Chapter 39
EMBERLINE
“Well, that was an unexpected detour.”
The villa was just in sight when I pulled my husband closer for another kiss. Honestly, we’d drifted apart since we’d arrived on the island, and carving out these few hours together had made me realize just how much we needed this.
“I want to go there again,” I sighed. “I feel really relaxed.”
“Good.” Dante’s raspy growl was pleased. “That was the whole point.”
The far side of the island even smelled different from the sunbaked rock near the villa.
Wilder. Salt-drenched, the air hung heavy with the sweetness of purple flowering vines and sea grapes dripping over the smooth edges of the towering walls of the cove, framing the slender waterfall spilling into turquoise-green water.
Like a secret the island had been keeping, just for us.
And maybe it had been.
My old boots dangled from two fingers, hair still damp and curling, smelling of the sea. Dante’s hand was clasped around mine, his thumb tracing absent circles against my palm as he splashed through the frothy waves.
Dark, wild, his hair blew over his face, eyes shining, turned toward the sea.
For once, my husband looked completely unguarded.
Younger. Like he might have looked if he hadn’t been imprisoned half his life.
The afternoon light slanted through the palms, dappling the path in front of us, and ahead of us, Nico said something that made Gabriel laugh—a real laugh—and my heart swelled.
Everything was just… perfect.
It had been months since I felt this free.
Like the Dynasty and the danger and the war were a world away. And maybe these past hours had been stolen, but if I could have stolen more, I would have. We all needed reminding, I told myself, of what it feels like to really live. To love.
“I still say you cheated, you bastard,” Nico announced, glancing back over his shoulder at us, shadows curling lazily around his fingers.
“Say what you will, but I won, fair and square.” Gabriel sounded amused, the tension that usually lined every word gone, a grin deepening that dimple in his chin. “You’re just a sore loser, like always.”
“You absolutely cheated.” Nico drew back. “Nobody gets four kings in one single hand. Nobody.”
I tugged Dante closer. “What are they arguing over?”
“Some ridiculous card game from twenty fucking years ago. Every so often it comes up, and then…”
“Luck favored me that night. Not my fault you got dealt a shitty hand and ended up with empty pockets. And besides, who the fuck even cares?” Gabriel’s eyes were shining when they caught mine. “If you want the hundred ducats, I’ll give them to you. Hell, I’ll give you twenty thousand.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Nico insisted. “Because there is no way…”
“Stop,” I called, both of them turning, Gabriel still grinning, despite those shadows curling ominously around Nico. “If either of you ruins a perfectly good day arguing over something that happened years ago, I will shove you off this path.”
“She means it,” Dante confirmed pleasantly.
“She definitely means it,” Nico agreed, throwing an arm over Gabriel’s shoulders. “You still cheated. Asshole.”
I shook my head, the sun beating down on my shoulders, every muscle loose in a way it hadn’t been in longer… than I could remember. The cove had worked miracles for all of us, a respite we’d all needed.
I squeezed Dante’s hand, and he squeezed back without looking at me, as if he already knew what I was thinking.
“I want to go there again,” I murmured. “Tomorrow. Actually, I want us to live there forever.”
“If only we could, tesoro.” He lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to my palm, eyes dancing with emotion. “I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time. It makes my heart hurt and not in a bad way.”
The path turned to rock, curving upward, and we stopped so I could slip on my boots. Above us, the villa’s terracotta rooftop appeared between the trees, and the warm, lazy contentment in my chest shifted into something tighter.
There were decisions to make, decisions we’d been putting off, but I wasn’t alone in feeling we’d run out of time. Blackwood was forcing our hand, and we had to be ready.
The back of the villa was open, every door thrown wide to catch the ocean breeze; that was the only reason I heard the sound in the first place.
Sobbing.
And not the polite, quiet kind. The raw, hopeless kind when someone can’t hold themselves together a moment longer. I stopped walking, Dante’s hand tightening around mine.
Ahead of us, Gabriel’s head tilted, and Nico’s shadows spun out all around us, sifting over the rock and sand before forming a protective shield.
We were running when we crossed the threshold into the villa.
Then I stopped, the boots slipping from my hand, panic rising so fast my throat closed off.
