Page 157 of Shadow King
Marcello rubs his chin, "Well, if we're playing open-handed, I was the one who killed Donna Margarita." He glares at me, waiting for backlash.
I shrug, "No tears here. She was a manipulative bitch, and if you hadn't done it, I would have."
Our eyes meet, hold. A beat passes, then he nods.
"Fine, I got rid of Ledyanoy Prizrak, the fucking bastard." Enrico gets up to refill his glass, turning his back to me as if testing if I'll stab him. I'd be crazy to do that. Not only are the other two watching me, but again, because I won't shed a tear over the loss of my uncle.
"I hope he at least spilled some secrets?" I throw at his back.
He stops for just a fraction of a moment. Then he continues to fill his glass. "Unfortunately, he killed himself before I could ask too many questions. Cyanide." He turns. Drinks the Blue Label down.
"Shit." I push myself off the wall to refill my own glass, moving past Enrico. When my glass is filled, he clinks his against mine.
Toni shrugs, "I don't have anything to add to the body count in your family. But I hope we can still be friends?"
Light laughter rumbles through the room, and the tension lowers. I realize the other three have been through more in the past few months that bound them together, and I'm still an outsider, but this? It's a start.
"Alright, so what's the deal with Ledyanoy Prizrak and Donna Margarita?" Enrico asks before sitting down again.
"I'm still looking into it. Besides them being half-siblings and growing up in…"
The door opens and interrupts me. Stephano enters, followed by an astonishingly beautiful redhead. Oksana Arsenyev.
"Hey kids," he drawls, like he’s walking into a poker night, not a war council. "Did the game start without me?"
But I freeze. Not because of what he says. Because of how he looks. Stephano Conti has always been clean-cut, polished, even at his most dangerous. But now?
He looks like hell.
Like he’s been through a warzone. Or maybe to hell and back.
There are lines in his face that weren’t there before—cutting deep, etched into his skin like they were carved by pain, not time. His humor is intact, the smirk, the confidence, but behind it… There's something darker. Something coiled and raw that didn’t exist before.
Whatever happened in Mexico didn’t just change him. Itscarredhim.
His eyes flick around the room, calm and calculating. And then, "This is my wife, Oksana."
I catch the ripple of surprise going around the room. Even Enrico shifts like someone just jabbed him.
Stephano strolls across the room, all smooth swagger, to cover the new darkness surrounding him. He tosses a thumb drive onto the table like it’s a casual ante. It lands with a soft clack—but it echoes like a detonator.
"Here’s the ammunition to shut Edoardo down for good, courtesy of my brother, who, by the way, isn't dead," he says. "All his dealings with the Venezuelans—emails, bank records, coded drops. Even early ties through Donna Margarita and our good buddy Ledyanoy Prizrak."
That name again. Like rot creeping in through old wood.
Stephano lowers himself into the nearest seat, one arm draped casually across the backrest like he hasn’t just dropped a nuke in the middle of the room.
"I know, I know… I’m the groom. I should be getting the gifts. But Oksana here—” he tips his head athis wife, who smiles, and who might actually be more dangerous than all of us combined—"convinced me it was time I got generous."
He shrugs, and for a flicker of a second, something slips through—like pain, or loss, or blood that won’t wash off.
"What can I say? Marriage changes a man."
No one speaks.
"What?" Stephano glances around. "What did I miss?"
THE END
