Chapter 18
EMBERLINE
Iscrubbed my face, trying to buy into this ridiculous fantasy he was painting.
“I have been training you for this since you could walk.” Giovanni slid off the desk and took a single step closer, close enough I could see the fine lines around his eyes.
“Not just with knives and pistols, but with strategy and politics. You read people the way others read books. Enzo knew you were a threat. The Dominicos will realize the truth, too—but far too late.”
He held my gaze, steady and unblinking.
“When you have weakened them,”—his tone was like velvet—“when you have turned their strengths against them, then you kill Marcello. You kill Gabriel and the younger brother. Not in public, but in a moment of your choosing. In their own house, like they did to your father. You will return to this palazzo with their blood on your hands, and we will be so powerful, no one will be able to touch you.”
My pulse thudded in my ears.
“And that’s it?” I wondered. “I just… come home? As if nothing happened?”
“I will become Don. You come home as the female who toppled the Dominico Dynasty.” Gio sounded as if it was already done. “No one will question us. Not the Council. Not the other Pentarchs. Not once I take Marcello’s seat at the Shadow Council and crush any discussions about my beloved niece.”
There it was. The heart of his plan.
Not for me to avenge his brother, but for him to inherit all the power in our world.
I wanted to laugh. This had been his plan since the beginning. The Rite of Arbitration… a ruse to get me to go along with it, a carrot he dangled for me to chase.
Only to dangle an even bigger carrot, one he knew I could not refuse.
Luca made a choked sound. “You’re talking about dismantling our entire power structure. Do you have any idea the chaos that will unleash?”
“Yes,” Giovanni admitted. “Transition is bloody. But power vacuums do not remain empty forever, and the DiRavellos will be ready to step in and lead, once our enemies are gone.”
He turned to Luca, eyes sharpening.
“The family business rests on your shoulders now.” His tone hardened. “You are the head of this house. The contracts, the debts, the alliances—every one of them will be looking to you for direction. You cannot afford to indulge in moral outrage, ragazzo. You must think in decades, not days.”
“I’m not outraged for myself,” Luca shot back. “I’m outraged that you’re selling my sister off like she’s a piece on your board.”
I flinched.
Giovanni exhaled slowly. “I am not blind to what I’m asking of her. Or of you. I loved your father. He was a good male, and he wanted to keep you away from the worst of our world. But Enzo is gone, and his softness will not protect you now.”
He studied Luca, gaze weighing and measuring, like a scale.
“You want to step into his shoes?” he asked. “Then understand what that means. It means making choices you despise. Sending loved ones into battle. Trusting their training makes them strong.”
Luca swallowed hard, fists clenched on his knees. “And if Ember decides she doesn’t want to be your blade? What then?”
Giovanni looked back at me. “Then,” he said quietly, “we face Arbitration without leverage. Without any story but the one that paints her as a foolish girl who tried to topple a Dynasty with her tongue. Marcello will never be found guilty, and he will be forced to punish her, publicly, or appear weak. She will be executed under the banner of the very justice she invoked.”
“In other words,” Luca muttered, “if I don’t play along, my sister dies.”
“If you don’t play along,” Gio agreed calmly, “we will all die. You can still try to run. We could throw ourselves at Don Marcello’s feet. Beg his forgiveness. But you know as well as I how far mercy goes in our world.”
I pushed to my feet, pacing away from the chair, needing distance from Luca’s desperate shock, from the smell of brandy, old paper, and the ghost of my father.
How did Giovanni know all this? I wondered, then the answer came to me. Because he always does, I realized bitterly. My uncle always knew the Dynasty’s next move, and he was always ten steps ahead.
How I wished I could go to the Isola della Cenere like my uncle did, and clear my head. I needed some damn clarity right now.
But I’d never been to the abandoned island, and I wouldn’t be going there tonight.
The window overlooked the canal. Across the water, in the hazy distance, I could just make out the shimmer of wards over another building in the distance—the Sala del Giuramento, where a grand banquet was taking place, the Dominico’s celebrating another successful Compact.
They had everything.
And Luca… he was all I had left.
