, Giovanni?”
Giovanni paused just inside the doors, calmly undoing the rope belt at his waist. He shrugged out of the brown habit like it was a costume, revealing dark trousers and a simple black shirt beneath. That quickly, the monk vanished; only the shark remained.
“Cara,” he said, draping his robe over his arm, “I did exactly what I promised your father I would do. I kept Luca’s position secure and the family fortunes safe, as your father would have wanted.”
And I was the price of that safety, I wanted to scream.
The foyer smelled the same—beeswax, old wood, the faintest hint of father’s cologne caught in the silk of the heavy curtains. The chandeliers glowed softly. The mosaics in the marble floor still depicted the DiRavello swan crest in gleaming onyx and pearl.
Giovanni’s soft footsteps echoed as he headed toward the corridor, the end of his robe dragging, and my eyes went to the hem snaking across the marble floor, remembering how he’d dragged a track of wetness over the stones outside the night of Enzo’s Nightfire.
Had he gone outside that evening, near the canal?
“You are not walking away from this,” I warned softly. “If you’re trading my life away, I deserve a godsdamned explanation.”
Giovanni paused, hand resting on the frame of the double doors leading deeper into the house. He turned his head just enough to peer over his shoulder.
“I am not walking away,” he spoke to me like I was a child. “I am going where we can speak privately about the mess you have just made.”
I laughed, and the sound scraped up my raw throat. “The mess I made? This wasn’t my plan, the Right, the challenge, any of it. And I’m certainly not the one who volunteered my own niece as a burnt offering.”
You planned that debacle? Luca shifted beside me, tension rippling through him. You planned something this momentous, and you didn’t even tell me, Em? His thoughts brushed against mine, sharp and frantic, and I flushed with shame.
I’ll explain later, Luca, I shot back as I followed my uncle. I was trying to keep you out of trouble.
We walked together down the hall, neither of us looking at the other, neither of us giving the slightest hint we were speaking mind to mind.
It was the one secret we’d kept from Uncle Gio, the one secret we hid from the world. Twins were rare in the vampire world, rarer still for both to survive to adulthood, and—according to Enzo—our ability to communicate mentally came from that bond.
You have no idea what I’ve gone through tonight, Em. No idea at all.
I’m sorry, Luca, but things got complicated, fast, and now… I’m in a bit of a mess.
We passed portraits of long-dead DiRavellos lining the corridor, their painted eyes watching with vague disapproval and tight-lipped smiles.
My father’s face stared down from the largest canvas, his hand resting on a globe, his expression somewhere between stern and amused.
Enzo had always liked that painting; he said he looked like a benevolent tyrant.
Giovanni pushed open the study door, and the smell—leather scented, rarified air, rich with cigar smoke—hit me like a physical blow.
My father’s study had always been the heart of the palazzo—a war room disguised as a gentleman’s office, and now, it struck me how alike this room was to Marcello’s.
Dark shelves crowded with ledgers and tomes, maps pinned to cork boards, sagging red string drawing lines between ports and drop-off points.
The desk overlooked the canal, stacks of documents still neatly waiting where he’d left them.
This was where he’d taught me to read shipping manifests and decode diplomatic letters. Where he’d smiled and told me, You see the chessboard better than anyone, Stella. One day, this will all be yours.
Except one day had died with Enzo because, without putting his wishes in writing, Luca would step into my father’s shoes.
Vampires, the quintessential procrastinators.
I didn’t mind my brother inheriting my father’s crown. In fact, part of me celebrated my twin getting everything he deserved, though I worried how he’d handle the responsibility. What rankled was how Giovanni had walked into this room—my father’s room—as if he owned it.
How he’d traded me away, like a pawn he was willing to sacrifice in pursuit of something far more valuable.
“Sit down,” he barked.
“Go fuck yourself,” I replied.
His gaze sharpened, just for a heartbeat. “Then stand, if you prefer.” He shrugged, taking my father’s seat behind the desk. “Your stubbornness will not change what we must discuss.”
Luca slipped past me and sank into one of the leather armchairs. He looked wrung out, the lines of his face carved deep by worry. There were spots of blood on his expensive suit, and more spotted the cuff of his shirt. Blood had been spilled tonight… and for what? The glory of the Dynasty?
Come on, my brother urged, his words edged with exhaustion. See what he has to say.
I crossed to the other chair and sat, but only because I wanted a better angle to watch Giovanni’s face as he lied, twisting the truth to suit himself, like always, because somewhere, beneath his slippery words, I would find the truth.
Because he’d taught me where to look.
He closed his eyes, and a secondary layer of wards shimmered along the walls and over the bookshelves, invisible to mortal eyes but bright to ours. Soundproofing.
“You used me,” I spat, the second the protections locked into place.
His brows lifted slightly. “I saved you.”
The casual lie stole my breath for a second, anger stuttering into disbelief.
“You think you’ll play the hero? Now, after everything?
We had a plan, Uncle Gio. Invoke the Right of Arbitration, then strike under the guise of justice.
We’d all get what we want, revenge and power.
The power, by the way, would be yours, the vengeance mine. ”
I spoke mostly for Luca’s benefit, trying to catch him up.
“So, we did,” he agreed mildly, moving to the liquor cabinet, opening it with an easy familiarity that made my skin crawl.
He poured himself a small measure of brandy—also my father’s—before answering.
“You went to the ceremony planning to put a knife in the Don’s heart.
Do you think that’s not using someone? You would have sacrificed us all for a single, satisfying kill. ”
“It would have been more than satisfying,” I didn’t look at him. “It would have been justice.”
“No.” He gave me a disappointed look. “It would have been suicide.”
Luca bristled. “Ember’s not wrong to want his blood.”