Valeria was on the floor, folded against Luca’s chest, both hands fisted in his shirt, her golden hair disheveled, her delicate face ruined—skin red and blotchy, mascara tracked in thin black lines down her cheekbones, around her mouth.
She was weeping so hard, she didn’t even notice us.
Luca’s chin rested on the top of her head, his arms wrapped tight around her, murmuring to her in a soft, calming voice, his shirt soaked with tears and mascara. The moment we crossed over the threshold, his head snapped up, fangs bared, as if he was warning off a threat.
Gods. He looked possessed.
Or… like a male protecting his mate.
I’d never seen Valeria anything but perfectly composed, and now, she was distraught, broken, and pity swept through me. Pity and fear, because what could have happened to fracture someone forged from steel?
All I could do was watch helplessly, pulse jittering as a thousand scenarios ran through my head.
When I stepped toward them, Luca’s dark eyes stopped me cold, brimming with fury as he held the shattered, sobbing female in his arms. I instinctively reached for that familiar mental connection…
There was nothing.
No, not nothing, exactly. There was a wall. Immovable and completely impenetrable.
Luca. Let me in, damn it.
He looked at me over Valeria’s head and shook his head. Not now, Em. A flood of Luca’s emotion hit me along with those words. Rage and protectiveness, a fierce, territorial instinct.
I grit my teeth, pushing at that barrier harder, but I couldn’t shove my way through.
“Valeria. Look at me.” Gabriel approached slowly, then touched her shoulder. She lifted hazy, red-rimmed eyes to him, as if she wasn’t quite sure where she was. “What’s happened? Are you hurt?”
“He’s back,” she rasped, her voice scraped hollow. “Giovanni. He’s not hiding any longer. He was at council today.”
The warm happiness of our afternoon evaporated.
Gabriel crouched down beside them, hands hanging loose, his expression giving nothing away. “Back… how?” he asked quietly as Nico crossed to the window, monitoring the surroundings. Dante stayed beside me, hand resting at the curve of my back, grounding me against whatever she was about to say.
Or ready to spirit me away.
“Tell them what you told me.” Luca stroked a hand down Valeria’s hair, and though his tone was gentle, his expression was strangely empty, not a hint of animation on his face.
Unease moved through me. Not alarm, exactly, just some odd sense that something wasn’t right. I knew Luca better than anyone, knew his every tell, his every little twitch, and much like our father, he wore his heart on his sleeve.
There was nothing about my brother right now that indicated he even had a heart.
But Luca wasn’t my primary concern right now.
“Tell us what happened today, Valeria.” I knelt beside Gabriel, close enough to see her eyes were unfocused, hear the panicked little breaths hissing between her teeth.
“He was there, in the Don’s chair, when I arrived, and my first thought was… finally. Finally, he’s come out of hiding, and we can kill him and drive Blackwood out of Venice, and then…” Her lips closed, as if she was trying to hold back a scream.
“And then he announced the Dynasty is returning to the old ways, whatever the fuck that means, which, as it turns out, is public executions, and…” She started breathing hard through her nose. “He had my family dragged in. My Aunt Aurora, my cousins, Sophia and Leon. You remember them?”
I nodded, that tightness in my chest turning painful. We’d all grown up moving in the same social circles, had all crossed paths enough not to be friends, exactly, more like toxic acquaintances.
“I remember them.”
“They’re dead.” She slumped in my brother’s arms, her fingers slipping from his shirt, as if she’d lost all her strength.
“Giovanni claimed it was a question of loyalty, but our bloodline has always been loyal. Always.” Her voice broke on the last name, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth for a moment.
“They were slaughtered. On the council chamber floor. They turned them into shriveled husks, and… Blackwood controlled them. They came at his bidding, and they killed everyone, and I thought they were going to kill me, but Severin gave me a signal, so I stayed in my seat and didn’t interfere, and now they’re dead, and I could have saved them. And I didn’t.”
Her words echoed in the dead quiet.
“How did he kill them, Valeria?” Gabriel asked, his voice cold as ice.
“He used those… Drax… things.” The words slid out between panting breaths.
