Chapter 5
GAbrEL DOMINICO
Icould barely think past my fear.
Around my rage.
Not only had Emberline stolen the cipher and snuck out, but she had also followed her uncle to the Draconi island. To a place I couldn’t reach her.
Couldn’t protect her.
“What if I went back out?” Emberline offered, a crescent of silver highlighting her dark eyes as she tracked the pendant swinging back and forth from my fingers. “Kept an eye on that portal? I know all my uncle’s usual routes, all his contacts. I could—”
Fear knocked the air out of my lungs.
I was going to throttle her if she casually floated the idea of tracking her utter waste of an uncle around Venice as if she was following a lost dog, not the psychotic bastard who’d tried to kill her.
Correction—he had killed her, which was why she now had silver in her dark brown eyes, and all too often, I caught her blankly staring off into space.
It was my fucking job to keep her safe. Mine. A job I was failing at.
“Emberline.”
One sharp word and she clamped those lush, red lips tight, watching me like I was a powder keg about to explode.
She was right. I was on the verge of either shaking her or kissing her; both would only make this situation worse.
I carefully set the cipher on the dark wood mantle, deciding my next play.
Setting limits… I was only daring her to test me.
Locking her up was pointless; she always managed to escape.
If she hadn’t pissed me off so badly, I would have been impressed, but godsdamn it, if Giovanni discovered she was alive, he would kill her for real, and the very idea of losing this female had all the air evaporating from my lungs.
“I understand the impulse.” I forced my voice into a calm, even tone.
“Believe me. There is not a day that passes that I don’t imagine walking into Giovanni’s sanctum and carving out his heart while he sleeps.
For what he did to my brother. For what he did to you.
” That dark, raw ache crept out of my heart and into my voice as I imagined ending that fucker’s life.
“He should be dead,” she agreed quietly. “I hate that he’s walking around, free to plot and scheme while Dante is….” When her voice broke, I gripped the edge of the mantle so I didn’t do something supremely stupid, like pull her into my arms and tell her everything would be okay.
Everything was pretty much fucked right now, and she didn’t even know the half of it.
“Yes, your uncle should be dead, but we need him alive.” I exhaled, but none of my tension lessened. We’d had this same conversation too many times already, and neither of us was happy about it.
“Giovanni is the only person who knows where my brother is.” I felt the need, once again, to point out the logistical reasons, because right now I was sorely tempted to just say fuck it and make him dead.
Poetic justice and all that shit.
Instead, I pulled in a breath, swamping my senses with citrus and lavender.
“Which means he stays alive, whether we like it or not. My father is ill, and Giovanni is busy gathering council support so he can replace Marcello. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for proof, and then we will bury them both.”
I didn’t tell her we were running out of time.
Didn’t let her see the panic driving me.
It was up to me to keep her safe. To find my brother. To outwit Giovanni in a constantly shifting political landscape where I was losing ground by the day.
“After we get Dante back,” she said, “and they are both gone, then you can step up and become the next Don, and we’ll put this nightmare behind us.”
How I hoped that day would come, even though the odds were more in favor of me becoming worm food than ruling the Dynasty.
“Revenge is easy; justice is harder to come by.” I frowned. “Dante deserves both. Until he’s safe, we wait on your uncle. We focus on locating the Fossa.” My hand tightened involuntarily on the back of a chair. Nico hadn’t come up with a single lead. Three weeks ago, I’d been full of hope, now…
“You really believe he’s there,” she asked, blinking fast, as though she had something in her eye. Just the idea of Emberline crying sent my heart into some sort of apoplectic jitter, asking myself one final time…
Why hadn’t I killed Giovanni DiRavello a long fucking time ago and spared her all this grief?
“I’m sure. The Fossa is a convenient way to make your enemies disappear,” I pointed out the obvious. “It’s the logical answer. I heard my father and your uncle strike that deal. But I’ve searched every Dominico manifest from the past fifty years, and there’s not a single mention of the prison.”
“Do you think he’s still alive? I’ve asked myself a thousand times, and I’m not sure I like the answer anymore.” Tears clung to her long, dark lashes, and it took every bit of my self-control not to wrap myself around her like a shield against a world determined to hurt her.
“Yes.” I made myself sure, the word a pledge of certainty as I touched my chest, fingers resting over my racing heart. “The bond between us hasn’t snapped.”
