Chapter 32
GAbrIEL
Sitting beside Marcello’s bed, I waited for his next breath.
And waited.
All night, I’d watched my father slowly wither away, the healers doing what they could for flesh that was too far gone. We did all we could, they intoned with the somber surety of creatures who dealt in death not life.
The breath finally came—a wheezing inhale, full of phlegm and pain.
I let out a breath of my own. The moment Marcello was dead, everything—the weight of the Dynasty, the responsibility of exposing Giovanni, the impending war—all fell fully on my shoulders. I’d trained for this. Prepared my entire life, and yet… I didn’t feel ready.
More than anything, I was pissed off.
I still cared about this husk of a male before me.
This monster, who’d killed his own brother to steal the throne, sent my brother off to die because Dante had discovered his secret. I shouldn’t have a shred of sympathy in my heart for Marcello, and yet…
I did.
That part puzzled me the most.
That some piece of me still cared about this heartless, selfish, cruel bastard.
All around us, the Dominico palazzo lay quiet under the weight of grief—curtains drawn, corridors hushed, servants rushing about, black bands already secured around their upper arms. My aunts were gathered in the sitting room, already planning my ascension ceremony, and I hadn’t bothered to correct them.
Officially, Don Marcello Dominico was dying of some unknown blood sickness.
Unofficially, I’d stopped the spy in our household who was poisoning him, but it was too late.
The chef would be dead soon, filleted to pieces by his very own hand-sharpened knives, and I would carve every last piece of information out of his traitorous body before I blessed him with death. If my father was suffering, then this fuck would, too.
Marcello lay suspended on the edge of death like a man too stubborn—or too damned—to let go.
No, he had his claws sunk so deep in this Dynasty, Death would have to drag him away.
His veined hands lay limp beside him, chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven pulls as I debated—and debated—my next move. The poison would have killed him tonight. By stopping the doses, we’d bought him a few days, perhaps a week.
Time where he would do nothing but suffer.
Or be lost in a haze of opium.
Guilt sat heavy in my gut, thick and nauseating. This was dishonorable. We were keeping him alive just long enough to strip him of his pride.
I told myself he deserved this fate.
I reminded myself of every evil thing he’d done.
Marcello stirred, lips parting. A faint sound escaped him—something between a breath and a laugh. Then his eyes fluttered open, milky from fever and whatever damage the poison had already accomplished.
“Gabriel,” he murmured, hand opening and closing, “my son. My son.”
I stiffened. “I’m right here. Haven’t left your side.”
His mouth twitched, like he was amused by that. “Of course you are. Always so loyal.” The candles carved his face into something grotesque. Once, he had seemed immortal in every way, too strong to ever fall.
Now, he smelled of rot and regret.
“Did you know,” he husked, “that I loved him once?”
My heart stuttered. “Who?”
“Your brother.” Marcello’s voice was sandpaper rough. “My firstborn. Dante. I lifted him in the air and announced to the entire world he was the next Don.” His eyes were unfocused, searching the space above his bed as though he was communing with ghosts.
“He was everything I’d ever wanted in an heir.
” His face pinched. “And then… and then… he found the truth. About my half-brother, Lorenzo.” Marcello drew the name out on a hiss of air.
“He was to be my father’s heir, even though I deserved the title.
I might have been a bastard, but I was stronger…
more ruthless. Better.” A wet breath rattled out of him.
“Salvatore never appreciated my… skills.”
This was his deathbed confession, most likely the only one I would get.
“You killed Lorenzo,” I redirected softly. “On the hunt.”
Marcello turned his head, eyes finding mine at last.
“Yes.” The word was calm. “He was in my way,” he continued. “And a weak, trusting male. It was almost too easy.”
Any residual sympathy I had been harboring for my sire evaporated.
“You murdered your own brother to steal the throne, then you killed your own sire.”
“Yes. And after that,” he whispered, paper-thin voice weakening again, “the Dynasty was… mine. Fear is a useful thing, Gabriel. It makes weaker vampires obedient. Loyal. Remember that when I’m gone.”
How could I forget when he’d drilled that nugget of wisdom into me since the time I could walk?
I glanced at the door, footsteps drumming past. I had some place I had to be.
Questions to ask. A chef to interrogate, but I had the source at my fingertips right now, spilling his secrets like cheap wine.
“What about Giovanni?” I asked quietly. “How did he fit into your plan to become Don?”
Marcello’s face twisted into something ugly, nothing but wrinkles and malice. “He knew all my secrets. He betrayed me, then blackmailed me. Me. I had everything in place. Lorenzo dead. Salvatore dead. The golden chair was mine. But he knew.”
“You made a deal.” My pulse pounded. “What did you give Giovanni to keep your secret for six hundred years?”