“I didn’t say she was wrong,” Giovanni replied, taking a slow sip. “I said her plan was shortsighted. And a smart male always has contingencies in place.”
“I did not kill him, as much as I wanted to,” I seethed, leaving off the part about Marcello’s sad eyes and my own pathetic hesitation. “I stuck to your plan, and you abandoned me. Then you sold me off like a fatted cow to a family you claim to hate.”
“Apparently,” I gave my brother the side eye, “I’m marrying Gabriel Dominico in three fucking days.”
“You had no right,” Luca shot to his feet. “You don’t get to throw my sister at the Dominicos like… like a sacrificial lamb.”
Giovanni’s mouth tightened, as if he’d somehow expected Luca to blindly agree with his ridiculous plan to sacrifice me for the greater good. He deliberately set the brandy glass down, untouched, and turned to fully face us.
“You are angry. Anger is useful. But if you let your emotions blind you, you will be dead before the week is out.”
“Stop saying I’m going to die,” I glared daggers at him, wishing they were real. “It’s like you have no faith in my abilities.”
“It’s also true,” he shrugged. “Unless you start thinking bigger than vengeance.”
I leaned forward, the leather creaking under my hands. “Enlighten me, then. Because from where I stood, all I saw was you offering me up as a pretty solution. ‘Oh, Don Marcello, my niece is so very sorry she was mouthy. Perhaps your son should marry her instead of killing her.’”
A muscle jumped in his jaw, both at my tone and my insolence. “Those were not my words.”
“They might as well have been,” I bit out. “Marcello agreed to the Right, and I convinced Gabriel to be the arbitrator. Our plan worked. Then you turned a valid accusation into a brewing Dynasty war to be smoothed over with vows and rings.”
He watched me closely. “Is that what you think?” he asked. “That you are being fed to our enemies to pacify their pride?”
“What else would you call this? True love?” I demanded.
“Leverage,” he intoned, and the word landed between us, heavy as an anvil.
“Your father spent decades trying to get close to the Dominicos,” he placated. “He wanted to learn the scope of their operations, have full access to their network of spies. We tried for years to get a seat at the table and were always kept at arm’s length. Useful, to a point, but not trusted.”
“Enzo never wanted their trust,” I countered. “He never wanted anything from Marcello.”
“You’re wrong. Enzo wanted everything,” Giovanni argued, voice sharpening. “But my brother understood you don’t topple a Dynasty by charging its gates with swords drawn. You bring them down from the inside.”
That doesn’t sound like Father. Luca’s nostrils flared, his eyes fixed firmly on our uncle. He never showed any interest in ruling this Dynasty.
I agree, brother. I’m wondering if we are just now discovering our uncle’s true nature.
Before father’s death, I’d trusted Gio completely, all the way down to my soul. Now, I thought about everything Gabriel had told me tonight. The way he’d sold me off so cavalierly. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
“You think I sold you.” He perched on the edge, brandy glass dangling from his fingers as I shored up my mental shield. “I offer you the chance Enzo wanted more than anything… a way into their house.”
I stared at him. “As what? A broodmare? A pretty ornament on Gabriel’s arm?”
“As a spy,” he said simply. “As a blade at their throat, they won’t see until it’s too late.”
“You’re insane,” Luca shook his head. “They’re not fools. Gabriel certainly isn’t. Marcello hasn’t survived this long by trusting anyone except family. They will never let Ember close enough to hurt them.”
Giovanni smiled faintly. “You’d be surprised how close males allow what they think they own.”
My cheeks burned. “You are disgusting.”
“Accurate,” he replied. “At first, they will keep you under guard, but eventually, you will earn their trust, Emberline. You will play the tragic, grieving daughter who accused the Don in her pain but is now brought into the fold as a gesture of unity. Gabriel will doubt you at first, but… you will earn his trust. You are an accomplished actress; you know how to work people well enough, especially males. He will tell you all of their secrets. Eventually.”
I thought of the way Gabriel had bandaged my hand, carefully, like he was protecting something that belonged to him, and warmth bloomed in my chest. Yes, I could do this.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“So what?” I shook my head at the ridiculousness of this entire conversation. “I smile, listen, play the obedient wife while I memorize shipping schedules and computer passwords? You’re asking me to pretend they didn’t rip our father’s heart out of his chest.”
Giovanni’s eyes softened. “I am asking you whether you want them dead more than you want revenge.”
That warmth in my chest twisted because I wanted both.
“I’m talking about true revenge, cara. Toppling their empire completely, erasing the entire Dominico bloodline, forcing Marcello to watch his whole life collapse around him. Failure is worse than a quick death, trust me.” There was a bladed edge to his voice as he swirled his brandy.
“If you go through with this,” he continued, “you gain something invaluable.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Time,” he offered. “Proximity. Access. You will see their operations from the inside. The secret accounts they don’t show the Council. You will see where the money flows, who gives the orders when Marcello is not in the room, every exploitable weakness.”
I could almost see it as he spoke—the Dominico island, the fortress-palazzo, the hidden offices. Doors that had always been locked for Enzo silently opening for me because of a ring on my finger and a title I would choke on.
“You send me in,” I spoke slowly, “and I deliver you their empire, piece by piece.”
“Exactly.” His gaze brightened. “You do not have to destroy them in a single day, but erode them, bit by bit. You will compromise their network. Plant doubt in their allies’ minds, strain their resources responding to threats you create.
And when the time is right—when their operations are in shambles, when Gabriel is stretched too thin, when Marcello is off balance—we strike. ”
“How?” Luca asked hoarsely. “They are impossibly powerful. Guarded day and night by Draconi soldiers. Marcello has six hundred years of experience.”
“So do I,” Giovanni smirked, taking a delicate sip, his gold ring glinting. “And we have something they do not.”
“What?” I asked, my teeth grinding.
He smiled. “You.”