“They obeyed Blackwood. He cast some sort of spell, but I wasn’t close enough to see.
There were hundreds of them, just like you said.
” Her gaze drifted to me, then she stared down at her trembling hands, as though she wasn’t sure they belonged to her.
“The things dropped from the ceiling. Devoured my family like they were food. And. I. Just. Sat. There.”
A muscle worked in Gabriel’s jaw, while Nico stayed utterly still.
“After they were… done, I kept waiting for Giovanni to end me. I thought, he knows. He knows I’m plotting against him, and he’ll give the order, and one of those things is going to drop down on me, and the last thing I’ll hear is that awful clicking sound as they…
” She took a wet, shuddering breath. “Then he just… finished the meeting. We talked about renegotiating smuggling routes while their blood dried on the floor.”
“You got out.” I reached out and took her hand.
Her fingers were freezing, stiff, shaking.
“You got out, Valeria. You’re safe, at home, protected by wards that have never been broken.
And there was nothing you could do to save them.
When Giovanni sets a trap, he always catches his prey, except this time, he didn’t catch you. ”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said quietly, her fingers curling around mine. “I watched them die, and I didn’t even make a sound.” She looked at Gabriel. “You have to stop him.”
“We will, I swear,” he said quietly.
“After they… dragged out what was left of the bodies, Giovanni calmly informed us the executions would continue. For as long as it takes, he said. He’s trying to draw you out. He has to know I’m working with you, and he’s sending a message.”
“Or he suspects Severin,” Dante put in. “If he was sure about you, Valeria, you’d be in a cell right now, answering questions.”
We traded a look. She was scared enough already. Answering questions was better than torturing the truth out of you.
“He gave Blackwood the order to call in the Drax. I saw it. Blackwood wasn’t happy about it, but he obeyed. There’s been a power shift. Giovanni is back in charge.”
This changed things. I’d been so sure Blackwood had outmaneuvered my uncle, but it seemed Giovanni did what he always managed to do. Come out on top.
“You have to stop him,” she said again, quieter. “Before there’s no one left to save. I can’t go back. I can’t go through that again.”
The silence only amplified the tension pressing down on the room; the fight we’d all known was coming, but none of us were prepared for.
We’d been moving too slowly, putting together a plan.
Emilia awake at last. Severin gathering his forces.
The Basin safely hidden. All parts of a bigger puzzle we’d been slowly fitting into place.
Always hoping we had more time.
“We’re not ready,” Dante said without apology because that was my husband—saying the blunt truth out loud when nobody else would. “We’re close, but we’re not there yet. If we move before we’re ready, we fail.”
“Yes,” Gabriel agreed. He was quiet for a moment. “But how many more families does he slaughter until we’re ready? How much longer can we afford to wait now that Giovanni has thrown down the gauntlet?”
Nobody answered.
Because there was no answer. There were only however many bloodlines Giovanni was willing to burn through until he drew us out of hiding.
“So, Blackwood needed a spell to control the Drax?” I leaned forward. “Are you sure?”
“Very sure. I watched his fingers, but he moved too quickly for me to decipher anything.”
“We have to get ready.” Gabriel rose to his full height. “We put a plan together with what we have in place right now. This cannot stand. I will not allow it to stand.” His voice thrummed with the gravity of the mafia heir who had made his decision and would stand by it to whatever end.
“We’ll get started right away. We need Severin and Emilia here, everyone in the same room for as long as it takes to hammer out a strategy that doesn’t get us all killed.”
I looked over at Valeria, watching us both with red-rimmed eyes and something that, beneath the shock, might have been relief.
Luca’s arms were still loose around her, and I nudged against that wall again. Nothing. And even worse, it seemed like nothing waited on the other side.
Like there was some kind of void.
For the first time in our lives, he’d blocked me out of his thoughts. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why the hair stood up on the nape of my neck, but dread was lodged between my ribs like a splinter too small to see and too deep to ignore.
I didn’t voice my concerns. Not with how Valeria clung to my brother, how he didn’t want to let her go. Not here, not now, not in the middle of everything that was already pressing down on all of us.
But I knew my brother.
And whoever I was looking at right now… wasn’t entirely him.