Chapter 28 #2
“Rom is loyal,” he agreed, pacing to the other side of the room, clasping his hands behind his back before turning back to face me.
Behind my father’s flat expression, greed glittered.
“But I need my son. You’re of my blood. There are things you bring to the table Romulus lacks.
Powers he could never dream of. Had I known your secret, I never would have let you go. ”
Powers. Secret.
Fuck. Losing control for those few critical seconds while we were locked in the circle had been a mistake. I’d panicked, intent on protecting Emberline, and instead, I’d revealed something my father could—and would—use against me.
Use against all of us.
Had I known your secret. I turned that phrase over in my head, fury building until I ached from holding it all inside. Like this curse was the only thing that gave me worth.
“You’ll never see that part of me again,” I said flatly. “And neither will anyone else.”
My father looked pointedly at the bedroom. “Tell that to your lover. She’s in your bed. But have you told her who you really are? Does she know what you’re hiding, or should I say… what’s hiding inside you?”
Anger flared, and the walls around us shifted, from pale sandstone to cold granite, flecked with black mica, the stone of the Blackwood Castle outside of Rome, a place I so despised, I hadn’t thought about in decades.
I grit my teeth and turned everything back to before, the memory of that awful place slipping through me like oil.
“Homesick, son?” His smile sharpened. “You could have visited. I would have welcomed you with open arms.”
“Get to the fucking point,” I snapped, “or this all goes away. Tick tock, you’d best talk fast, Cesare, because I am out of patience.”
His expression darkened as he wrestled his temper back under control. The process took longer than I remembered, and I tried not to enjoy his struggle as much as I did, but damn, it was good to have the upper hand for once.
“After your departure, I never thought I’d see you again.” He pasted an appropriately somber expression on his face. “All those years, I thought you were dead.”
“That was the whole point.”
“Then you came to Rome. Imagine my surprise when I realized the Draconi soldier sent to investigate my supposed crimes was my own son. I wondered if you’d somehow been… reincarnated. I told myself that was, of course, impossible. That there must be another explanation.”
I kept my face blank, hands loose, breaths even as he threw my greatest miscalculation back in my face.
I still couldn’t say what drove me to go to Rome.
Curiosity, perhaps. Pride, most definitely.
The chance to bring my father—the male I despised with every cell in my body—down for his crimes. I’d left empty-handed, and my father had discovered his long-dead son was alive.
I’d been living under his shadow ever since.
“I could force you to return.” His feigned calm was shredding; I saw it in the way his fingers flexed, the tight edge to his voice. “Leash you to me and drag you back like the fucking dog you are.”
“There’s the father I remember. Just like old times, eh?
” I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned into the wall, daring the fucker to try.
“I well remember your leashes, father,” I said softly.
“How they burned. How they choked. How they crushed. I’m not a child anymore.
My bones don’t break as easily as they used to. ”
He took a step, and I pushed off the wall, bare feet braced on the cold floor.
He stopped, doubt flickering on his face.
Because he saw everything he’d missed before. The scar on my pectoral, designating me as a Vendetarri. The layers of muscle from decades of training. The curling shadows I commanded that were deadlier than vipers.
A male that matched him in speed and size and magic.
More than matched him… if I chose to.
“This time, when I fight back, it won’t be with two small fists. It will be with magic that will devour you whole, chew you up, and spit you out a shredded mess. This time, you’ll be the one bleeding on the floor.” My voice shook, my body stiff with rage.
Not fear. I’d left fear behind a long time ago.
He put his nose in the air. “You always were an intractable child.”
“Probably,” I said evenly, “but you were a monster. If I could have killed you, I would have, but instead, I saved myself.”
“Saved yourself,” he sneered. “For what? This? Playing house with some no-name mafia princess? And what of this… princess of yours? What shall I do to her once I have her under my control? She is a beautiful little thing, don’t you think?
Such a lush body and pretty mouth,” he mused, viciousness coating his every word.
“Perhaps she will serve me on her knees as she serves you, like a common who…”
Fury exploded through my veins, shredding my vision, hollowing out my lungs. In the space of a breath, I shattered the room apart, surrounding us instead with the council chambers of the Sala del Giuramento in all their luxurious glory.
My form changed, shoulders cracking, back lengthening, claws sprouting from my fingers. And I didn’t fight the shift. No, for once, I wanted my father to see me for who I was. Let him try to leash me now.
Just let him try to take Emberline away.
I would shred his world to pieces before he would ever lay a single finger on her.
There were few things in this world I was sure of, but I knew one thing with absolute certainty. The next time we met in the real realm, I would eviscerate this bastard.
“Is this better, Father?” I purred, prowling toward him, my own temper on the rise, shadows spilling across the floor like ink. “Do you feel more at home on a throne, pretending to be king? That’s what you want, isn’t it? Power? Control? Dominion?”
Shadows darker than midnight wrapped around his throat like a noose, and I lifted him up, one of his custom-made shoes clattering to the floor.
“Speak her name again, and I will fully embrace this darkness inside of me. I will come for you. In your dreams, in your nightmares, I will slip out of the shadows and twist your miserable existence into something horrifying.”
Blackwood didn’t fight back.
He stared up at me with gloating satisfaction, the same look I’d seen him give a hundred others, right before he took everything away from them.
“You don’t have the strength to kill me,” my father taunted softly, his form disintegrating in my grasp. “You’re just as weak as you’ve always been.”
Then he was gone, and something scraped the floor behind me, the barest whisper of a sound that had me spinning around. Emberline peered around the corner from the bedroom.
“Nico? What… what are you?” With a blanket wrapped around her, her eyes drifted slowly up and up and up, growing wider until they landed on my face. Then I realized… she was staring not at me, but at my other form. The one I’d sworn never to show anyone.
My father hadn’t come here to bring me back into the fold.
He’d come to provoke me into showing my true form, and now Emberline—the only person in the world who mattered—saw me for exactly what I was.
A fucking monster.