Chapter 47
DANTE
“And what is… this?” Ember waved her hand between us. “The two of you, plotting together. What’s this all about?”
“Oh, this?” Nico’s lazy smile just grew wickeder. “Just a friendly little revolt, meant to expose centuries of corruption and install a new Don, one who’s not rotten to the core.”
Emberline’s eyes landed on me, her mouth parting slightly.
“Gods, no, not me.” I shook my head. “Gabriel. My brother is the future of this Dynasty. He has the training, the knowledge, and the temperament. You know me.” I shot her a smile to try to ease the tension in the room. “I’d just burn it all down and start over.”
“Or dance in the ashes.” Ember leveled that incendiary glare on Nico, and the hardened soldier actually flinched. “So, you and Gabriel and my husband are working together? For how long?”
“For over ten years,” I confessed. “As you know, Draconi soldiers are trained in the pits. Minimum two years before they are seriously considered for the Brotherhood.”
“Five years to become a Vendetarri,” Nico told her with a wink. “I even have a fancy scar to show for my efforts. Do you want to see? I’ll have to take my shirt off, though.”
I leveled my own glare at the asshole, daring him to show my wife any part of his body he didn’t want to lose.
“Nico faced me in a fight, recognized me…”
“Barely,” he snorted into his coffee, “you were pretty beat to shit.”
“There is no escaping the pits, and my sire was paying to keep me imprisoned there. After I made contact with Nico, I had a good reason to stay alive. While I was busy surviving, Nico passed messages between Gabriel and me. I told them everything I knew. We started to plan.”
“But planning took time,” Nico admitted. “We had to move slowly because there were spies everywhere. Our… source was growing nervous that he was being watched.”
“I’d been in the pits for almost fifty years when Gabriel bribed one of the guards.” My voice was shaking, just talking about that brutal place, my palms sweaty.
“A year ago, I woke up on a beach in Tunisia with a bag over my head, but I was free. Up until a few weeks ago, I stayed hidden, trying to get my head straight, took some jobs that weren’t…
Well, Rocco blackmailed me for some off-the-books work I did, so let’s just say I didn’t always land on the right side of vampire law. ”
The way the sun came in the window caught Emberline’s face just right, turning her into a Caravaggio painting, a chiaroscuro masterpiece fit for the grandest museum or my darkest fantasies.
She looked so godsdamned innocent, with her hair falling past one shoulder, my shirt off the other, and I braced my feet on the shifting floor that used to be my world.
I reached up, absently dragging my fingers over a tattoo, magic tingling against my fingertips, something dark and unspeakable shifting inside me, waiting to get out.
My wife could never know what the Fossa had turned me into. What the Overseer had created, down in his workshop, with pagan magic and malice and the help of a witch.
An animal, really, unfit for anything but dealing out pain and death for his enjoyment.
Because if I ever wanted Emberline to love me the way I loved her, then she couldn’t find out I was a fucking monster cloaked in a vampire’s skin.
She swallowed. “You said there’s proof.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “There is. We just don’t know where it went.”
I turned to my friend. Nico’s usual lazy arrogance was gone, elbows resting on the table, fingers laced, his pale eyes steady as he studied Ember.
“All these years, Marcello didn’t operate alone,” he explained slowly, something like regret flashing across his face. “He’s not smart enough to run a con this complicated, not even ambitious enough. He had your uncle helping to cover his tracks.”
Ember’s fingers tightened around the mug. “My uncle has spent his life pitted against Marcello. He would never protect him,” she insisted stubbornly.
“Giovanni was protecting his own secrets,” Nico clarified gently. “Your uncle was instrumental in securing Marcello his position, remember? They worked in tandem for centuries, covering each other’s tracks.”
Nico’s gaze drifted up to mine, his question clear. Should I keep going?
I nodded.
“But then someone else discovered the truth. Someone with enough influence and forethought to gather proof—letters, ledgers, eyewitness accounts, even from the DiSangue priests involved. Someone who could expose six centuries of corruption. Someone respected, even revered. Dante’s source.”
“Just how many people are involved in this conspiracy?” Ember asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Only us, and three others, and one of them is now dead.”
Ember winced, and I could practically see the wheels turning inside her head, linking one clue to the next, creating a picture that led to one logical conclusion.
“Enzo,” she whispered. “Your source was my father. Was that why… of course it was… of course that’s why he was killed.” She stared into the distance, not seeing either of us, a horrified awareness growing on her face.
“I thought it was the rivalry with Marcello. I thought it was my fault someone got inside…”
How badly I wanted to scoop her up. Carry her away from this city. Kiss away that broken hopelessness on her face.
“Your sire was the first person I visited once I came back to Venice,” I said hoarsely.
“He still had the evidence. Hard, physical evidence—records written in Marcello’s own handwriting—that proved, beyond a doubt, his claim to the title is not valid.
But he was scared. He couldn’t trust anyone anymore. ”
I cursed these last twelve months I’d spent screwing my head back on, retraining myself to become a member of society. If I’d only returned sooner…
“You came to see my father?” She looked up at me with tears running down her face. “When?”
“Two nights before he was killed.” I hardly dared to breathe. “In addition to showing me the evidence, your father asked me for a favor that night.”