“Everything,” Marcello wheezed. “His silence cost me everything.” He coughed, a harsh, wet sound that shook the entire bed. I reached for the water out of instinct, tipped the glass to his lips, but he caught my wrist in bony, strong fingers.
“Before I’m gone, before you take over… I must tell you about the Basin.” His grip tightened, his eyes clearer than before, and I froze at that sudden clarity, that glimpse of the father I’d once known. Even respected, once.
“Everyone knows about the Basin.”
“No,” he rasped. “Not the story told to children. If you are to become Don, you must protect the Basin. That is your real duty. Your only duty. One passed down from Dominico to Dominico, since the beginning of time.”
He closed his eyes, voice slipping into something distant, almost reverent.
“The first Don of Venice was a nobody,” Marcello said. “A warlord with ambition but no divine right. The tribes refused to bow to him, but they were tired of war. They were at a stalemate when a high priestess arrived from the north.”
My skin prickled.
“A witch, older than our bloodlines. Her coven was driven south by their enemies, and she needed a strong alliance. A strong ally. She gifted him the Basin—not as a blessing or an offering of peace, but as a weapon against his own people.”
“What kind of weapon?” I asked softly, setting the glass of water back on the table.
“A weapon where the victims are complicit in their own demise. They took the Basin to every tribe, promising peace, asking for only a blood tithe in return. A single drop of their blood in honor of creating a truce, and most complied. Then he and the witch used the magic in the Basin to enslave them.”
The temperature in the room plummeted.
“The Basin’s ability to judge worth is a secondary magic,” he went on. “That rock is dangerous. In the wrong hands, it binds and enslaves. And that dark stone remembers every drop it has been fed. I could have been a tyrant, but I was benevolent. Kind, even.”
My blood chilled when I thought of the Compact. Of all that blood sinking into ancient stone and disappearing
“And now this responsibility falls to you,” Marcello husked. “You must do what I did. Never allow that terrible magic to be used against our people. I don’t need slaves. I earned my position, Gabriel. You have earned yours, too.”
I raked my hands through my hair. This… monster—this male so corrupt and so morally bankrupt, I wanted him dead—had done one good thing. Something I respected, even admired.
Something I could scarcely believe, given how power hungry he was.
I supposed everyone had their hard limits, and apparently, my father’s was enslaving his own people. Good to know he drew the line somewhere.
Marcello picked at the edge of his blanket. “Whatever happens, you cannot allow Giovanni to become Don. He knows what the Basin can do, and he has yearned to wield that power for six hundred years.” He licked his cracked lips, his lids starting to close.
“All this time, I kept my people safe. My only victory, keeping him from the Basin. My… only… victory.” With those final words, my father fell asleep.
The truth slammed into me with brutal clarity.
Giovanni didn’t want the throne at all.
He wanted the Basin, and with it, he planned to hold our leash. For the first time, I was seeing the true shape of this war we were fighting.
Not a contest for power, but for survival.
We’d been fighting the wrong war. This wasn’t a civilized mafia power play, entailing proof and the council and reasonable people playing this sometimes-bloody game.
We were fighting for our godsdamned lives, and if I hadn’t wasted the day having an existential crisis at my father’s deathbed about whether or not I was up for this task…
I would have never known what was coming.
Giovanni wanted the Basin.
That’s what he was after, that night he met with Severin. He’d asked for a tour, sure, but I’d bet my left fucking nut he’d tested every ward, every single defense when he was there. And being Marcello’s son and heir to the throne, I was one of the few people who knew where the Basin was stored.
At the Draconi fortress.
I pushed to my feet. This changed everything.
But… I still had a chef to interrogate.
I pulled out my phone. Nico was nowhere in godsdamned sight, even though I’d texted him twice. What happened with Ember at the Fossa had rattled him, but I needed him right now.
He’d get into this asshole’s head and dig out every last detail of the orders Giovanni gave him.
I eased out of my father’s room, nodding to the two Dominico soldiers who snapped to attention the second they spotted me. “Where is he?” I asked softly, handing one of them my coat and unbuttoning my sleeves.
“We put him in the room off the kitchen, Signore. The walls are thicker.” His gaze strayed to the room where my aunts were holding their death vigil. “We thought it would be better.”
“Good thinking. You two are with me. Stand guard while I find out what this bastard knows about the person who hired him.” I already knew the answer to that question, but I needed every last, dirty detail, and I couldn’t wait to start cutting pieces off this fuck.
I checked my phone one last time and cursed.
Nico ghosted me tonight. I was on my own.
“You sure you don’t want one of us in there with you?” one of them stammered, my coat folded neatly over his brawny arm. “In case things get… messy?”
“Do I look like I care how messy this gets?” I cocked an eyebrow, and a bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. “That fuck poisoned my father, and I will carve on him with his own knives until he tells me everything I need to know. You want to be helpful? Be ready to dispose of the body.”
The male swallowed. “Very good, Signore.”