Chapter 23
EMBERLINE
Iscrubbed my hands down my face, turned, and walked to the other side of the room.
Repeated the movement. Didn’t feel one fucking bit better.
I’d checked on Luca—sleeping. While Nico and I were away, Gia—the healer—had treated him and sent him back to bed, and I hadn’t had the heart to wake him up.
“What are you doing?” Dante watched me from the bed, hands gripping the edges of the mattress, shoulders pushed forward. There were still leaves stuck in his tangled hair, a scratch down the side of his face. Cuts on his arms from the glass.
“Pacing. It seems to help Gabriel. I thought I’d try it out.”
“Well?” He tipped his head to the side, and a few leaves floated to the floor. “Is it working?”
“Not even a little. What kind of bullshit coping mechanism is this?”
Dante just watched me, letting me make another pass before he crossed his arms over his chest, heat radiating off his shoulders.
“So. Blackwood’s son?”
Most of the anger had drained out of my husband, leaving only shock behind. Thick and dulling, like a wall you couldn’t quite think around. I knew the feeling. I’d been trying to reconcile the truth in my head for a while now.
“Does it matter, though?” I asked, a rhetorical question, but not. “He left that life when he was a child, which is more than either of us did. We served our fathers and our uncles and their corrupt twisted plans. Me, longest of all. He had the sense to see his father was a monster and get out.”
And where did he live at twelve years old?
He’d been a child.
At twelve, I was taking horseback riding lessons and comportment classes and practicing my footwork on the training mats.
He was surviving on his own, and I didn’t even want to know what that looked like.
“Why not tell us the truth, then?” My husband looked wrecked. Not just in body, but in soul, and I was across the room in a heartbeat, stepping between his spread knees, pulling him against me. He buried his face between my breasts, body shuddering.
“Fear. Embarrassment.” I picked a pale green leaf out of his dark locks.
Then another. “He spent his childhood with no family. He thinks of you and Gabriel as his brothers. The way his father spoke, the things he said… he would have hung onto you two with everything he had. Done anything—even lie—to keep you as friends.”
“What kind of things did Blackwood say?”
I swallowed. “Terrible things that no one should ever have to hear about themselves. Cruel, hurtful things meant to wound… and they did. Lord Blackwood was going to kill his own son, and he took joy in the act. Those first twelve years of Nico’s life… they were hell.”
Not a guess.
A certainty.
“And who are we to judge, anyway?” I sank my fingertips into his scalp and began to massage, feeling his big body finally relax.
“I was killing innocent people for my uncle, Gabriel was being twisted by Marcello’s cruelty, and you were locked in a prison because you were a threat to your father.
None of us had happy childhoods. But what we do have is a family. ”
“A dysfunctional family.” His lips moved against the hollow of my collarbone.
“Fine, yes, but it’s our family. Nico has questions to answer, to be sure, but I’m not abandoning him. His father expected me to, though. He said…” I paused, replaying every awful thing that came out of Blackwood’s mouth. “Blackwood mentioned if I had Nico’s child, he would own both of us.”
Dante went ramrod straight, more heat pouring off his body in waves.
“But wait, there’s more.” I set my hands on his shoulders, as if I could somehow keep this powerful male in place. “Blackwood called me little bird. There is only one other person—and I’m using the term loosely here—who called me that. The Overseer.”
Dante stayed where he was, but I felt anger vibrate through him, his muscles tensing, hands squeezing into fists before relaxing.
“Every Dynasty used the Fossa as their dumping ground for prisoners and dissidents,” he murmured, as if to himself. “Makes sense he’d know about the place, but to use the exact same term…”
“Yeah, coincidences really aren’t my thing, either.
” I let my husband pull me down into his lap and sank into the glorious comfort of his big arms wrapping around me, my head cradled against his chest. “There’s one more thing, and I’m going to need you to keep a lid on your temper.
And tell your demon to stand down because if he burns this villa, we’ll be sleeping under the trees tonight. Most of which are now broken.”
“Fine,” Dante’s fingers tightened their hold around my waist. “I’m good.”
I seriously doubted that but took a breath and plunged in.
“Blackwood was there the day we destroyed the Fossa. He watched Nico and me fight. It gave him great pleasure to give me a blow-by-blow replay, enough for me to know he wasn’t lying. What I can’t figure out is if this has anything to do with my uncle and Rocco or if it has to do with his son.”
Dante’s silence kept me talking.
“Probably more to do with Nico, actually. It’s no secret he’s slated to be your brother’s enforcer once he becomes Don.
Or that he’s Severin’s favorite Draconi soldier.
Blackwood might have followed his ascent through our Dynasty.
” I paused. “Which means he’s been waiting for the opportunity to expose his son and hope we…
I don’t know… threw him to the wolves? And Nico had to know this day would arrive, eventually. ”
“Nico had better fucking come clean about everything.” Dante’s voice took on a low and deadly edge. “There are too many unanswered questions.”
“There’s another possibility here.” I glanced toward the bedroom door. “Blackwood let us escape. He planted seeds of doubt, enough that once we began picking at them, distrust would tear us apart from the inside. That’s a classic tactic and what my uncle would have done.”
“So, the black smoke wasn’t meant to help you, but cover for Blackwood to let you go?”
I shrugged. “It’s a possibility. I mean, anything is possible right now. We have to sift through layers of lies to get to the truth and are facing enemies who have been manipulating councils and dynasties far longer than we’ve been alive.”
“I’m not seeing a solution here.”
“Because I don’t have one.” I looked out the windows to the sky, lightening to a pale pink in the east. “One thing went right last night, at least. Emilia’s awake,” I said, a shiver going through me at what that meant.
“Which means we are taking a trip this morning. All of us,” I said sternly.
“Nico is the one who broke the stasis spell over Emilia. He deserves to be there. Whatever his truth is, I say we hash all this out after a big breakfast.”