I forced my heart to stop racing. “Enzo made me swear to honor the old blood oath he and Marcello swore, a century ago. He told me I was the only one who could protect you if something happened to him. Then Giovanni forced Marcello into an agreement, I interrupted your wedding, and here we are.”
“My father asked you to honor the oath. He wanted you to protect me?” Her voice came out so small, so vulnerable. She looked… absolutely wrecked.
I wanted to go kill something.
Preferably a cherub-faced motherfucker who dressed like a monk.
“Your father knew he was in danger, and his only priority was protecting you and Luca.” Nico put in. “He’d sat on the evidence for years to protect you and your brother. He thought he was careful.”
Nico’s mouth twisted. “Enzo was many things. Reckless wasn’t one of them. But he underestimated how closely Marcello was being monitored. And he didn’t know he was being monitored, just as closely.”
Ember swallowed. “By whom?”
“The blackmailer who’d spent centuries getting rich off Marcello’s secrets.” Nico looked worried about my wife, which was pissing me off. “He couldn’t risk Enzo exposing Marcello and ruining his lucrative arrangement. So, he did what males like that always do when someone threatens their power.”
“He killed my father,” Ember whispered, her voice hollow. “This blackmailer.”
Nico’s gaze met mine before he answered. “Yes.”
“I thought…” She traced an old stain on the table. “I was sure Marcello ordered the assassination. That Gabriel carried out the order. I was convinced my father died because of some ancient feud.”
“There is a feud, just not the one you know about,” I said, my voice hoarse. “He told me he was finally ready to go to the council. That with me back, even disgraced, with my testimony, he had enough to demand an investigation into Salvatore’s death. Into Marcello.”
Ember looked like she was going to be sick. “But he never made it.”
“No.” I shook my head. “He didn’t.”
I closed my eyes, wishing I didn’t have to break her heart and rip her entire world apart. I was exhausted, and not just physically. Bone-deep.
The sort of emptiness I thought I’d left behind me, buried in the sands of The Fossa.
“There’s a reason we tried to keep you out of this,” I explained, gripping the edge of the counter, “A reason I didn’t tell you everything that first night.”
“I don’t care about your excuses,” she snapped. “I want the truth. Who has been blackmailing Marcello?”
“Giovanni.”
For a second, Ember blinked, then her shoulders sagged, the light draining out of her eyes.
“No.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not…”
“Your uncle was the assassin,” Nico broke in, when I couldn’t get anything out. “Giovanni killed your father, who was about to expose him for the treacherous sociopath he is.”
I was glad Nico said it, given the death glare he got from Ember.
“You’re insane.” She crossed her arms over her chest, half laughing. “Giovanni hates Marcello. He’s been working against Marcello for years, pushing me to—”
She stopped talking, eyes widening as the truth hit her.
“Pushing you to marry Gabriel? To get close to the family so you could strike us from the inside?” I smiled down at her sadly. “Yes, we knew what your uncle’s plan was the moment he proposed the arranged marriage.”
“You said there was proof,” she snapped. “Show it to me.”
I traded a look with Nico. “The proof disappeared the night your father was killed. Our theory is that Giovanni tortured Enzo, got him to reveal where the documents were, then killed him. They could be anywhere now.”
“Oh gods,” she breathed, her voice shaking. “I trusted him. My father trusted him.”
“Your father was about to prove everything,” I cut in quietly. “Five hundred years of Giovanni never taking the throne for himself—but always in the background, moving the Pentarchs around like his own, personal chess pieces.”
“Enzo got too close.” Nico touched her hand, and I ground my teeth together. “Giovanni couldn’t risk losing his leverage over Marcello or having the truth exposed. So, he did what he’s always done.”
“He chose his own survival over his own blood,” I finished.
“My uncle raised me. Giovanni’s the one who put a blade in my hand and told me I was nobody’s pawn.”
She rubbed her chest, round and round, breathing fast.
“He sat with me the night my father died,” she whispered. “He held my fucking hand. He swore on our family name he’d find out who did it. Now you tell me he’s the monster who ripped out my father’s heart?”
Nico’s voice was very quiet when he answered. “The worst monsters are friendly, principessa. That’s how they get close.”
I took one step, and she flinched away. “Don’t. Just… don’t. I can’t…”
“I’m sorry, tesoro,” I tucked my hands in my pockets, so I didn’t scoop her up. “I wish… I wish I’d come back sooner and that your father was still alive.”
One week.
One week sooner and perhaps none of this would have happened.
Enzo would have gone to the Council, I would have backed his claim—disgraced, banished, and broken but still the voice of a Dominico.
“I want to see that proof,” she demanded. “Real proof. The kind that ends dynasties.”
Nico’s mouth curved, this time with a hint of his usual sharp-edged amusement. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
We both ignored him.
“You say there’s a stash of documents, records, whatever.
You don’t know where it is.” She spread her trembling hands.
“We find it. We use it. Against Marcello. Against Giovanni, and anyone else who had a hand in my father’s murder.
” Devastation was still there, sorrow bleeding across her beautiful face, but resolve spiked to life, too.
“You understand what comes next,” I cautioned softly. “That means we’re going after your uncle, the most powerful male in the entire Dynasty. It means, Ember, that at the end of this, he has to die.”
“Yes.” She took a shuddering breath.
“But if this is true, I don’t have an uncle anymore. I only have a target.”