Father would have wanted me to protect him. He would have counseled us to stick together in one of his uplifting speeches about there still being good in the world, and we shouldn’t overlook things like family bonds and loyalty.
I pressed my palm against the cool glass, feeling my wound throb through the bandage.
Ember, Luca sent, the mental touch tentative. You don’t have to do this. We can find some other way to fix this mess. There’s always another way.
Is there? I thought back. Tell me how.
He had no answer.
Giovanni’s reflection appeared beside mine, slightly warped in the thick glass. “Once, you asked me what the difference was between a pawn and a queen.”
I remembered. I’d been fourteen, bent over a chessboard in this very room, frustrated beyond belief that all my little pieces kept dying while the king hid behind them like a fucking coward.
“Pawns move where they are told,” he reminded me. “They are expendable. Queens go where they please. They are terrifying not because they are safe, but because they are lethal, mobile, and too valuable to ignore.”
“I don’t feel very lethal right now.” I laid my cheek against the glass and closed my eyes, wishing this was all a dream.
“If you choose this, you will be. If you walk into their house not as a lamb to slaughter but as a queen stepping onto the board. They think we are weak. They will underestimate you. Use your training to hurt them.”
“And if I fail?” Tears pricked at my eyes, and I was too tired to stop them. “If they kill me before I accomplish anything?”
“Then you die,” Giovanni sounded almost bored. “But you were prepared to die tonight on that dais. At least this way, you die on your own terms with a chance to do real damage first.” He didn’t sugarcoat it, and in a perverse way, I preferred this brutal honesty over his smooth lies.
I let a wave of rage and grief roll through me, then forced myself to turn.
Both of them were watching me—the uncle who had shaped me into a weapon and the brother I’d sworn to protect at all costs.
I stood there in my ruined gown, my palm still throbbing from the oath, my throat tight with disappointment and failure.
“You’re asking me to be your sacrifice.” I rolled my shoulders, feeling something inside me shatter. “To smile at our enemies until they hand me the keys to their kingdom.”
My uncle, the male who’d turned me into a weapon, made me trust him, inclined his head. “Yes.”
I sighed, not daring to look at Luca as I sent him a plea, If I do this, I need someone I can trust. Can I count on you, brother?
He didn’t look at me, either. I don’t like this, Em, but if you go through with this insane plan, then yes, I’ll always have your back.
“Fine,” I sighed. “You have a deal.” I stared Gio down. “But you even think about selling me out or leaving me to rot with our enemies or sacrificing me again for your own greed, you will find yourself at the end of my blade, Uncle.”
Giovanni’s expression didn’t change, but darkness flickered in his eyes. “In three days, the ceremony will take place. We must craft our plan carefully.”
“I want to be part of those meetings.” Luca’s dark gaze swung between us. “You’re not keeping me in the dark anymore. Either of you.”
Giovanni smiled faintly. “Fair enough.” He cradled the brandy glass. “The family business rests on your shoulders now, Luca.” He took a long sip. “Both of you have opportunities in front of you. What you do with them will decide whether your sire died for nothing.”
Suddenly, the weight of the night pressed down on me—the ceremony, the Basin, Marcello’s sad eyes, Gabriel’s hot and cold act, Giovanni’s smooth bartering away of my future. But the opening he offered gleamed like a poisoned chalice.
Drink deeply and live long enough to strike.
Refuse and die a martyr, leaving my brother to pay the price of my sins.
I thought of my father’s hands, steadily tracing ancient trade routes on maps, showing me how life used to be. We work with what we are given, stella, he’d told me once when a storm had destroyed one of our fleets. We bend, or we break. But we never stop moving.
“This isn’t what father would have wanted,” I offered softly.
“No,” Giovanni agreed. “Enzo trained you to take over the business, not fight a war.” He gestured around the study.
“But he’s not here now, is he?” He drained the last of his brandy and set the glass down with a soft clink, right where it would leave a ring on the desk, and I hated him for that, too.
“We’ll talk in the morning.” Then he was gone, my brother and I silent until his footsteps faded down the hall. Luca sank back into his chair, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Ember, he sent finally. Tell me you’re not going to do this.
“I have to.” My mouth was dry because for the first time all night, the truth tasted worse than any lie.