For a long moment, she stared at me, as if deciding whether or not to trust me, then finally took a long, shuddering inhale and nodded, a tear slipping down her pale cheek.
My fingers flexed with the need to wipe it off her face.
“But our connection is… muffled.” My voice was low as I went on, “like he’s buried under layers of stone. Some days I feel nothing, and then... then I feel the bastard shove back. Stubborn until the bitter end.”
Hope flared in those beautiful brown eyes as she nodded, and that tight, squeezing pain intensified in my chest, an ache that felt wonderful and awful and impossible.
Her hair was curled around her face from the humidity, and she had dusty marks on her knees where she’d knelt while tracking her uncle. Alone.
I could barely swallow around my fear.
I should lock her up. Keep her safe. Even when I knew that was a fool’s dream.
“Nico will be back in two days. This time, he’ll have a lead.
All we need is something to point us in the right direction, and we’ll bring him back.
In the meantime, we keep up the act. You’re dead.
I’m my father’s loyal heir. If we fuck this up, Emberline, they’ll come after us.
Dante won’t be a prisoner; he’ll be a bargaining chip. Or worse, a liability to be erased.”
My stomach turned at the thought of losing either of them.
“You think Giovanni would have him killed now?” Her voice was high.
“I think,” I said slowly, “if Giovanni were even half as smart as he thinks he is, he would have killed Dante the moment they captured him. No complicated plots. No gloating. Just a blade, a grave in the dirt, and a toast to his success.”
She sank into the nearest seat, white as a ghost. “But he didn’t,” she shuddered, fingers gripping the arms of the chair. “Giovanni wanted him to suffer. So, he left him alive.”
She looked so lost, I sent up a prayer to the gods. Gods, please let him be alive.
Please don’t let her slip away from me. I’ve seen the darkness in her eyes, the way she sits for hours, staring out at nothing. The silver crescent outlining her irises. I can keep her safe from many things, but wherever she goes to inside her head…
I cannot follow.
“For now,” I muttered, silence spreading between us, thick and heavy.
Bile rose in my throat at the idea of Dante chained and collared in some bloodied arena, forced to fight for amusement. The idea of him trapped in a private cell, tortured and stubborn to the very end, refusing to die just to spite them, hurt even more.
It took me fifty years to free him before, and this time… this time, Giovanni made it personal. Bribes wouldn’t free my brother, not even a kingdom’s worth.
“I hate this.” She tipped her head back against the top of the chair.
“I know,” I said. “You and me both.”
“I dream about killing Gio,” she admitted, staring up at the ceiling, eyes following the long crack that went from corner to corner.
“Killing Marcello. Face-to-face, so they know who is bringing them down. I want them to feel their empires crumble. I want them to suffer like I did when they took Dante from me.”
“I do too, bella.” I sighed, sinking into the chair beside her.
I laid my hand over hers, so small and pale, yet calloused as any Draconi soldier’s.
“But if we rush in unprepared, we lose everything. Our leverage. The element of surprise. Dante didn’t spend years planning this just so we could die as martyrs to the cause.
We have to take them both down together, and we have to survive. ”
“Here I thought Nico was the patient one,” she muttered, staring down at our hands, but making no move to pull away. “But you’re surprisingly good at playing the long game.”
I huffed out a humorless laugh. “I’ve spent fifty years playing the dutiful son and learning this business. We have to settle this politically. I reminded Nico that without Severin and the Brotherhood on our side, without Emilia’s and Rocco’s support, we don’t stand a chance against your uncle.”
She curled her fingers around mine, so dainty, yet so strong, and again, the world shifted, a realignment of the cosmos, reminding me I was right where I wanted to be.
“Your father… he seemed healthy enough at the Blood Compact. That was barely a month ago. What’s changed?” she asked. “I’ve never heard of a vampire declining so fast, especially not an Ancient.”
“Life, maybe?” I huffed out a hollow laugh. “I don’t know. He’s barely able to get around. Perhaps he’s been hiding his illness from everyone, or maybe six centuries of greed have finally caught up to him.”
“Both are probably true.” Emberline peered over at me, outlined by the faintest glow from the fire. She looked exhausted. Hollowed out. She needed to stop spending every night on the rooftops of Venice, hunting her uncle. She needed sleep.
She needed to feed.
That fast, my body went from relaxed to taut at the thought of giving her what she needed. How many nights had I imagined now what it would be like to feel her lips on my throat?